The Church structured her official prayer around a framework of the psalms prayed eight times a day so that within one week, all 150 psalms are said.
As laity, we are not required to pray all the hours of the Divine Office. But it is highly recommended to do more as we’re able, starting with Prime & Compline.
Prime is the perfect Morning Prayer, Compline the perfect night prayer, and Sext is for the middle of the day.
This is better than private prayer; it’s the prayer of the entire Mystical Body because you pray with one heart with the millions of other clerics, religious and laymen around the world who have prayed and are praying these exact same prayers, AND because you adopt the intentions of the psalmist as you pray.
Below are a few options for praying the Divine Office.
The Roman Breviary (3 volumes)
$350-$380
Reprint of the 1961 Roman Breviary in English and Latin. Traditional Roman Breviary, in the form approved by Pope Benedict XVI in Summorum Pontificum. Full texts of national feasts for the USA included in the Proper of Saints. National feasts for England & Wales, Scotland and Australasia indicated in the Proper on the dates they occur. Extracts from the Rituale Romanum (including the most commonly used litanies) given in Latin with English rubrics in an Appendix.
The Monastic Diurnal
$70-90
A republication of the 1963 edition of the Benedictine hours of Prime, Lauds, Terce, Sext, None, Vespers and Compline, in Latin and English for all the feasts and seasons in the traditional Benedictine calendar. The Latin text is the traditional Vulgate psalter
Breviarium Meum App
FREE
This app allows one to pray the traditional (1962) Latin breviary of the Catholic Church from anywhere (via your iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad).
You simply have to select the hour to pray, and begin.
You can download the texts up to a week in advance, so you can pray even when you don’t have a network connection.
This is handy even if you have a printed Breviary so you can travel light.
The app makes praying the Divine Office easy — no flipping requires.
There are other prayers & blessing and convenient features of this app.
If you don’t understand the Latin, you can display a parallel English translation.
Those more familiar with the breviary, and especially priests, will be pleased to see we’ve included a selection of prayers and blessings in Latin, such as are normally found in the appendix of a breviary.
The Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary
$20-$30
This is a wonderful devotion. It is what I prayed in my earliest years of motherhood.
It is a shorter form of the Divine Office in honor of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
It has been used for centuries as the Church’s daily liturgical prayer to Our Lady, by Priests, religious, and the laity throughout the centuries.
“Lay people used to flock to the great Cathedrals to publicly recite The Little Office during the Middle Ages, and during the great persecution, when the practice of the Catholic Faith was illegal in Great Britain, Bishop Challoner commended The Little Office to his flock.
Through its psalms, antiphons, readings, responsorials, and prayers the Little Office stresses the role Our Lady played in salvation history, and how through her fiat the divine Word took flesh in her womb and achieved salvation for us all; and how Our Lord granted her the first fruits of the general resurrection in her holy and glorious assumption.
All Catholics are called to a consistent prayer life. For those who do not feel called to recite the Divine Office, but still wish to participate in the liturgical prayer of the Church, or for those who have a particular devotion to the holy Mother of God, there is no finer form of prayer than the Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary.”
