A liturgical calendar app for keeping the church year together

Ordo is a liturgical calendar app for iPhone that follows the Western church year, from Advent through Christmas, Epiphany, Lent and Eastertide to Ordinary Time. Its prompts, readings and photographs turn with each season, the Daily Office can be prayed in the app, and the year is kept with a small group.

Why keep the church year

The church year retells the life of Christ every twelve months: his coming, birth, manifestation, fasting, suffering, resurrection and the sending of the Spirit, followed by the ordinary time of the church’s life. Keeping it gives your prayer a shape that is not set by your mood or the news. Lent feels different from Easter because it is meant to. Our guide to the church year explains each season, its colours and this year’s dates.

What to look for in a church year app

• Seasons you can feel. A date in the corner is not enough. Prompts, readings and the look of the app should change with the season.
• Prayer as well as information. Many liturgical calendar apps tell you what day it is. Fewer help you pray it.
• The Daily Office. Set prayer at set times is the oldest way the church has kept the hours.
• A way to mark the end of a season. Looking back at Advent before Christmas begins is part of keeping it.
• Company. The church year was never meant to be kept alone.

How Ordo keeps the church year

1. The season sets the tone. Ordo knows which season it is. Its photographs, prompts and readings change on the First Sunday of Advent, at Christmas, at Epiphany, on Ash Wednesday, at Easter and in Ordinary Time.
2. Pray the Office. Read more in the guide to the Daily Office, then pray it in the app.
3. Keep the day with your group. Each day asks for a written reflection, a response to the day’s scripture and a check-in on your group’s rule of life.
4. The reveal. When everyone has written, the group’s reflections open together.
5. Close the season. At the end of each season, a formation letter drawn from your reflections arrives, and your archive keeps the season with a day grid and a thread of what you wrote.

The next church year begins on Sunday 29 November 2026, the First Sunday of Advent. See Ordo for Advent and for Lent 2027.

Who it is for

Anglicans and Episcopalians who pray from the Book of Common Prayer, Lutherans, Catholics and Methodists will find the seasons familiar. Reformed and Presbyterian churches increasingly keep Advent and Lent, and many value a disciplined pattern of daily scripture. Pentecostal, Baptist and non-denominational Christians who are discovering the church year for the first time can begin with a light rule and simply let the seasons set the tone. Orthodox Christians should know that Ordo follows the Western calendar, so Pascha and Easter fall on different dates in most years.

If prayer is your main interest, see the Christian prayer app page. If you want to write a rule shaped around the seasons, see the rule of life app page.

How Ordo differs

Many liturgical calendar apps are reference tools: the day’s colour, feast and lectionary readings, kept by one person. They are useful, and Ordo does not try to replace them. Ordo is for living inside the season with a few others, writing what it is doing to you, and receiving it back at the end.

There are no streaks, badges or reminders that you have fallen behind. Ordinary Time is long, and some weeks are quiet; Ordo will be here when you return. It is in beta on iPhone; join the waitlist.