"loth Gives Me A Headache"

[Ephrem Augustine]

Well not me, a good friend of mine.
She is discerning religious life, and experienced praying it when she visited a convent. She ended up buying the Christian Prayer book shortly afterwards, and I gave her a bit of direction.
I love LOTH and promote it as much as a can, but I think she has been overwhelmed by the whole experience. She had been using the Magnificat magazine, but I don't know how frequently she did morning and evening prayer.
She put it down for now, but is not entirely closed off to it.
anyways, any advice on what to say to this friend?

[jumpfrog]

Make sure she has the current guide pamphlet that goes with Christian Prayer; there should also be a little page with the gospel canticles and the invitory, so you don't have to flip around for those. She should get the ribbons set up before starting. Doing just the morning and evening prayers is a good way to start. Make sure she knows that repeating the antiphon is not usually done when praying alone, that alone makes it a little less complicated.

Finally it helps to get some audio support the first few times; you can get podcasts [url="http://psp.libsyn.com/"]here[/url]. Another way to go is the ibreviary app if she has an iphone or an ipod touch, that gives the daily office via wifi.

[Hilde]

I actually read "sloth is giving me a headache"

What's LOTH?

ETA: I got it now:

Edited February 23, 2010 by Hilde

[Marie-Therese]

Well, if your friend is discerning religious life, then the Divine Office will obviously be an important part of her life in that respect.

As for me, I first tried to attempt the LOTH on my own. Bad mistake. If you don't have the proper tutelage (and patience!!) you will fail miserably. The Office obviously wasn't set up to be accessible to the average person without some teaching. I got frustrated and put it away. About a year later, when I seriously wanted to incorporate the Office into my life, I got a copy of Shorter Christian Prayer and read some tutorials on the Office. Using the condensed version helped a LOT because it allowed me to learn the structure of the Office. After using that for a few months, I went back to my full Office and, voila! I don't even use a St. Joseph's guide to navigate. I can locate all the correct readings simply by understanding how the Office works. And the text tells you a lot in the rubrics.

I have a .pdf document that I used to teach myself the Office. I would be happy to send it to you or your friend, just PM me. And I definitely advocate patience and trying to learn in baby steps. It pays off so enormously in the spiritual life when your day is ordered by the hours.

[Ephrem Augustine]

Thanks Marie Therese, I will have to get that. She tells me that she bought Christian Prayer, when yes I would have actually recommended Shorter Christian Prayer, she beat me to the punch lol!

I had recommended to her that she omit the Psalm Prayers, Responsories, and Intercessions for her own. I also recommended she only do one Psalm, and gradually do more when she becomes more comfortable.

I used to actually to on Universalis every couple days and do it on my computer, its all ligned up for you there, and I guess I got a hang of the structure there, I never would get a Breviary until I became a Prenovice.

[laetitia crucis]

Does your friend have anyone to pray some of the hours with her?

Perhaps just having the physical presence of someone else praying with her would help? I find that "communual" aspect of praying so much more helpful (and enjoyable) for me when praying the LOTH.

When I'm by myself, I tend to vocally speak the LOTH when praying. For some reason, it just helps me to pray better this way.

Oh, and I also used universalis when I first became acquainted with the LOTH -- even though I had "Christian Prayer", I needed a guide to work myself around the page flipping. Getting comfortable with universalis definitely helped me get more comfortable with "Christian Prayer".