Choosing a Catholic prayer app — the daily calendar is the feature that matters

Search for a Catholic prayer app and you'll find two kinds. The first is a library: hundreds of prayers, novenas, litanies and meditations, organised by category, waiting to be browsed. The second is a calendar: whatever the Church prescribes for today, in order, and nothing else until tomorrow. Both are useful. Only the second reliably becomes a daily habit.

The reason is simple. A library asks you to choose; a calendar has already chosen. On a busy morning the difference between 'pick something' and 'here is today' is the difference between praying and scrolling.

The daily prescribed practice

Catholic life is unusual in how much of it is dated. The Mass readings follow the lectionary. The Office follows the psalter and the calendar of saints. The Rosary has mysteries assigned to weekdays — Joyful on Monday and Saturday, Sorrowful on Tuesday and Friday, Glorious on Wednesday and Sunday, Luminous on Thursday. The Angelus has its hours. An app that simply knows what day it is can hand you all of this without a single menu.

That is the feature to look for: not the size of the library, but whether opening the app on a Thursday in Ordinary Time shows you Thursday in Ordinary Time.

Where Lauds fits

Lauds is an iPhone app built entirely around that calendar: the day arrives every morning at the time you choose, on your Lock Screen and in a notification, and today's official USCCB readings open with one tap. The readings, the saint of the day and the widgets are free; Lauds Pro adds a guided Rosary and evening prayer. It is on the App Store as “Lauds: Daily Prayer”.