A small group of students and faculty has found a new way to pray an ancient tradition.

On several nights at 9, a gathering participates in the night prayer in accordance with the Liturgy of the Hours. Instead of praying at a church, however, they pray over Zoom.

Senior Aris Inkrott said, “A group of us started doing night prayer at our senior retreat. (Those) of us who did it went (to retreat) the beginning of February and we’ve been doing it ever since.” This group includes Inkrott and fellow seniors Connor Gianoli, Lauren Dubbink, Andrew de las Alas and Andrew Marcou, along with several others.

Social studies teacher Mr. Cole Hepp, vice principal for academics Mr. Mark Matthews and religion teacher Mr. Matthew Cannaday prayed the night prayer during Inkrott’s retreat. She said, “It’s something that we chose to do. (Some teachers) were planning on doing it and we asked to join them. It’s an extra thing we did once the ‘retreat’ part of retreat ended.”

A few teachers have since joined night prayer since it went virtual. Inkrott said that English teacher Miss Irene Wilson and computer science teacher Miss Ria Pereira have popped in.

From first praying it at retreat to now praying it over Zoom, Inkrott said the group has learned a lot. She said, “At the beginning it was very much teacher-led because everyone was learning how to do night prayer. There’s a bit of a rhythm to it. The app is very user friendly but you do have to know where you’re supposed to read and at what time, so at the beginning it was very much Mr. Cannaday (who) would lead it. But now, it’s pretty much student led. We have it down. Normally we’ll have a student as the leader and another student as the respondent.”

Inkrott further detailed the process the group goes through for night prayer. She said, “It’s kind of a collection of psalms that’s prayed in a community usually, (and) you can pray it by yourself. There’s an app that we use called iBreviary. Night prayer is pretty standard. It’s the same couple of psalms every day, but it varies a little bit.”

Inkrott said, “This liturgy of the hours in general is a call and response sort of psalms. The way that’s different on Zoom is we’ll have two people leading it. One person will be a leader and one person will be a respondent. Normally it would be a leader and two groups of people, but we can’t do that since Zoom doesn’t really pick up multiple voices at the same time. We usually try to say it out loud even if we’re on mute.”

Inkrott encouraged anyone who would like to do so to take part. She said, “It’s open to everybody, It’s a really fun group of people. We have a lot of fun doing it. If you’re looking for a different, fun way to pray, it’s really a great way to do it. I really enjoy liturgy of the hours, and I know a lot of the people who do it enjoy it also, so we’d be happy for anybody who wanted to join.”