Daily Prayers for Busy People

Rating:
Summary: What a great way to end your day and sleep peacefully!
Review: Daily Prayers for Busy People has just 30 days of prayers, but you won't be bored on even the 10th time around. The combination of simple and sophisticated, stimulating and soothing, makes this the one book that I always take along with me. O'Malley has the ability to touch the soul with just a few words

Rating:
Summary: Daily Prayers for Busy People
Review: I have used this book for three years. I am back to purchase an additional copy for my 18 year old daughter. I would like to buy it for all of my close family and friends-but won't until they ask! What is remarkable about O'Malley's book is the pertinence of the prayers, and the excellent selection of timeless poetry ( English majors- here's Donne, herbert, Pound, Tennyson, Dickinson, truly remarkable selections- artlessly placed throughout the month. Coupled with his own paraphrases of the psalms and a very direct personal and yet intelligent conversation with God- he usually gets me started by saying to God precisely what I was about to say myself, and lets me move on from there. The dailiness of it helps to form you. The book consists of a month's worth of prayers, three per day- each a short series of prayers, psalms and a selection from literature. Intended to be used in place of or the same way as a breviary. Everyone zI know who's used it, lives with it.

Rating:
Summary: A volume filling a distinct need
Review: This volume has a well-deserved sequel. Fr. O'Malley has developed a prayer book with a four week cycle which speaks to contemporary Catholics to whom the psalms and patristic readings are "dead". This is not an adaptation of the Liturgy of the Hours; rather it is a substitute. Morning and Evening prayer have a simple structure: an opening prayer, a "grace" or single sentence to carry with you outside the formal prayer time, a psalm expanded to include a variety of Biblical poetry, a hymn which is usually poetry from the last three or four centuries, and a closing prayer. Mid-day prayer is the longest adding a prose reading and a Scriptural reading to the format.

Representative authors of hymns and readings include: Gerard Manley Hopkins, John Donne, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Graham Greene, John Masefield, e.e. cummings, John Milton, Thomas Merton, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Dag Hammarskjold, T. S. Eliot, Eleanor Farjeon, William Shakespeare, Elinor Wylie ...

If you have not found the Liturgy of the Hours prayerful, consider this volume as an alternative. It is an excellent volume.