Four-week Psalter for Evening and Night Prayer during the Season of the Year
The texts of the Psalms and Canticles are taken from the official Divine Office — The Liturgy of the Hours according to the Roman Rite — approved for use in Australia, England & Wales, Ireland, New Zealand and Scotland.
A note on the texts
Language evolves. The texts that were first published in 1974 are still beautiful but are often jarring to the sensibilities of contemporary prayers. Certain adaptations have been made to the texts to remove horizontal gender-specific language — language that refers to other human beings using male pronouns. Where the text refers to a specific person or role (such as the king), the male pronouns are retained.
Although ideally the reality that the God of our worship is well beyond gender is now more deeply appreciated, finding ways to express this while retaining the personal nature of our relationship with God is very difficult. This is especially true in a prayer text. So the existing male language for God has been retained.
The texts have been formatted to make praying in choir easier — with the first side using roman text, and the second side being italic and indented. This also assists in individual use as an aid to retaining one’s place. Although there are many ways to pray the liturgy, texts are formatted so that the second Psalm or canticle begins with the second side.
The texts only include the basic schema of the four-week psalter and do not include proper texts for seasons and feasts. The various hours of the day are broken up into separate books, to make it easier to find the desired texts when you wish to pray them.
The number in brackets after the Hymn title is the metre – the number of syllables for the lines in each stanza of a hymn. This provides a means of marrying the hymn’s text with an appropriate hymn tune for singing.
