Lauds
Friday after Ash Wednesday — February 20, 2026 (Lent, Week 0)
Psalter: Friday, Week IV (Divine Office)
Invitatory
Antiphon: Come, let us adore the Lord, and do penance with a willing heart.
Psalm 94 (95) — Invitation to Praise (Douay-Rheims)
Come let us praise the Lord with joy: let us joyfully sing to God our saviour.
Let us come before his presence with thanksgiving; and make a joyful noise to him with psalms.
For the Lord is a great God, and a great King above all gods.
For in his hand are all the ends of the earth: and the heights of the mountains are his.
For the sea is his, and he made it: and his hands formed the dry land.
Come let us adore and fall down: and weep before the Lord that made us.
For he is the Lord our God: and we are the people of his pasture and the sheep of his hand.
To day if you shall hear his voice, harden not your hearts:
As in the provocation, according to the day of temptation in the wilderness:
Where your fathers tempted me, they proved me, and saw my works.
Forty years long was I offended with that generation, and I said: These always err in heart.
And these men have not known my ways: so I swore in my wrath that they shall not enter into my rest.
Glory be to the Father…
Antiphon: Come, let us adore the Lord, and do penance with a willing heart.
Morning Prayer (Lauds) — Friday, Week IV
O God, come to my assistance.
— O Lord, make haste to help me.
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost.
— As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.
Psalmody
Psalm 50 (51) — Miserere (Douay-Rheims)
Antiphon: Create in me a clean heart, O God: and renew a right spirit within my bowels.
Have mercy on me, O God, according to thy great mercy.
And according to the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my iniquity.
Wash me yet more from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin.
For I know my iniquity, and my sin is always before me.
To thee only have I sinned, and have done evil before thee: that thou mayst be justified in thy words, and mayst overcome when thou art judged.
For behold I was conceived in iniquities; and in sins did my mother conceive me.
For behold thou hast loved truth: the uncertain and hidden things of thy wisdom thou hast made manifest to me.
Thou shalt sprinkle me with hyssop, and I shall be cleansed: thou shalt wash me, and I shall be made whiter than snow.
To my hearing thou shalt give joy and gladness: and the bones that have been humbled shall rejoice.
Turn away thy face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities.
Create a clean heart in me, O God: and renew a right spirit within my bowels.
Cast me not away from thy face; and take not thy holy spirit from me.
Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation, and strengthen me with a perfect spirit.
I will teach the unjust thy ways: and the wicked shall be converted to thee.
Deliver me from blood, O God, thou God of my salvation: and my tongue shall extol thy justice.
O Lord, thou wilt open my lips: and my mouth shall declare thy praise.
For if thou hadst desired sacrifice, I would indeed have given it: with burnt offerings thou wilt not be delighted.
A sacrifice to God is an afflicted spirit: a contrite and humbled heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.
Deal favourably, O Lord, in thy good will with Sion; that the walls of Jerusalem may be built up.
Then shalt thou accept the sacrifice of justice, oblations and whole burnt offerings: then shall they lay calves upon thy altar.
Glory be to the Father…
Antiphon: Create in me a clean heart, O God: and renew a right spirit within my bowels.
Canticle — Tobit 13 (Douay-Rheims)
Antiphon: Rejoice, O Jerusalem: for the Lord shall gather all nations unto thee. (universalis.com)
Blessed be God that liveth for ever, and blessed be his kingdom.
For he scourgeth, and he saveth: he leadeth down to hell, and bringeth back again: and there is none that can escape his hand.
Give glory to the Lord, ye children of Israel, and praise him in the sight of the Gentiles:
Because he hath therefore scattered you among the Gentiles, who know not him, that you may declare his wonderful works, and make them know that there is no other almighty God besides him.
He hath chastised us for our iniquities: and he will save us for his mercy.
Behold what he hath done with us, and with fear and trembling give ye glory to him: and extol the eternal King in your works.
I for my part will praise him in the land of my captivity: because he hath shewn his majesty toward a sinful nation.
Be converted therefore, ye sinners, and do justice before God, believing that he will shew his mercy to you.
And I and my soul will rejoice in him.
Glory be to the Father…
Antiphon: Rejoice, O Jerusalem: for the Lord shall gather all nations unto thee.
Psalm 147 (147B) — Praise of God’s Providence (Douay-Rheims)
Antiphon: Praise the Lord, O Jerusalem: praise thy God, O Sion. (universalis.com)
Praise the Lord, O Jerusalem: praise thy God, O Sion.
Because he hath strengthened the bolts of thy gates: he hath blessed thy children within thee.
Who hath placed peace in thy borders: and filleth thee with the fat of corn.
Who sendeth forth his speech to the earth: his word runneth swiftly.
Who giveth snow like wool: scattereth mists like ashes.
He sendeth his crystal like morsels: who shall stand before the face of his cold?
He shall send out his word, and shall melt them: his wind shall blow, and the waters shall run.
Who declareth his word to Jacob: his justices and his judgments to Israel.
