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Septies in die laudem dixi tibi... (Ps. 118:164) Media nocte surgebam ad confitendum tibi... (Ps. 118: 62) With these words, the Psalmist reminds us of our duty to offer prayers of thanksgiving and praise to God throughout the day and night. The Breviarium Roman (Roman Breviary) contains the Psalms and various prayers recited at each liturgical hour of each day by clergy of the Roman Rite in order to fulfill their obligation and desires to offer prayers unceasingly.

This website is intended to aid the clergy, to provide them with a means to recite the traditional Office as afforded by Article 9 § 3 of Pope Benedict XVI's motu proprio Summorum Pontificum: "Fas est clericis in sacris constitutis uti etiam Breviario Romano a B. Ioanne XXIII anno 1962 promulgato." The entire Breviarium Romanum will be available so that all liturgical hours of every day will be accessible. The simple layout will allow one to follow an entire hour for the appropriate day without having to follow several links to get the required information - the Psalms, antiphons, versicles, responses, hymns, prayers, etc. will be provided dynamically for ease-of-use. Rubrics will be provided both within each hour at appropriate points and in a separate hyperlinked section; one or more rubrical guides may also be made available in the future. It is hoped that more Roman Rite clergy may be encouraged to pray the Divine Office according to the traditional formula by providing an open, easily navigable, and powerful interface.

For the time being, the breviary will be provided only in Latin, except for some non-essential text (e.g., the "About" link in the footer). This decision was made for two reasons:

1) The official language of the Roman Rite is Latin, which even the Second Vatican Council upheld, thus most liturgical actions should be conducted in Latin. The fact that some may not understand the language well (even those who are reciting the prayers) does not necessarily detract from the efficacy of the prayers. This is not to say that the study of Latin should be neglected, but rather that using the Roman Rite's language should not be avoided until some far future date when the language can be understood perfectly.

2) The project is immense as-is, and any addition of suitable vernacular translations will considerably prolong the completion of project. Along with this is the difficulty of providing a suitable translation, one which possesses beautiful language and adheres closely to the Latin text. This is difficult because some available translations are still under copyright, while others do not possess good qualities throughout. If the decision to provide the vernacular was made, another decision would also arise - which vernacular(s)? As stated above, fluency in the language used for prayer is not necessary, but the presence of a vernacular suggests that it should be easily understood. If only an English translation was provided, would non-English speakers benefit at all?

Along with the Divine Office, other suitable and complementary prayers will also be provided. The Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary (Officium Parvum Beatæ Mariæ Virginis) and the Office of the Dead (Officium Defunctorum) will be provided in full, along with the seasonal variations of the Little Office. These two offices have sadly witnessed a decline in usage in recent decades, but there are great signs of revival among the clergy and laity alike. Both offices are very well suited to laymen who do not have the time and talent to recite the full Officium, but still long to add their voices to the prayers of the Church. Both match the general layout of the full Office but with little or no variations from day-to-day. Also, various other prayers such as litanies, the Penitential Psalms, and so forth will be provided as a means of rounding out one's daily prayer life.

So far, this project is being attempted by one man - please pray for the success of this endeavor as it is overwhelming at times. If at any point any users of this site notice a mistake, typographical error, or simply have a suggestion, they may contact the site owner at daniel@officiumdivinum.org. Any and all help will be greatly appreciated!

Some technical information:

This site is designed using straight HTML, PHP and mySQL. The PHP code is mostly used to interact with the various mySQL databases in order to display the correct content for the day: the feast day, the appropriate Psalms, hymns, and so forth. If your browser displays the wrong date or other dynamic information, you may try clearing your cookies and cache, then restarting your internet browser. Also, you may need to enable the appropriate web browser setting to check for newer versions of stored pages to verify the content you see is up-to-date. The site is optimized for screen resolutions of 1024x768 to 1280x1024 using either Microsoft Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox. Other screen resolutions (especially smaller ones) may have difficulty viewing the headers and footers; for this I apologize. If the screen does not display well initially, you may try adjusting the text size within your internet browser; sometimes increasing or decreasing the text size will make the layout more pleasing on some resolutions. If any users regularly visit this site while using screen resolutions of 800x600 (or some other non-optimized resolution), please send me an e-mail so that I may try to accommodate your needs. Also, should anything not display properly in any internet browser, please let me know as well so that I may try to correct the issue.