Bishop Barron introduces Word on Fire's new Liturgy of the Hours Second Edition
Bishop Robert Barron presents Word on Fire's newly published Liturgy of the Hours Second Edition, commissioned by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.
Summary
Bishop Robert Barron announces that Word on Fire has been chosen by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops to publish the Liturgy of the Hours Second Edition — only the second new translation since the close of the Second Vatican Council. The video presents a detailed behind-the-scenes look at the design, materials, and manufacturing decisions that went into producing the volumes. Contributors from the Word on Fire design team, specialist paper manufacturers in France, a century-old leather tannery, and an Italian printing and binding house explain their roles. The overarching goal, as stated throughout, was to optimize every element of the book for prayer, and to give a copy to every seminarian in the United States as a gift.
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Introduction by Bishop Barron
Bishop Barron: Hey everybody, it's Bishop Barron. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has chosen Word on Fire to publish the Liturgy of the Hours Second Edition. Our aim is simple: to bring Word on Fire's experience in publishing beautiful books to this daily prayer of the church. The Liturgy of the Hours is offered around the clock by clergy, religious, and lay people throughout the world. It's an ancient, structured way of praying scripture throughout the day, focusing especially on the Psalms. With this edition, our goal is to spark a renewal in this great tradition, drawing it into the heart of Catholic life — into our families, schools, parishes, and communities. This endeavor marks one of Word on Fire's most ambitious publishing projects to date. In this video, you'll see the careful reflection and meticulous attention to detail that's gone into the creation of these volumes. Our design team has improved the readability of these texts while curating the finest materials from around the world, giving the Liturgy of the Hours the care and craftsmanship it deserves. Enjoy this creative overview of Word on Fire's Liturgy of the Hours Second Edition. May God richly bless you.
The Vision: Beauty as a Gift to the Church
Word on Fire team member: Bishop Barron was very direct — he wanted a gift to the church. He wanted this to be beautiful.
Word on Fire team member: A book, no matter how usable it is, if it's not beautiful, if it doesn't beckon someone to use it, then what good is it? If it doesn't draw someone to it, then it's not doing its job.
Word on Fire team member: The Liturgy of the Hours is the heartbeat of the church. It's a sacramental, it's an extension of the Mass. And these are extremely beautiful, rich, ancient prayers. Designing a book that was worthy of those prayers was something very important to us.
Word on Fire team member: We look at our phones all day, every day. We wanted to create the most beautiful book possible to encourage priests to pray with their book.
Word on Fire team member: Why not just use a prayer app in order to have this kind of devotion? In other words, what's the importance of having a physical text in a religion that is sourced on the incarnation? There is a necessity to ensure that particular aspects are set aside — that are consecrated entirely to the glory of God. And this includes books. To own a text whose only purpose for being is prayer.
So, why pray the office? Because the office is, as the Second Vatican Council says, the voice of Mother Church. It's the voice of the church crying out at every hour of the day throughout the world to the glory of God the Father.
The Liturgy of the Hours, unlike many liturgical texts, is not often translated.
Word on Fire team member: So this is the second time it would be done since the closing of the Second Vatican Council. We're continuing to be inheritors of this prestigious tradition that goes all the way back to Jesus himself, who also prayed the Liturgy of the Hours in its Jewish form.
First Impressions from a Priest
Priest: I was deeply struck when I saw the initial copies of the Liturgy of the Hours produced by Word on Fire — first and foremost by its beauty. Looking through it, the attention to detail that is not just professional, but spiritual. That really gives the one who is holding the book a deeper sense of the mystery that they're trying to embody in that moment. It's something that I deeply appreciate about this new edition. It speaks deeply to my heart as a priest as well, and I know that it will continue to do so in the decades to come.
Typography and Layout Design
Word on Fire design team member: The old version was kind of this edge-of-the-page to edge-of-the-page text. In this new edition, we've greatly improved the layout of the prayers page to page. I think of the analogy of a messy desk. You come to work and your desk is a mess — it's just not a good start to the day. But if you tidy up your desk, you've decluttered everything. That immediately has an impact on your brain, on your focus. We've done that in the book. We've got the parts of the prayer rubrics off in the sidebar, in the margin now. That actually builds in some breathing room, some space to the text.
