St Patrick in Ireland 2019

The rules say that when a Solemnity (such as that of St Patrick in Ireland) falls on an important Sunday, such as one of the Sundays in Lent, it is celebrated on the Monday instead.

The Irish bishops have asked the Vatican if they can not apply the rule this year, and the Vatican has agreed. Accordingly the Solemnity of St Patrick will be celebrated in Ireland on Sunday the 17th of March, in place of the 2nd Sunday in Lent.

Universalis has just been updated to include this change. If you are in Ireland and haven’t received an update by Friday, you may want to update yourself “by hand”. Here are the instructions.

Lent 2019 newsletter

Happy Lent!

To many of us this greeting may sound odd, because isn’t Lent meant to be associated not with happiness but with gloom? That is a risky way of thinking because it risks valuing gloom for the sake of gloom. Yes, Lent is stern, but its sternness is because it is sorting us out and setting us more firmly on the path to glory. St Paul is fond of athletic similes, so perhaps one could think of Lent as a kind of getting back into training. Nobody likes getting up at six in the morning and going for a row in the pouring rain, but unpleasant though it is, it has value both in getting rid of the belly and pointing one in the right direction for the future.

The two-year cycle of the Office of Readings

When the liturgy was extensively revised in 1970, one of the themes was the inclusion of a far wider range of biblical readings. At Mass, this meant a three-year cycle of Sunday readings and a two-year cycle of weekday readings. In the Office of Readings in the Liturgy of the Hours this meant a two-year cycle, both of Scripture readings and of the patristic Second Readings which accompany them.

The two-year cycle covers the whole of salvation history and uses practically every book of the Bible – not avoiding tricky passages which need thorough reading and meditation and aren’t suitable for the “listen fast or it’s gone” nature of the readings at Mass. It is also carefully designed to be out of step with the Mass readings, so that if you hear a passage read at Mass then it won’t appear in the Office of Readings for a year (or at worst, for a few months).

This masterpiece is lovingly described in §§147 to 152 of the General Instruction on the Liturgy of the Hours. But if you look in the actual printed books – it isn’t there. In its place is a one-year cycle of readings, covering half the material.

The Revised Standard Version (UPDATED)

Universalis uses the Jerusalem Bible for all the readings in the Liturgy of the Hours. In the English-speaking world which uses the Jerusalem Bible at Mass, this is a consistent and familiar translation. It is less so in the USA, where the New American Bible is used at Mass, and in some other parts of the world which use one or other variant of the RSV at Mass.

We have now reached agreement with the copyright owners and are able to offer the Revised Standard Version (Catholic Edition) readings as an add-on to the Liturgy of the Hours in Universalis. This affects the Liturgy of the Hours only: the Mass readings continue to be from the Jerusalem Bible (or, in the USA, the New American Bible).

January 2019 newsletter

Happy New Year, and welcome to 2019! Thanks to all who gave Universalis as a gift this Christmas. It will be with the recipient always, in fruitful times and dry ones, in good times and bad.

Encouraging people with free trials

When groups get together, at conferences, retreats and so on, it is quite common for them to do at least some of the Hours and it is also common for them to use Universalis to do it. The question is how to preserve that spark when everyone gets home afterwards, in the hope that it will burst into flame.

So here is a summary of how anyone with a mobile phone, or a tablet, or a laptop, can get the Hours free for at least a month. This gives good habits a chance to get established, and lets people decide whether they really want to carry on doing the Hours, in whatever way suits them best.

Christmas 2018 newsletter

The last couple of newletters have been quite long. This one will be shorter. Its main purpose is to wish you a happy Christmas.

Giving Universalis for Christmas

The two safest kinds of present to give at Christmas are the kind that lasts no time at all (it gets eaten or drunk, so it doesn’t add to your burden of possessions and you don’t have to keep on being grateful for it) and the kind that lasts for ever – such as Universalis. Universalis is a present that will be with the recipient for life, through the pious times and the pagan ones, through the dry seasons and the fruitful ones.

Liturgy of the Hours (UK & Ireland) available in the Kindle Store

There was an awkward period during which the new Liturgy of the Hours e-book for the UK and Ireland (“2019 High Seasons”, which means Advent 2018 to Pentecost 2019) was not available in the Kindle Store. This was the fault of Amazon’s systems.

The problem has now been resolved, just in time for Advent. The e-book is now available and here is its page in the Kindle Store.

Here is a full list of all the Kindle Store e-books from Universalis, for the UK and Ireland, the USA, and Australia.

November 2018 newsletter

The next great feast, only a few days away now, is the feast of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe. This is glorious. It is also a little embarrassing for those of us discreet Christians who like to present ourselves to others as “just as normal as everyone else except we go to this funny place called ‘church’ on Sunday mornings.” But there is no getting away from it: each of us has been anointed with holy oil at baptism, as priest, prophet and king. The feast of Christ the King is thus a good moment to reflect on our kingship and on what “kinging” means and how to do it.