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I will tell you this now, after 23 or 24 years of praying this every single day, this is my favorite prayer. It is literally my favorite way to pray. Hi, my name is Father Mike Schmitz, and this is Ascension Presents. Maybe wondering why there's a Christmas tree behind me with lights on and everything. Because right now we are filming for our Advent series called Waiting. Well, and so we have to film now so you can have it then. One of the most daunting things, the night before I was ordained a deacon, I was so nervous. It's also the day you promised celibacy. But I was more preoccupied with the. Made a promise that I would pray this thing called the Liturgy of the Hours every single day. Some days I don't pray the rosary, some days I don't have a holy hour promising to do this until I die. I was very, very intimidated by that. So let's back up. Liturgy of the Hours. What is it? Why would the church ask all priests, deacons, bishops, religious sisters and brothers to pray this? And how can you get started? So the Liturgy of the Hours is like this. It is. The church has given, taken the prayer of scripture. Like we have the psalms, right? All 150 Psalms. We have canticles, right? Songs or prayers in the Old Testament and in the New Testament. And the church has done this. It's taken all of those psalms and canticles, or many of them, and has put them in an ordered way so that throughout the day, every person who prays them would stop and pray five times, pray those psalms, pray those canticles on a regular basis on like basically a four week cycle throughout the course of the church year. Now, the first hour, the first hour, it's not. When I say hour, keep in mind, I'm not talking 60 minutes, I'm talking like here's a moment that we stop. So it's an hour. So the first hour, the first prayer is called the Office of Readings. And the Office of Readings is broken down into three psalms typically, or three sections of psalms, and then one longer scripture passage and then a writing from some kind of saint or church document or church person. And it's, it's by far, it is my absolute favorite hour to pray. Liturgy the Hours at the Office of Readings. So good you can pray that any time of day. And then there's second one is morning prayer. So morning prayer is similar kind of thing. You have three psalms or two psalms and a canticle, right? Canticle is just a word for a song, right? A song in scripture or prayer in scripture. Two psalms, canticle, and then some other prayers in the, in the church. You, you pray a little reading from Scripture, you have intercessions, praying for other people. And there's also a canticle, the one of Zechariah, right? John the Baptist's father. One the of his tongue is loosened. He can speak. And we pray that prayer every morning. So that's morning prayer. Then we have daytime prayer. Daytime prayer is the second shortest of all the prayers. It's relatively brief opportunity to stop and pray. Evening prayer is the fourth prayer. And that is just like morning prayer, but slightly different. I'll say like that. Instead of the canticle of Zechariah, we have the canticle of Mary from Luke's Gospel, where Mary visits Elizabeth and she says, my soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord. My spirit rejoices in God my Savior. We pray that. And so that morning prayer and evening prayer kind of mirror each other in a certain way. And then the last prayer of the, of the, of the day is night prayer. And that is some people's favorite prayer because it is the absolute shortest of all of the, all the hours of the day. Now pause. Why is this kind of prayer so important? Well, I say, number one, it's because we get to pray with scripture throughout the whole day. It's, it's, it's an opportunity for anybody because it's not just for priests. Keep this in mind. It's not just for deacons, priests, bishops, religious sisters, religious brothers. It's not just for those overly spiritual people. This is literally called the prayer of the church. But one reason is because we're praying with God's word on a regular basis. That's why it's so, so valuable. Number two, we pray this over the course of a day because we know this. We know that there's such a thing as holy spaces, right? You go to a church, that's a holy ground. You want to into a cemetery, that's holy ground. You go into, you know, a place of pilgrimage, that's a holy space. But there's also such a thing as holy time. We sanctify the day by stopping at various moments throughout the day and calling upon the Lord, renewing our mind with his word and sanctifying that time. So again, this holy spaces, the liturgy, the hours gives us the opportunity to create holy time. Does that make sense? And then third, this is interesting at the beginning when I mentioned here's different ways to pray, holy hour, rosary, chaplet, Whatever other prayer. Those are all what's called devotions. And they're great. They're fantastic, great ways to pray. The Liturgy of the Hours is actually a liturgy. What I mean by that is like the sacraments. Celebrating the sacraments is entering into the liturgy. The Mass is the liturgy. The Liturgy of the Hours is liturgy, which means it's not just a devotion. It is the prayer of the whole Church. I've mentioned this before. I made a promise to pray the Liturgy of the Hours every day. The Church does not ask priests to make a promise to say Mass every day of their lives, but the Church does ask priests to. To pray the Liturgy of the Hours every day of their lives. Why? One reason is because sometimes a priest might be in a place where he cannot do it. Like he. Maybe he is traveling. Maybe there's a situation where there is no vessels, right? There's. There's no hosts, or there's no wine, there's no water. There's none of the things he needs because he needs material. You need materials for the Mass. Another reason could be because a priest might find himself in a state of mortal sin. And if he's in a state of mortal sin, then it would be inappropriate for him. Inappropriate sin to receive Holy Communion if he didn't need to. Therefore, you can't have an obligation to say Mass even in a state of sin. Does that make sense? But we can always