HolyStudy vs Orthodox Hours

HolyStudy is a daily companion for Orthodox worship and Bible study. Each day brings the Church's rhythm to your hands: the appointed Gospel and Epistle readings, the fasting discipline with a simple food guide, the saints and feasts we remember, and the liturgical tone and season. WORSHIP — Today's readings with commentary from the Church Fathers — The fast, explained: what is kept and what is set aside — The saints and feasts of the day, with their stories — Morning and evening prayers, arranged by your prayer rule — Quiet prayer reminders at the times you choose, if you want them — A record of the days you worshiped — this month, this year. No streaks, no scores. STUDY — The whole Bible in one app — Commentary from the Fathers on the New Testament, Psalms, and Job — Cross-references and the original Greek and Hebrew, verse by verse — A topical guide for what is on your mind REFLECT — Keep private reflections on the verses that stay with you — Share publicly when you choose, and read what others have noticed — Set aside names to pray for, day by day Your account carries between this app and holystudy.com — reflections, bookmarks, and your worship record stay with you.

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.