The typeface that we're using is called Trinitate. Experts have observed that we tend to read shapes in words rather than each individual letter and character. Trinitate has some really nice variants in letter form height. You can take the analogy of a skyline — if every building in a skyline were of uniform height, you'd have a hard time telling the difference between one skyline and another. But take the Chicago skyline and you look at the Willis Tower versus the John Hancock Center. Now you're creating some variation in height, a recognizable shape to the skyline. Jumping back to the previous edition of the Liturgy of the Hours, the font they used was of lower contrast in terms of these variations between expression and letter height. We've cleaned all that up, created a really nice clear structure to the prayer, and we've cleaned the desk.
Physical Format and Handling
Word on Fire design team member: Thinking through the trim size of this book, the materiality of the book, how we wanted someone to use it and hold it in their hand — that was something very critical for the design. That's where we landed with the format that we did. You compare this edition with the previous edition — I remember the first time I held both in my hands. I open up the previous edition and I could feel my hand cramping up, and the book wanted to close on itself or flop out of my hand. Our book just laid there. Any page you turn to, front or back, it would just lay comfortably in my hand. I could position my hand any way I wanted and it would just lay open, and it was comfortable.
Paper: PDL, France
Word on Fire team member: Creating a book like this, manufacturing a book like this, is very difficult. The partners for this project were extremely important to us. We wanted to choose people who could make the book that we were dreaming of. Our partner for this project for the paper is PDL — they're based in France. They make some of the best thin print paper in the world. The different fillers that they have in the paper allow it, under light, to be evenly illuminated across the page and to limit glare. The mix of fibers that they use — both long-grain and short-grain fibers — allow it to be extremely durable and resist tearing as much as possible.
PDL representative: This process is not an easy process. We have to give strong properties and high optical properties to the paper with low substance. The end result is to give the mechanical properties — strength and tear — while maintaining optical properties. We are very specific and we are all specialists.
Word on Fire team member: It's truly an incredible paper. It's easy to print on. The text kind of jumps off the page because of the color. And the feel of the paper is this perfect silky matte feel. We wanted it to feel good to pray this book. Turning the page is really something that you can only do in a physical book. So the paper that you'll be touching so much was extremely important in adding to that.
We're using a custom gold ink with additional metallic content in it. Typically, gold ink sits on top of a heavily coated paper so that the metallic properties of that ink can shine. To our knowledge, no one has ever printed on a thin paper like this. So a lot of troubleshooting had to be done — different print tests, different inks were used to try and get an effect to help the gold pop as much as possible on the borders and images throughout the book.
Leather: Cromwell Leather
Word on Fire team member: For the leather for this project, we went with a company called Cromwell Leather. They've been operating a leather tannery for books for over 100 years now.
Cromwell Leather representative: Cromwell was started by my grandfather's uncle. We've been in the leather business since 1899. Our leather is a very specialized leather — we make leather primarily for book binding. Of all the leather in the world, a very small portion, less than 1%, is used for book binding.
Word on Fire team member: We probably went through 100 different leather samples from a dozen different leather manufacturers all over the world. The specific leather that we chose for this project is a full-grain leather. That means it's 100% natural grain and natural structure of the leather. Full-grain leather is more durable than top-grain leather.
Leather supplier representative: In Spain and Portugal, we have the best raw material. And in the Valencia region of Spain, we have the best know-how. We combine those two, and the result is we get the best book-binding leather in the world. It's a leather that is made from steer hides, which is very important — not from milk cows. The steer hides are younger and plumper and fuller. That's a lot of information about the origin, but when you end up with wonderful leather, it starts from the very beginning.
Word on Fire team member: Most books or leather products out there are top-grain leather. They'll take a leather hide, sand down the top of that leather to remove any natural grain pattern, scarring, or bug bites that are on the animal hide, and then stamp an artificial grain pattern into that leather. For this project, we went with full-grain leather — it's the 100% natural grain that's on top of it. Depending on where on the animal hide the cover was cut from, every Liturgy of the Hours book will have a unique grain pattern. It's tanned specifically to age beautifully.
Cromwell Leather representative: The expectation is that that leather endures not for 10 years or 20 years, but for generations, for centuries. And we have to build all of those properties into the leather itself. So sometimes we are asked, "How should I care for the leather on my book?" And the answer is very simple: use the book. You don't need to put any creams or any polishes on that leather. That is all built into the product by us. We tan it properly, we add the tanning oils, and we add the protection. If you use the book and hold it, over time it'll become even more wonderful and develop a patina. You'll hold it at the spine, and you'll use the book, and it'll be uniquely yours. It is very similar in a way to a glove or a baseball mitt that gets better over time. It may get wet in the rain, or coffee might spill on it — you can wipe those off. Those are built into the protection of the leather. You drop it on asphalt and it shouldn't scratch. The reason is that our leather is fully penetrated with dye — it's not just on the surface, so you're not going to see something white underneath. It may never happen, but it's there for you.