pray the Liturgy of the Hours. We can always come before the Lord in this way and let His Scripture inform or. And transform our hearts, our vision, our minds, as well as the fact that, as I said this, these praying of the Psalms and Canticles, it's been elevated to a point where when you pray, I don't care who you are, when you pray the Liturgy of the Hours, you are uniting your prayer to the entire Church. This is what the Church declares. That when you pray Liturgy of the Hours, it has more, let's say, like, it's more oomph. We'll say it like that. More power. It's more. It's because. Why? Because it is called the Prayer of the Church. So I get together once a month with our youth ministers, and at every one of those youth minister meetings, we pause and we pray daytime prayer. Because I've already prayed Office of Readings, and I've already prayed morning prayer in the Holy hour. So here we are with youth ministers. Let's pray daytime prayer together. And one of the things we remind them is a. This is the universal. This is the prayer of the Church. So you're uniting. We're uniting here in this small room in the basement of the pastoral center. We're uniting our prayers, the prayer of the whole church. But also because of that, you can bring your intentions. Like take. Pick a target, pick a, pick an intention. When you offer up this more, this daytime prayer, because it's not just you, it's you and the whole church, you and the entire body of Christ. You, us united as body of Christ with Jesus Christ, the head of the church. So all of that being said, how do you do it? I would say start small. There's five hours, right? Five times you start and pray. Pick one. Picking one is great. Maybe pick two. Like, I want to pray morning prayer and night prayer. Like, that would be a great way to kind of bookend your day. Morning prayer, night prayer, night prayer. Being the shortest is a great way to do it. But if you were to say, you know what? I tried doing so many things. I tried praying morning prayer and evening prayer and night and night prayer. Honestly, maximum, I would say maximum. Pick two and then just get accustomed to like, okay, this is how I, how I, how I. This is not just how I do it. This is when I do it. The first time I ever tried praying Liturgy of the Hours, I, I went out and I got like the four volume book. We just all set, you know, like, this is the varsity edition of Liturgy of the Hours. And I was praying with some people and they're like, okay, put your ribbon on this page, put your ribbon on this page. Flip it back and forth. And I remember one week or one day I wasn't with them and all of a sudden looked at this big book and looked at all these ribbons and all these pages and I was like, I am completely lost. I have no idea what to pray today because, oh, today's September 14th. Cease to the exaltation of the cross. But, oh, wait, it's also Sunday, which, what do I do? And I just didn't know what to do. And so I, what I did was I allowed the confusion, the complexity of the ribbons, like flipping back and forth on pages to stop me from praying. Why? Because I didn't want to do it if it wasn't going to be perfect. My invitation. If it's not the right day, pray it anyways. If it's not perfect, do it anyways. I have to tell you that the Liturgy of the Hours, as I said when I was getting ordained, I was, it was, it was the most boring prayer I've ever experienced my entire life. Like I just. When I prayed about myself, I was like, this is okay. When I prayed with other people, it was even worse because they had to be on their pace, like, oh, gosh, barf. And also, I didn't. I didn't feel moved by it, right? I wasn't like, inspired by anything. I was reading. I was just reading through these words. But something happened. The more and more I was exposed to these words, because they're not just words, right? They're God's words. This is God's word. The more and more I was exposed to God's word, something happened in me. It was not flashy, it was not emotional, it was not inspiring. But what happened was God's words penetrated my mind and my heart, and something really fascinating happened. Maybe I've shared this with you before. I was on retreat at like a silent retreat place in central Minnesota. But in the middle of January, and it's just snow everywhere, flat, freezing. I went out outside of this little one room cabin in a place called Pacham in Terrace. Peace on earth, right? And I was just walking through the winter wonderland of Minnesota in January. Everything is just frozen. And here I am, I'm just thinking about God and wanting to talk to God, but I didn't have the words. And all of a sudden, kind of out of the hidden recesses of my heart, I started reciting one of the psalms. And I realized as I was praying, like, oh, wow, Lord, these are the words I want to pray. And they're here for one reason. They're here because you essentially planted those words in my heart by inviting me and asking me to pray the Liturgy of the Hours on a regular basis for the last. Maybe at that point it was like the last 10 years. And because of that, my heart had been shaped, my mind had been shaped. And because of that, words that were better than my words, but words that I needed to pray, I had them. And I think there's something about that that is so, so powerful. I had come to prayer with the idea of, like, okay, I want to be inspired, I want to be lifted up, I want to be moved in some way. But the literature of the hours is so subtle because God's word, right, is subtle and effective, right? God's word can penetrate between joints and marrows, between soul and spirit. And so we allow God's word to penetrate our hearts. And what happens is it takes up residence in our hearts. And all of a sudden, now we have a lens that we can see the world through. All of a sudden now we have words that we didn't have before. All of a sudden now we can do something couldn't do before. This is the prayer of the church. If we come back again and again to God's word in the liturgy of the Hours, it will not leave us unchanged. This is my favorite prayer. It. It is literally my favorite way to pray. So there you go. That's all I got from all serious presents. My name is Father Mike. God bless.