Angelus News | April 21, 2023 | Vol. 8 No

Heather King is an award-winning
author, speaker, and workshop leader.
offers the backstory of his venture.
He was raised as what he calls a
“post-modern,” nondenominational
Christian. In high school, he was
“beckoned to the Church by the Holy
Spirit.”
For 10 years, he and his brother had
run a company that worked with kids
to give them public speaking and debate
skills. But around 2020, he “was
kind of on burnout and also wanted
to do something more evangelical
with my time.”
He was also in “a quarter-life crisis”;
a space of great desolation, both spiritually
and personally. He’s an extreme
extrovert and the pandemic had worn
him down.
So he took a sabbatical of several
months to discern what his next step
should be. For his birthday that year,
Dec. 30, his sister gave him a breviary
set. And when he started praying
and singing the Office, everything
changed.
“There’s a great letter from Church
Father and doctor St. Athanasius to
Marcellinus, where he discusses the
psalms. It’s not for our entertainment
that we sing our psalms, it’s for the
soul’s own benefit.”
In the midst of the darkest period
of his life, he realized it’s impossible
simultaneously to sing the psalms and
to feel despondent. “You’re breathing,
moving, standing. It’s a perfect integration
before God of body, soul, and
spirit. But it’s not just a mental health
tool or a way to find peace, it’s a way
to worship God.”
Nonetheless, after a few months
he realized he was probably singing
the psalms wrong. He started asking
around and searching online — podcasts,
Instagram, YouTube — and he
found there was literally nothing: no
guide, no materials.
In high school he’d been interested
in music, music production, and
voice. He began to realize: “I can
sing, I can produce — why not just
pray the Office myself and make it
available to other people?”
He started posting during Advent of
2020. His early efforts were awful, he
says. A friend told him he sounded
like Justin Bieber, if Bieber had converted
to Catholicism and become a
monk. He quickly began adopting a
more “traditional” tone — though,
trained in pop vocals, his singing is
always going to have a bit of “modern
charm,” as he laughingly puts it.
More and more, he realizes, the entire
human experience is contained
in those 150 psalms: our suffering,
our joy, our thanksgiving, our angst.
They were written by David, Christ’s
ancestor, and Christ prayed them
himself.
“The prayer is timeless but it enters
time in our contemporary English
language context.”
At the behest of his mother, Rose
and his siblings also learned Latin as
children. Bits of that he’s also incorporated
into Sing the Hours.
“Think of how many thousands of
saints have prayed the ‘Glory Be’
throughout history in Latin — at
work in the fields, before the altar,
about to be burned at the stake. It’s
so great to close each psalm with that
eternal shout-out.”
Rose’s enthusiasm is contagious. His
conviction that God had a plan for
his dark night of the soul is a consolation.
That he took the resources at
hand — his musical talents, his energy,
his faithful heart — and molded
them into an ongoing daily labor of
love is a lesson and an inspiration to
all of us.
In the passion according to John,
Jesus and his disciples sit down to
the Last Supper. His time is at hand.
“One of you will betray me,” he tells
them. He will not again together
drink the fruit of the vine until they
meet in the Father’s kingdom.
Then he takes a moment to integrate
himself fully before God
— body, soul, spirit — and forever
enshrines the glory of music.
“And when they had sung a hymn,
they went out to the Mount of Olives.”
April 21, 2023 • ANGELUS • 31