About

The St Bede’s Breviary is an online breviary application designed to permit users to have a clear, streamlined, and user-friendly experience of the Daily Offices of the Episcopal Church as found in the authorized American Book of Common Prayer (1979 edition). I have attempted to include as many options as possible while still staying within the rubrics of the prayer book. My own background is Prayer Book Catholic, but I have tried hard not to force that perspective upon anyone who does not want it.

This blog will be a resource to explain the options available on the breviary, to point to resources on the Daily Office and the breviary tradition in general, and to explore the spirituality of the Daily Office in general and the St Bede’s Breviary in particular.

I’m the programmer of the breviary. I’ve tried to keep the user experience as clean and simple as possible, but the average office utilizes several thousand lines of code and connects with a few dozen database tables. That means there are a number of moving parts, and sometimes glitches show up. I’m constantly working to reduce these as much as possible. Unfortunately, the breviary is a hobby project and, as such, has to get in line behind raising my family and earning a living and sometimes glitches don’t get fixed as quickly as I’d like.

My main qualification for constructing the breviary is that I’m an active Episcopal layman who loves the Office and is trying to promote this distinctively Anglican spiritual practice. Secondarily, I have a PhD in New Testament from Emory University, and my chief area of research is the intersection between the Scriptures and the Liturgy and the Daily Office/breviary tradition is a key place where this dialogue has occurred through the centuries.

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