Divine Office

I have found it helpful as a beginner to utilize this app for guidance. It makes praying straightforward as we learn the way to pray the hours. It also helps us focus as a family with small children as sometimes they can get fussy or jittery and it helps to have the audio continue to guide us audibly so we are not constantly trying to find our place again. The children especially enjoy the sung hymns and the bells. It helps us all prepare ourselves and helps our home feel like we have brought the church wherever we are. It is also helpful to be able to read/pray when we are not at home. However, for us it has helped giving a dedicated time and space to pray and not stacking it with another task. For example, on a long drive home while our toddler is sleeping and we are dedicating that time to pray during our travels after dr appointments or other mandatory duties with a family, never if we don’t have enough time and would have to rush through it or if there are other things our vocation as parents is demanding of us at the time crying toddler, snack time, lunch while eating etc. this has helped us hold the prayers with more reverence and model sit for our children. Overall great resource in our current season!

Overall, this app is very useful. First, it’s more intuitive than iBreviary and it doesn’t have the mistakes that the other one has. There isn’t as much scrolling through options here, for example. The audio is a useful tool since I travel a lot and would miss Hours without it. However, as useful as it is, I find the reading to be a little distracting in all honesty. It seems a little…exaggerated to me, almost like it’s trying to be emotional. For someone like me who normally prays the breviary in common this is very distracting. The hymn choice I feel could also be improved to match the actual breviary. This would make it easier for a mixed group of people praying with the book or this app. Besides, I’ve never heard any of these hymns so I don’t know them anyway. But, there’s no accounting for taste. Some folks like the reading and others like the hymns. Just my thoughts. The main improvement I see is for the Daytime Hours. Terce, Sext, and None all use the Complementary Psalmody instead of the Current one for the day. It would be very helpful to those of us who need to pray the Hours (clergy, religious, seminarians) if the Current Psalmody was included for at least one of the daytime hours. This is one thing that iBreviary does better. As it stands now, Daytime Prayer ends up being the exact same set of psalms every day.

I have prayed the Divine Office for many years. While, I admit, I haven’t always been consistent in praying it daily, and I was never sure I had the ribbons placed correctly, it has helped me grow so much closer to Our Lord. When I discovered this app, all of my concerns of ribbon placement were gone. Having the Divine Office on my phone is absolutely the best thing ever! The sense of community is so wonderful as I see how many others are praying at the same time as myself. When I rise in the early morning, it’s still dark. Praying in the dark helps me feel the presence of the Lord and keeps distractions to a minimum. Now I don’t need to turn a lamp on as I use to when I used the Office printed volumes. It is such a blessing to have the Divine Office in my pocket. Many times I’ve been sitting in a doctor’s waiting room at the time of Mid Morning prayer. It is so calming of any worries to pull out my phone, open the app, and be able to connect with Our Lord at those times I need Him most. I don’t use the audio version much but the few times I’ve traveled, it is so comforting to not have to skip the Office in order to keep my hands on the steering wheel and my eyes in the road. I recommend this app to friends all the time, especially to those who’d like to pray the Office but feel intimidated by the size of the printed version and getting the ribbons placed properly. Thank you for developing this app. It is my constant companion.