The four-week Psalter for the Office of Readings for use during Ordinary Time of the Year. Use in combination with the Year I or Year II Patristic Lectionary which provides the long reading from Scripture and a Patristic commentary upon the reading. This document includes the hymns for both the Office of Readings as well as those from Midday Prayer.
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.
