Yes, it is. The Mass readings and the Liturgy of the Hours are those of the Catholic Church and their content is the same as in the Latin edition of the Liturgy of the Hours published by the Vatican. The calendar used is the General Calendar, with local calendars included where we have details of them.
This question is about different texts. If you are concerned about a different translation, see this answer.
If the calendars don't match, then either you've chosen the wrong local calendar for your location, or we've got something wrong. Please let us know if you find any discrepancies: there are bound to be some because this is such a large project.
Similarly, do please let us know if a reading doesn't match what you expect. It could well be that we've mistyped something.
On the other hand it may just be that there is more than one allowable reading for the day in question, or that your book has got things wrong. This blog entry goes into more detail. This blog entry gives a detailed example where the lectionaries seem to get it wrong and Universalis (together with the US Conference of Catholic Bishops) gets it right. (Actually, the lectionaries are right if you read the rubrics carefully, but it's easy not to notice this).
If you see a discrepancy you don't understand, do ask us. Let us know what you expected to see and what you are seeing, and we will do our best to help.
If Psalm 94(95) appears inside an Hour when you would have expected something else, this is not a mistake but the result of an allowable variation in the Invitatory Psalm.
One final point about the Office of Readings: Universalis is based on the 1985 edition of the Latin Breviary, which is a bit of a mess in that the General Introduction refers to a 2-year cycle of Scripture and patristic readings but never specifies it; and the texts in the breviary itself are for a 1-year cycle. Universalis therefore does this 1-year cycle of readings. Now that details of 2-year cycles are more widely available, Universalis may at some point switch to a 2-year cycle, but given the amount of translation that needs to be done, this won't happen at once.
If Universalis appears to get stuck on a particular date, and it stays the same day after day, this is not a fault in the site, but a problem at your end.
http://www.universalis.com/).
If it has an 8-digit number in it somewhere (something like /20020111/)
then that is an explicit date. Remove the date and one of the slashes,
and try again. (If you see something like /0100/ or /-0500/
then don't worry, because that is a time zone and not a date).It is called the Liturgy of the Hours because the different parts of it are intended for different hours of the day. In "Divine Office", the word "Office" has its older meaning of "function, purpose, duty". "Breviary" has the same root as "abbreviation". It is so called because it is a single compendium that brings together antiphonals, lectionaries, responsories, and other sources of liturgical materials.
The Invitatory Psalm opens the whole Office of each day: it calls us together to pray and praise God throughout the day's work. You should recite it at the beginning of the first Hour that you say each day. On the Web we provide two versions of Morning Prayer and the Office of Readings, one including the Invitatory Psalm and the other omitting it. In the downloads, the Invitatory Psalm is presented in a separate page.
The Liturgy gives you two options with the Invitatory Psalm. Either you can use Psalm 94(95) always, or you can choose between Psalms 94(95), 99(100), 66(67), and 23(24). In the Universalis downloads we offer you two choices: "Psalm 94(95) always" or "Rotate among the allowable Invitatory Psalms". On the Universalis web site we always rotate, to give you more variety.
There is one slightly unexpected consequence of this rotation through the Invitatory Psalms. Suppose that the rotation has brought up Psalm 99(100) as the Invitatory Psalm to be used today, but that psalm happens to appear in (say) Morning Prayer. In that case the rules say that in Morning Prayer Psalm 99(100) should be replaced by Psalm 94(95), to stop you having to recite the same psalm twice. Universalis follows these rules exactly. We only mention this here in case you wonder why, on such a day, the choice of Morning Prayer psalms doesn't match what is printed in the books.
The Mass readings, and the Scripture readings in the Liturgy of the Hours, are from the Jerusalem Bible. The Jerusalem Bible is authorised for liturgical use at Mass in the United Kingdom and in several other parts of the English-speaking world. (By the way, if you are thinking of buying a bible, you should be aware that the New Jerusalem Bible is different from the Jerusalem Bible).
In the downloadable versions of Universalis (iPhone/iPad, Android, Mac and Windows), the Mass readings (and only the Mass readings) are also available in the New American Bible version, which is authorised for liturgical use in the United States. This version cannot be displayed on the Web for copyright reasons. In the United States you get the RSV (1st Catholic Edition) for the readings in the Liturgy of the Hours. From December 2024 England, Wales and Scotland will start using the English Standard Version (ESV) and this will be included in the downloadable versions.
There are two versions of the psalms and antiphons in the Liturgy of the Hours in Universalis.
Hebrew bibles and Greek/Latin bibles number the psalms differently.
| Greek | Hebrew | |
|---|---|---|
| 1-8 | 1-8 | Hebrew=Greek |
| 9 | 9 and 10 | |
| 10-112 | 11-113 | Hebrew=Greek+1 |
| 113A | 114 | |
| 113B | 115 | |
| 114 | 116 | Hebrew=Greek+2 |
| 115 | 116 | Hebrew=Greek+1 |
| 116-145 | 117-146 | Hebrew=Greek+1 |
| 146 and 147 | 147 | |
| 148-150 | 148-150 | Hebrew=Greek |
The Greek numbering is used for liturgical purposes, and the Hebrew numbering for scriptural studies. On the Universalis site, we quote both numbers, Greek first and then Hebrew: eg. Psalm 94(95).