He hath not done in like manner to every nation: and his judgments he hath not made manifest to them.
Glory be to the Father…
Antiphon: Praise the Lord, O Jerusalem: praise thy God, O Sion.
Short Reading (Douay-Rheims) — Isaiah 53:11–12
Because his soul hath laboured, he shall see and be filled: by his knowledge shall this my just servant justify many, and he shall bear their iniquities.
Therefore will I distribute to him very many, and he shall divide the spoils of the strong, because he hath delivered his soul unto death, and was reputed with the wicked: and he hath borne the sins of many, and hath prayed for the transgressors. (universalis.com)
Short Responsory (Douay-Rheims)
He shall deliver me from the snare of the hunters.
— He shall deliver me from the snare of the hunters.
And from the sharp word that wounds in secret.
— He shall deliver me from the snare of the hunters.
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost.
— He shall deliver me from the snare of the hunters.
Canticle of Zachary (Benedictus) — Luke 1:68–79 (Douay-Rheims)
Antiphon (Isaiah 58:7–8, Douay-Rheims):
Deal thy bread to the hungry, and bring the needy and the harbourless into thy house… then shall thy light break forth as the morning. (universalis.com)
Blessed be the Lord God of Israel; because he hath visited and wrought the redemption of his people:
And hath raised up an horn of salvation to us, in the house of David his servant:
As he spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets, who are from the beginning:
Salvation from our enemies, and from the hand of all that hate us:
To perform mercy to our fathers, and to remember his holy testament,
The oath, which he swore to Abraham our father, that he would grant to us,
That being delivered from the hand of our enemies, we may serve him without fear,
In holiness and justice before him, all our days.
And thou, child, shalt be called the prophet of the Highest: for thou shalt go before the face of the Lord to prepare his ways:
To give knowledge of salvation to his people, unto the remission of their sins:
Through the bowels of the mercy of our God, in which the Orient from on high hath visited us:
To enlighten them that sit in darkness, and in the shadow of death: to direct our feet into the way of peace.
Glory be to the Father…
Antiphon: Deal thy bread to the hungry… then shall thy light break forth as the morning.
Intercessions
Let us pray to Christ the Lord, who for love of us accepted fasting, poverty, and the Cross:
— Lord Jesus, form in us a clean heart.
You who bore our sins in your body upon the tree, teach us to bear one another’s burdens.
— Lord Jesus, form in us a clean heart.You who fed the hungry with bread in the wilderness, make us generous in secret, joyful in mercy.
— Lord Jesus, form in us a clean heart.You who were numbered with transgressors, remember all who feel written off, ashamed, or alone.
— Lord Jesus, form in us a clean heart.You who opened paradise to the repentant thief, open to us today the door of true repentance.
— Lord Jesus, form in us a clean heart.You who gather the scattered into one City of peace, strengthen your Church in unity, courage, and charity.
— Lord Jesus, form in us a clean heart.
Our Father (Douay-Rheims form)
Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation.
But deliver us from evil. Amen.
Concluding Prayer
O Lord Jesus Christ, who justified many by thy sufferings, grant that the penance we have begun may be true, not theatrical; quiet, not proud; and fruitful in works of mercy. Make our fasting a door through which charity may enter, and our sorrow a lamp that leads to thy Resurrection; who livest and reignest for ever and ever. Amen.
May the Lord bless us, protect us from all evil, and bring us to everlasting life. Amen.
Paradox of the Day
The quickest way to be seen is to hide your goodness; for the Father who sees in secret teaches the soul to prefer reality to applause.
G.K. Chesterton quote
“The man who disliked the plain fasts and feasts was mad on entrées.” (Christian Classics Ethereal Library)
Chestertonian Reflection
If Lent were merely a diet, the Devil could keep it better than we do; for he is wonderfully thin, and has never tasted bread with gratitude. The point of the fast is not the absence of food, but the presence of truth. When the Prophet tells us to feed the hungry and shelter the harbourless, he is not adding a “nice extra” to religion; he is revealing what religion is when it stops being a costume.
The modern world is full of spiritual dress-up: we are forever “expressing ourselves,” which usually means exhibiting ourselves. And so we are tempted to make penitence another exhibition—an elaborate performance of austerity, a public monument to our private discipline. But the Church, with her blunt and bracing common sense, begins Lent with a psalm that cannot be faked: Create in me a clean heart, O God. A man can pretend to be busy; he can even pretend to be holy; but he cannot pretend to be clean, because cleanliness is precisely what the light exposes.
Isaiah’s Suffering Servant justifies many by bearing their iniquities; and here is the shock: the clean heart is not manufactured in solitude like a fine instrument, but washed in mercy like a wounded thing. If you want to know whether your fast is real, look not at your face in the mirror but at your neighbour’s face across the room. Does your sacrifice make you harsher—or does it make you kinder? Does it tighten your fist—or open your hand?
Today, then, let our small hunger teach us the large hunger: the world’s hunger for God. And let our secret prayer do its secret work—until, by a grace as quiet as dawn, charity breaks forth like morning light.
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