Yesterday the 2015 Abide in My Word showed up in the mail. Nice thick glossy-cover paperback that looks like this:
Wow. What a neat book. It’s nothing complicated, just the daily Mass readings for every single day of 2015. (Note: It starts on January 1, not with Advent.) Big print, and big, bold-faced date headings for each day. Very cool, and not very expensive. I was particularly excited about it because a friend of mine is trying to improve her English by going to more English-language Masses, and she was drooling over this guy, my most favorite book of all time:
But that’s a long term investment. (Or, be lucky and someone will get you one for Epiphany. It happened to me!)
The annual paperback doesn’t pack in any extra features, and at the end of the year you’ve got to buy a new book. But for low initial outlay, ease of use, and no fear of something very bad happening to it, it wins.
Other resources to know about:
If You’re Digital . . .
Then you want the iBreviary. It’s free.
UPDATED for Kindle fans, Julie Davis writes:
… I’ve been using Reading God’s Word for several years for the daily readings. It also comes in paperback.
Been longing for a missal but am not as lucky as you are. 🙂
If You’re Planning a Retreat . . .
Then you want an Ordo. Get the one for your region, because it will have lots of local info in it. (Serious cool factor: Dates of death for all the clergy in your diocese, ever. Historian’s dream.) You can read more about what’s in an Ordo here. It does not contain the actual texts. But it tells you what the readings are, what day of the Liturgy of the Hours 4-week cycle you’re on, and all kinds of odds and ends like the liturgical color for the day, saint of the day, etc., in a very small package. It’s like a liturgical version of one of those sponge-animal-in-a-capsule things.
Funny story: I call mine the Magic Green Book, because my 2014 regional edition was green. It turns out sometimes it’s a magic magenta book. I bet there are other colors, too. But because Google works the way it does, when I search for “Magic Green Book”, my favorite Ordo links pop up, something that does not happen when I search on the term “Ordo”.
Cover art courtesy of:
Christ the King Books and Gifts
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