Great news!

The new collaborative publication between GIA, the USCCB and ICEL, titled “The Divine Office Hymnal,” is now available for orders on GIA’s website.

This is the fruit of many years’ work by ICEL in leading the translation into fresh, accurate, metrically matching, contemporary but poetic English of all 294 Office Hymns in the the Liturgia Horarum‘s current official Latin edition.

This is yet another major milestone reached in the long-awaited development of the Liturgy of the Hours Second Edition, a behemoth of a project to match the most recent 2011 translation of the Roman Missal.

Best of all, the Hymnal is approved for immediate (optional) use with the current edition of the Liturgy of the Hours, ahead of the completion of its full revision and release.

This good news comes on the heels of the U.S. Bishops approving the new Ordinary of the Liturgy of the Hours at their June 2023 meeting, which will (among other things) render more faithfully the opening and closing versicles and blessings, include Latin options for the Gospel Canticles and Te Deum, have the usual marks (daggers, asterisks) to aid in chanting, and restore the traditional names of the hours (Lauds, Vespers, Compline, etc.).

I look forward to extensively, fairly, and hopefully positively reviewing a copy of it on this blog when I get a chance.

Meanwhile, thanks to USCCB, ICEL, and GIA Publications, for putting this invaluable resource in the hands of the Church, filling a decades-old lacuna in the liturgical life of American Catholicism.