The Rule is read straight through three times a year, restarting at the Prologue on
1 January, 2 May and 1 September — the custom resting on RB 66:8,
“We wish this rule to be read often in the community, so that none can offer the excuse of ignorance.”
How today’s portion is worked out (and what is editorial)
The dated division follows the daily-reading table cited under Texts & rights below.
That table is block-level: it assigns a range of chapters to a block of roughly ten days, not a
discrete portion to each calendar day. This page therefore subdivides each block evenly
across the days of that block to give a true daily portion. The block boundaries are
the table’s; the day-by-day boundaries within a block are editorial and carry no authority.
Three inconsistencies in the published table were normalised:
- 31 October is listed in two rows (18–23 and 24–36). It is assigned here to
24–36. This makes cycle 3 run 9 days then 15 days — exactly matching cycle 2.
- 31 May, 1 June, 31 August and 1 October appear in no row at all. Each is absorbed into the
preceding block. This makes rows 3 and 11 run 11 days in all three cycles.
- 29 February falls inside the 18–23 block, which simply runs 9 days instead of 8.
In a leap year all three cycles then run perfectly parallel.
The row printed as “37–43; 44–49” is a single block of chapters 37–49;
the semicolon reflects two web pages on the source site, not two readings.
The two columns are aligned. The Latin and English are divided at the same sentence
boundaries, so each day’s English translates the Latin shown beside it. The four mid-chapter
boundaries (2:10 / 2:11, 4:61 / 4:62, 7:34 / 7:35, 64:1 / 64:2) are cut exactly.
This project was made by a Benedictine Oblate.