During the archdiocese’s retreat for pastors earlier this month, Fr. Matthew Ernest, director of the archdiocese’s Office of Liturgy, addressed upcoming liturgical changes set to come into effect on Ash Wednesday, February 10, 2027.
The Liturgy of the Hours, also known as the Divine Office or the breviary, is the Church’s official daily prayer. Built largely on the Psalms, along with canticles, Scripture readings, hymns, and intercessions, it marks set times across the day and night, chiefly Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer, as well as the Office of Readings, Daytime Prayer, and Night Prayer before sleep. Priests and deacons commit to praying it daily, as do many religious communities.
The Second Vatican Council urged lay Catholics to take it up as well, so the whole Church could join in sanctifying each day through praise. Pope Leo XIV has urged lay Catholics to embrace the Liturgy of the Hours, saying in August, “Every week and every day, the Eucharist and the Liturgy of the Hours are the breath of the life of the Church, which makes the Holy Spirit circulate through her Body.”
Revised Liturgy of the Hours arrives in 2027
The forthcoming revised Liturgy of the Hours is the first major update to the English text since 1975. Volume 2 covers Lent and Easter. “Don’t take off the wrapping quite yet,” Fr. Ernest joked. “It’ll be your Ash Wednesday gift to yourself.”
He opened his presentation to the attending pastors of the archdiocese with the story of Cardinal Richelieu, who served as the chief minister to King Louis XIII of France (1610-1643), and who devised a system to pray two days of the Divine Office in two hours. The tale illustrated how the recitation of the Office could become detached from its purpose of sanctifying the hours of the day. The Council wanted the day and night made holy by praise, Fr. Ernest said, “not just two hours out of 48.”
The new edition follows the principle of formal equivalence set out in “Liturgiam Authenticam,” the same approach behind the current Roman Missal. The most visible change will be the Psalms, which move from the 1963 Grail Psalter to the “Abbey Psalms and Canticles.”
Psalm changes carry theological weight
“Frequently, the changes will be small, just enough to trip us up,” Fr. Ernest said, “but I think we’ll find a theological significance that justifies those small textual changes.” In Psalm 8, “mortal man” becomes “son of man,” bringing out the Psalm’s Christological resonance. In Psalm 56, the revised translation restores the vivid biblical image of God collecting the Psalmist’s tears in a flask, rather than simply keeping a record of them. “The Lord is actively gathering up our tears and preserving them as something precious,” he said.
Scripture readings will use a revision of the New American Bible, to be called the Catholic American Bible, and also be published on Ash Wednesday. Other changes include a return to “world without end” in the doxology and “all 291 hymns of the Latin edition, translated into English while preserving their original meters,” Fr. Ernest said. Volume 1 arrives for the First Sunday of Advent 2027, and use of the entire revised Liturgy of the Hours becomes mandatory on the First Sunday of Advent 2028.
Fr. Ernest said the changes flow from fidelity to the original languages and accessibility for all the faithful. “A worthy, accurate, singable, and familiar translation,” he said, “is one of the concrete ways that we are carrying out that conciliar promise.”
Ascension Press and Word on Fire Publishing are the two publishing houses authorized by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops to issue the updated four-volume Liturgy of the Hours set.