Orthodox Hours

Hours is a prayer book for the Eastern Orthodox Byzantine tradition: the daily cycle of prayer, the calendar of the Church, and the whole Psalter, in one place and always to hand, with or without a signal.

THE HOURS The Horologion, the cycle that sanctifies the day. Orthros at dawn, the First, Third, Sixth and Ninth Hours, Vespers at sunset, and Compline before sleep. The hour you are presently in is marked when you open the app, so you always know where the day stands. The Little Hours are given in full, and change with the Church's calendar: the hymns of the Resurrection in the week's tone, the hymns of each weekday, the Great Feasts, the Lenten Hours and the Paschal Hours of Bright Week.

TODAY The Orthodox calendar for the day:

- The commemorations and feasts, and the rank of the celebration - The tone of the week - The fasting rule, and what is abstained from - The scripture readings, in full - The lives of the saints commemorated

Follow the New Calendar or the Old in Slavic usage, as kept by the OCA, ROCOR and the Russian and Serbian Churches, or the usage of the Antiochian and Greek Archdioceses. On the memorial Saturdays and through Great Lent, Today points to the prayers the day calls for.

THE PSALTER All 150 Psalms, in both Masoretic and Septuagint numbering, so the psalm you are looking for is the psalm you find. And the twenty Kathismata, stasis by stasis, with those appointed for the day at Matins, at Vespers, and at the Hours of Lent.

THE LITANY Write in the names of those you pray for, the living and the departed, and they are read into the commemorations of the Prayer Book. Pin each name's saint, and keep your own patrons, your family's and your parish's; Today remembers them on their day. Check names off as you pray. The names never leave your phone.

THE PRAYER BOOK Prayers for adoration, confession, thanksgiving, supplication, intercession, lamentation and consecration, and the prayers before Holy Communion.

PRAYERS FOR A NEED Sickness, grief, a sick child, the departed, fear, repentance, travel, marriage, peace and more: for each, the psalms and the prayers of the Church.

SEARCH Find a saint and the day they are kept, a verse of the Psalms or the readings, a life, or a prayer.

REMINDERS Set any of the seven hours to call you to prayer. Each repeats daily and carries a line from that hour's own prayers rather than a generic alert. Orthros begins at four in the morning, so it is left off until you ask for it.

CHANT Orthodox chant that keeps playing while you pray, with the screen locked or another app open, and with controls on the lock screen.

Discovery signals