Guidelines for troparia/kontakia in the Hours

[Jeremiah Taluzek]

Greetings in our Lord Jesus Christ.

I have tried to determine whether this has asked before or not, but I have been able to find no answers. When one is preparing to recite the Hours, how does one determine what troparia and kontakia to recite, and in what order? When I meet up with some of my college friends, we like to get together and recite the Hours, but I'm not sure that we are doing the Troparia/Kontakia correctly.

Thank you for you time!

In XC,
Jeremiah

[D. W. Dickens]

I use http://orthodox.seasidehosting.st/

But has been pointed out by others it misses "special" times during the year like changes for Lent.

[Fr Raphael Vereshack]

Greetings in our Lord Jesus Christ.

I have tried to determine whether this has asked before or not, but I have been able to find no answers. When one is preparing to recite the Hours, how does one determine what troparia and kontakia to recite, and in what order? When I meet up with some of my college friends, we like to get together and recite the Hours, but I'm not sure that we are doing the Troparia/Kontakia correctly.

Thank you for you time!

In XC,
Jeremiah

At the hours you are supposed to read the tropars and kondaks that relate to the feast/saint of the day. Thus for today on the OC there would first be the tropar to the Cross (since this is the afterfeast of the Cross) and then the tropar to the saints of the day- St Eustafius and comp. The kondak would be to the cross.

Note however that these different tropars and kondaks are found in the Menaion. Quite a few parishes nowadays have a full Menaion (it's in 12 volumes), but it's not likely you as individuals would have this. So a more realistic solution would be to use the tropars/kondaks either for the Octoechos commemoration of the day or for the feast you are presently celebrating.

By Octoechos commemoration for the day we mean that on Monday we celebrate the angels, Tuesday- St John the Baptist, Wednesday & Friday- the cross, Thursday- apostles and St Nicholas, Saturday- Theotokos, all saints, departed, Sunday- resurrection. It sounds complicated, but if you get hold of a standard Prayer Book you should be able to find all of these as well as the tropar and kondak for festal periods. This would be a lot more realistic as an option I think.

In Christ- Fr Raphael