In the USA, the Hebrew numbering is used in the liturgy as well. Converting the numbers from Greek to Hebrew has caused an error in the US Lectionary: the psalm for Thursday of the thirteenth week in Ordinary Time in Year I of the two-year cycle is Psalm 114(116), but the American liturgist calculated 114+1=115, so in the USA and the USA alone, Psalm 113B(115) is mandated. This mistake is not repeated on Sunday of the 24th week of Year B of the three-year cycle, where the correct psalm, 114(116), is used.
These symbols are guides for chanting the psalms. The most common pattern is "out and back", where the first line goes up at the end and the second line goes down:
The fírst line goes up at the énd, *
and the sécond comes dówn again.
Sometimes the verse is longer, so there is an extra line at the beginning that goes nowhere:
The nóughth line is all on one note; †
the fírst line goes up at the énd, *
and the sécond comes dówn again.
These symbols appear in the Latin, and in the apps and programs they can appear in the English also if you turn on the appropriate setting.
The accents indicate stresses. The Grail psalms structure lines according to the number of stresses they contain, rather than the number of syllables.
We are happy for you to do this. However, if you are using the web version of Universalis (as opposed to an app, program or e-book) you should bear in mind that the psalms are not the officially approved translations.
On the other hand, if you are in a situation where you don't have your breviary with you, using Universalis is certainly far, far better than doing nothing at all.
You are welcome to do so.
We have to be a bit careful here. We do not want you to do anything that might infringe or weaken our copyright, so we must ask you to contact us before you reproduce anything. We'll normally be happy to let you reproduce as long as (a) you don't do it for gain and (b) you credit us, with our Web address (www.universalis.com) and (c) we judge the quantity, frequency, and purpose to be reasonable.
No. On the other hand, if you want the effect of having Universalis content in your own site, there may be ways round this prohibition. Look at our Free Services for Webmasters page for some suggestions.
You are very welcome to do so. How to Link to Us gives some guidance. If you would like a link from us to you from our Links page, you have only to ask.
Liturgy of the Hours: Everyone who has heard of the project has been enthusiastic and supportive, from parish priests and religious to senior figures in the Church. We can see from our sales records that many priests and bishops have bought the downloadable versions (some cardinals use Universalis as well). However, this is not a clone of any one of the printed books, and so the site cannot receive official approval. We believe that this is unfortunate, but we fully understand the reasons for this policy and support its application.
This situation is scheduled to change when the current revision of the Breviary is complete. The revisers are aware of the need to license electronic versions of the texts. Various dates have been put forward for the completion of the revised version, but it is a complicated process and the best thing is to say that it will be ready when it is ready.
Mass: All the texts shown here (Order of Mass, and readings and prayers) are the official texts, officially authorised.
The owners of the Responsorial Psalm don't allow it to be published on the Internet. It is present in all the Universalis downloads.
The psalm-prayers are prayers after each psalm, to deepen the reflection on that psalm. They do not officially exist, yet. They were put into the 1970 revision of the Liturgy of the Hours but never published.
The General Introduction to the Liturgy of the Hours talks about a “Supplement” which includes the psalm-prayers, but the Supplement hasn’t been published yet. (On the other hand, it’s only 53 years late).
Because the texts exist even though they are unpublished, the compilers of the American-language breviary include them in their books. It is important to note that these psalm-prayers are completely optional: you should use them if you find them helpful and not use them if you do not. (It appears that one of the reasons for not including the psalm-prayers in the official 1970 revision was precisely the fear that people might misunderstand this point.)
We have been given copies of the unpublished psalm-prayers, and each of our apps and programs will let you choose whether you want to see the psalm-prayers. These psalm-prayers are available in both English and Latin.
Some psalm-prayers exist in two alternative versions. The printed American books print one version only; Universalis will show you both.
Until practically the last minute, the Office of Readings was going to be enriched by having its First (biblical) and Second (patristic) readings spread over a two-year cycle, allowing thorough coverage of the whole of Scripture. Unfortunately, at the last minute, practical considerations intervened and the two-year cycle was abbreviated (hurriedly and dramatically, according to some stories) to a one-year one.
Accordingly, although the General Instruction on the Liturgy of the Hours goes into great detail about the make-up of the two-year cycle, the actual published Liturgy of the Hours only has a one-year cycle of readings.
This blog post goes into more detail, but basically the situation with Universalis is that the published and printed one-year cycle is provided by default, but you can switch to a two-year cycle if you prefer it. The two-year cycle is also official as far as the First Readings are concerned, but the situation with the Second Readings is more complicated: we use the official one-year Second Readings, but match them to the two-year First Readings whenever it is possible.
Different localities have different local calendars of their own. These have some local feasts, and occasionally transfer celebrations of the General Calendar to a different date. Each of the pages with the Hours and the Mass readings has links which let you choose the local calendar you want.
No, we do not: we only publish web pages, apps, programs, and e-books.
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