Vigilemus — a gold oil lamp burning on a night-blue field

Vigilemus

let us keep watch

Catholic daily prayer — the Mass readings, the Little Office of Our Lady,
the prayers of the Church, and the Fathers. Every text on your device; nothing collected.

On the App Store — free, no account, no ads, nothing collected.

Download on the App Store Google Play — in testing

The Name

“What? Could you not watch one hour with me? Watch ye, and pray that ye enter not into temptation.” Matthew 26:40–41, Douay-Rheims

Vigilemus is Latin for “let us keep watch.” In Gethsemane, on the night before He suffered, Our Lord asked His disciples to watch and pray — vigilate et orate. Down the centuries the Church has kept that watch, praying through the hours of the day: Matins before dawn, Lauds at daybreak, the little hours through the working day, Vespers at evening, Compline before sleep.

Vigilemus is that answer in one word — the same “let us” the Church uses whenever the priest says Oremus, “let us pray.” Not a command, but an invitation: let us keep watch together.

What Is Inside

Today

The readings of the day in the Douay-Rheims, the traditional English Bible of the English-speaking Church, with the Church Fathers’ commentary on the day’s Gospel from the Catena Aurea. The readings, the calendar and the season follow the modern Roman Missal.

The Hours

The Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary — Matins through Compline, season-aware — read it, or listen: every hour narrated, part by part.

Prayers

The common prayers of the Church, complete with their rubrics — when to bow, when to genuflect, when to strike the breast — and the seven litanies. Every one of them narrated.

Novenas

A novena is nine days of prayer leading up to a feast. Vigilemus schedules each one so it ends on the right day, with litanies and seasonal devotions.

The Rosary

All twenty mysteries. The day’s set is announced and prayed aloud as you would pray it — the mystery named, then the decade, down to the Fatima Prayer. Or step through it bead by bead, in silence.

Chaplets

The Seven Dolours of Our Lady and the Chaplet of St. Michael, with a counter for the beads — offered on their own feasts.

The Stations of the Cross

St. Alphonsus Liguori’s way, one station to a screen, with its prayers in full — offered on the Fridays of Lent and on Good Friday.

Library

The whole Douay-Rheims Bible, the full Catena Aurea with each Gospel verse set above its Fathers, spiritual readings — and search across everything: a passage by its reference, a prayer by its name, a line of the Little Office.

Scripture, linked

Citations are tappable wherever they appear — from a prayer, a psalm, or a Father’s homily straight to the sacred page.

The App

The Today tab: the readings of the day in the Douay-Rheims The Hours tab: Compline from the Little Office of Our Lady, ready to read or to hear The Prayers tab: the Rosary, the chaplets and the Stations of the Cross, then the common prayers The Rosary tab: the day’s mysteries, with a feast-day chaplet offered above them Praying the Rosary along with the audio: the mystery, the bead count, and the prayer on screen The Stations of the Cross: the third station, with its versicle, meditation and prayer The Novenas tab: each novena scheduled to end on its feast The Library: the Douay-Rheims Bible, the Church Fathers, and spiritual readings Search: “Psalm 23” opens the Douay’s Psalm 22, which most modern Bibles number 23

Our Sources

Every text comes from the Church’s own historic prayer books, breviaries, and translations — each in the public domain or in free devotional use, and each one named. Scripture and the prayers, word for word.

Building on public-domain texts is a deliberate choice: it lets the whole of this reach you without licensing standing in the way, and it means every word can be traced to a named, historic source you can check for yourself.

  • Holy Scripture — Douay-Rheims Bible, Challoner Revision — Project Gutenberg #1581
  • The Mass propers — the readings of the day — the modern order of readings, compiled by Fr. Felix Just, S.J.
  • The Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary — Benziger, 1915
  • The Fathers on the Gospels — St. Thomas Aquinas, Catena Aurea — Newman’s Oxford translation, 1841–45
  • The spiritual readings — the Fathers themselves, in Schaff’s Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers (15 of the 17), the Ante-Nicene Fathers, and the Oxford Library of the Fathers
  • The Rosary — the mysteries and the manner of praying it from the same public-domain manuals; the Luminous Mysteries and the weekday scheme come from Rosarium Virginis Mariae (2002), which is not public domain and is named here for that reason
  • The chaplets — the Seven Dolours from Keens’s Manual of Devotions in Honour of the Seven Dolours (London, 1868); the Chaplet of St. Michael from the Raccolta (1910)
  • The Stations of the Cross — St. Alphonsus Liguori’s way, from Moran’s Catholic Prayer Book and Manual of Meditations (Dublin, 1883)
  • Common prayers & novenas — the Raccolta (1910), pre-1929 prayer manuals, and other named public-domain sources. Two carry a narrower claim: the St. Jude novena is a 1929 printing, public domain in the United States only; the Fatima prayer (1917) is in universal devotional use, with no pre-1929 English printing located.

The full shelf, book by book ›

Privacy

Every text and every recording in Vigilemus lives on your device. The app makes no network requests of its own — not even for the narration — so it works entirely offline; the only time anything leaves your phone is if you tap a source link, which opens your browser. No account, no analytics, no advertising, nothing collected in the app — your prayer life is between you and God. This website counts page views; the app cannot.