The Hours of Mass
The source and summit.
Every church is built around an altar, and every altar waits for an hour. To know when the Mass is offered is to know when the door of the house is open.
“You have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.”Saint Augustine, Confessions, I, 1
Why the hours matter §
The Eucharist is the source and summit of the Christian life. Every other sacrament, and every work the Church does, flows from it and returns to it.i A cathedral, a parish church, a chapel in a hospital corridor: each is a roof raised over one table, so that the faithful of one place may gather at it and be made one body. Saint Augustine put it to his own people plainly: be what you see, and receive what you are.ii
So the hour of Mass is not a detail about a parish, like where to park. It is the moment the parish becomes what it is. When the times of Mass are known, a building becomes a home, and a stranger becomes a guest at the table of the Lord.
The stranger at the door §
On Sundays and on the holy days of obligation, the faithful are bound to take part in the Mass.iii The Church does not lay this duty on her children as a burden; she gives it as a mother gives a place at the table. But the invitation supposes an answer to a very human question: where, and at what hour?
Think of the traveler in a city whose language he does not speak. The nurse whose shift ends at dawn. The migrant family in a new town with the boxes still packed, wanting nothing so much as one familiar thing. The widow who no longer drives and needs the Mass that is near. For each of them, the difference between a known hour and a guessed one is the difference between kneeling before the altar and standing before a locked door.
The hours of Sunday and daily Mass on this site come from the parishes themselves, in their own words. Find a parish and its Mass times from the front page. Developers may use the same hours through the open interfaces.
Mercy and adoration §
Beside the hours of Mass stand two quieter hours. The first is the hour of confession, when a priest waits in the half-light for whoever will come, and the Father who saw his son a long way off runs out to meet him.iv No one who has been away long, or who is ashamed of the length of their absence, should have to guess when that door is open. The hour of mercy deserves to be as public as the hour of Mass.
The second is the hour of adoration, when the Lord in the tabernacle is set upon the altar and the church falls silent before him. The Church has always known that the Eucharist is to be adored, not only received, and that a people who kneel together in silence are being taught to love one another.v Where a parish keeps such an hour, it is listed beside the Mass, so that the tired and the searching may find a place to be still.
The hours of the Office §
The day does not end when Mass ends. The Liturgy of the Hours is the public prayer of the Church, arranged so that the whole course of the day and night is made holy by the praise of God.vi Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer are its two hinges, and they belong to the whole People of God, not to the clergy alone.vii A lay woman on a train at seven in the morning, praying Lauds from her telephone, is praying with the Pope.
The season, the liturgical colour, the saint of the day and the hour of the Office are shown on the front page and available through the open interfaces. The prayers of each hour, read aloud and free of charge, are at DivineOffice.org.