Orthodox Hours

Hours is a prayer book for the Eastern Orthodox Byzantine tradition: the daily
cycle of prayer, the calendar of the Church, and the whole Psalter, in one place
and always to hand, with or without a signal.

THE HOURS
The Horologion, the cycle that sanctifies the day. Orthros at dawn, the First,
Third, Sixth and Ninth Hours, Vespers at sunset, and Compline before sleep. The
hour you are presently in is marked when you open the app, so you always know
where the day stands. The Little Hours are given in full, and change with the
Church's calendar: the hymns of the Resurrection in the week's tone, the hymns of
each weekday, the Great Feasts, the Lenten Hours and the Paschal Hours of Bright
Week.

TODAY
The Orthodox calendar for the day:

- The commemorations and feasts, and the rank of the celebration
- The tone of the week
- The fasting rule, and what is abstained from
- The scripture readings, in full
- The lives of the saints commemorated

Follow the New Calendar or the Old in Slavic usage, as kept by the OCA, ROCOR
and the Russian and Serbian Churches, or the usage of the Antiochian and Greek
Archdioceses. On the memorial Saturdays and through Great Lent, Today points to
the prayers the day calls for.

THE PSALTER
All 150 Psalms, in both Masoretic and Septuagint numbering, so the psalm you are
looking for is the psalm you find. And the twenty Kathismata, stasis by stasis,
with those appointed for the day at Matins, at Vespers, and at the Hours of Lent.

THE LITANY
Write in the names of those you pray for, the living and the departed, and they
are read into the commemorations of the Prayer Book. Pin each name's saint, and
keep your own patrons, your family's and your parish's; Today remembers them on
their day. Check names off as you pray. The names never leave your phone.

THE PRAYER BOOK
Prayers for adoration, confession, thanksgiving, supplication, intercession,
lamentation and consecration, and the prayers before Holy Communion.

PRAYERS FOR A NEED
Sickness, grief, a sick child, the departed, fear, repentance, travel, marriage,
peace and more: for each, the psalms and the prayers of the Church.

SEARCH
Find a saint and the day they are kept, a verse of the Psalms or the readings,
a life, or a prayer.

REMINDERS
Set any of the seven hours to call you to prayer. Each repeats daily and carries
a line from that hour's own prayers rather than a generic alert. Orthros begins
at four in the morning, so it is left off until you ask for it.

CHANT
Orthodox chant that keeps playing while you pray, with the screen locked or
another app open, and with controls on the lock screen.

VESTED IN THE DAY
The app takes the colour of the day as the Church keeps it: gold through
ordinary days, purple through Great Lent, red for the feasts of martyrs and of
the Cross, dark on Great and Holy Friday, Paschal red through Bright Week. The
cycle follows the moving date of Pascha by itself, year after year, on either
calendar. A widget brings the day to your home and lock screens.

EASY TO READ
Text set for reading on a screen, that follows your iPhone's Text Size, in light
or dark.

WITHOUT A SIGNAL
Everything is in the app itself: the prayers, the Psalter, the chant, and the
calendar with its readings and lives through 2050. Hours never needs a
connection, which matters most where prayer is wanted and there is no signal.

PRIVACY
Hours collects nothing. There is no account, no analytics, no advertising and no
tracking of any kind, and the app makes no network requests. The calendar is
compiled from orthocal.info; the lives of the saints are from Abbamoses.com, by
permission.