Printing and Binding: LEGO, Italy
Word on Fire team member: We consulted about a dozen different printers all over the world before making our final decision. The best option available to us was to print these in Italy. Our printing and binding partner for this project is LEGO. The company LEGO literally means "I bind" in Italian. They are experts at binding a book.
LEGO representative: The company has been a bindery for quite a long time — across two world wars. Now we are perhaps the largest company in Italy doing this kind of job.
We use the machines, but we use human control. The human beings are the most important thing in production. You may have the best machine in the world, but if you have not the right kind of person, you will not produce good quality. And we are confident that the printing of this book is going to be quite nice.
Art Gilding and Ribbons
Word on Fire team member: The gilding on the pages — books are taken through this process where the edges are sanded down through different grits. The gold foil is applied to them, and then after they're gilt, they are taken to an outside vendor. They'll spray the books by hand — two coats of red paint over the top of this gold gilding — to give it what's called art gilding, this beautiful red over gold. Then as soon as you open up, you see that deeply liturgical, beautiful red pop through on the sides of the pages.
Priest: Extra ribbons — which I'm very happy about. Only my brother priests could sympathize with me in this particular regard, perhaps.
Word on Fire team member: We went through a ton of research and development with how the ribbons are adhered to the spine. The more ribbons that you have attached to the spine, the more difficult it could be to bind a book to lay flat in your hand. So the way these ribbons are connected is different than a typical book.
LEGO representative: A book with ribbons will be opened many times — a book like this. So they must be strong. Strength needed particular attention in how you attach the ribbons to the spine of the book.
A Priest's Reflection
Priest: I was just excited as a priest because I've been praying the breviary for over a decade now, every day, five times a day. It's such a central part of my life and devotion. And to be honest, there was room for improvement and growth. And I believe that Word on Fire has answered that call.
Craftsmanship and the Gift to Seminarians
Word on Fire team member: There are so many different parts of this project where true craftsmen have to touch the different components by hand to make the end result. Every leather cover is cut by hand. Every book is hand-inspected by someone at LEGO making sure that it's up to quality.
So many different highly skilled laborers are integral to creating this book. You can optimize it for a number of different ways, including price or portability or size. But we wanted to take the opportunity to optimize this book for prayer. Every single thing — from the size of the thread that's sewing the cover together, to the size of the font, to the font choice — was intentionally chosen by experts in their fields. Everything was truly deliberated and labored over for an extended period of time.
We felt very strongly that this project is a gift to the church, and for us to be able to give a copy to every seminarian across the United States is incredible. We're extremely grateful for the donors behind this project to give these books away — for this to truly be a gift to the next generation of priests.
Word on Fire team member: It's going to introduce a whole new generation of Christians into the beauty of prayer, the liturgical life and prayer of the church.
Reactions from Recipients
Recipient: This is really beautiful and it's easy to read.
Recipient: Special. Sacred.
Recipient: You've put a lot of thought into it and it's like a very important book.
Recipient: I really like how this feels. I really like the real leather, and I'm really enjoying that there's actually beautiful artwork in this book while I pray. This font is really readable and I can see myself carrying this around for many years to come.
Recipient: You can just let it rest in your hand and it feels very comfortable — very good materials. I really do love and feel very comfortable with the way that the margins and the layout are all arranged. It feels very nice and very good, very professional.
Recipient: It looks like a sacred book. Just the binding has a nice breakup too, having some pictures and just introducing each different section of the breviary. That looks really beautiful, looks really dignified.
Recipient: The thing that's most striking is the consistent margins all the way throughout, at least as far as the actual pages go.
Recipient: I like that you have morning prayer, vespers — you have those laid out together.
Recipient: Yeah, this is beautiful.
Recipient: It's a great feel in your hand, especially if you're sitting down or standing up and praying the breviary. Sometimes those little prayer books are too tiny, sometimes you don't want a gigantic missal in your hand. But this breviary I find rests very snugly in my hand, and it's beautiful to look at.
Recipient: It will be hard for me to hold any real-but-fake leather and not think — oh, it's just not the Liturgy of the Hours.