Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Great News! Ibreviary steps up with new English translation prayers!

A week or so ago I treated you all to the little scissors and paste project that brought my breviary up to date with the new translation of the concluding prayers (mass collects=breviary concluding prayers).

A friend of mine on Facebook remarked that my idea was nice, but also bemoaned having to go back to relying on the print breviary when he was so happy with the convenience of a mobile version.

This morning, my husband  and I read morning prayer together. Bill had the Kindle and I had my jerry-rigged  Volume I of Christian Prayer. When we got to the end, Bill paused to let me read the concluding prayer, as we have done for the past couple days.  Suddenly, he began praying along with me the newly re-translated prayer!  "How did you do that?" I asked.

"It's right here online,as an alternate under the old translation."

Sure enough. ibreviary.com   had added the new English translations each day as a second choice.  Just scroll down past the old prayer and there's the new. It's interesting to have both the old and the new to compare--a reminder every single day to thank God that we have this more prayerful and poetic new translation. Check the widget on the left to see what I'm talking about.

I know that DivineOffice.org also  plans to add the new translations in the near future.

So there's one very real triumph of the digital revolution over traditional print publishing. We don't have to beg and wait until Catholic Book Publishing Company gets around to issuing a new breviary. We've got it.

Am I feeling a little sheepish about all the trouble I went through to retro-fit my breiviary? A little. But it will still come in handy during not uncommon power outage days around here. So I'll probably continue to cut and paste my way through a year's worth of Word Among Us magazines.