Angelus Bells

By Jennifer Gregory Miller ( bio - articles - email ) | Jul 05, 2016 | In Reviews

Last week I wrote about Ordinary Time, Writing Our Acts. A large part of living in Ordinary Time is establishing a rhythm of prayer in our lives.

Our family has been trying to remember to pray the Angelus once or sometimes twice a day. In times past, local church bells gave reminders of the times of day, with special Angelus bells for those hours of the day, 6:00 AM, 12:00 noon, and 6:00 PM.

Today we have more synthetic or artificial ways to remind us of those special times, such as using alarms on iPhones.

Recently Magnificat issued a new free Angelus app for both iOS and Android, which harkens back to having those church bell Angelus reminders.

I downloaded the iOS version on both my iPhone and iPad and have found the app simple to use and unobtrusive. There is a simple church bell that tolls 4 times as a reminder for the Angelus. There is an option to open the app and read the prayers of the Angelus (or Regina Caeli during the Easter season) in English (and other languages) or Latin (the bells can be turned off when reading the prayers). There is also a link to the Pope’s Angelus videos from the Vatican Radio.

It’s such a simple concept for an app, but as a family we have really enoyed using it. The church bell reminders differ from the other alarms throughout the day, making it help us all stop and pray together as a family and remember the moment of Incarnation.

The only difference I wish it had was a recording of the prayers that at times I could play them aloud.

If you have space on your smart phone, this is one useful app for our lives in Ordinary Time.

For more on the Angelus in our lives, see my previous posts:

• The Solemnity of the Annunciation: the Moment of Incarnation in Our Lives
• Summer: More Time for the Lord, Not a Vacation from Him