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1765 Regina Begin the Thirty Days

The Regina Rule

A rule of life you can keep.

A few anchors for your day, each with a floor for the hard days and an aim for the good ones, kept by the Church's calendar and reviewed every ninety days.

What a rule of life is

Every household already runs on a rule: the hour the alarm goes off, the drive to school, the dishes after supper. A rule of life is the same thing made on purpose. It is a small set of resolutions about prayer, penance and the sacraments, fitted to the hours of your real day, kept when it is easy and when it is not, and looked at again each season.

A rule of life is a resolution, not a vow. Breaking it is not in itself a sin, and you should not turn it into a vow without your confessor’s advice (a vow binds by the virtue of religion, canon 1191).

It is not a list of everything a holy woman might do. It is the few things you will actually do, chosen with your state of life in view: a mother of small children, a wife, a single woman, a widow, a woman discerning or consecrated. The point is fidelity, not intensity. One decade of the Rosary kept for a year forms a soul more than fifteen decades kept for a week.

How the Regina Rule works

Anchors, each with a floor and an aim

Choose the anchors you will keep. Each has a floor, something small enough for your worst day (one Hail Mary at noon, one decade, one page), and an aim for your best (the whole Angelus, the whole Rosary, ten minutes of reading). You choose which one you resolve to keep. On a hard day, keep the floor and the chain holds.

Some of this is not yours to choose. Sunday and holy-day Mass, and the fast and abstinence of Ash Wednesday, Good Friday and the Fridays of Lent, are precepts of the Church: they bind whether or not you put them in your rule (Catechism 2042–2043).

An if-then plan in your own words

A resolution with no time and place rarely survives a real week. So each anchor becomes a sentence you finish yourself: After I put the baby down for a nap, I will read one page. When I set lunch on the table, I will pray the Angelus. Tie each anchor to something you already do every day, and the old habit becomes the reminder for the new one.

Today, by the Church's calendar

The checklist shows only what today asks of you. Holy Mass appears on Sundays and on the holy days of obligation kept throughout the United States. On Ascension Thursday it appears as an extra row that never breaks your chain: that Thursday is a holy day of obligation only in the ecclesiastical provinces of Boston, Hartford, New York, Omaha and Philadelphia, and the rest of the country keeps the Ascension on the following Sunday. In Hawaii only Christmas and the Immaculate Conception are holy days of obligation; the tool does not track this, so follow your own diocese. The Friday penance appears on Fridays, on Ash Wednesday and on Good Friday. On a Friday that is a solemnity, when canon 1251 lifts the law of abstinence, the tool does not ask for it. In Eastertide the noon prayer becomes the Regina Caeli. Each day also carries a short note on what the day means for your rule.

Honest streaks

A day counts when you keep at least one of its anchors, even at its floor. Each anchor also keeps its own count: days for a daily anchor, Sundays and holy days for Mass, Fridays for the penance, weeks for the work of mercy, months for Confession. One missed day ends a streak and the next kept day begins it again; today is never counted as missed while it is still open. After a restart you will see Started over beside your longest run, which stays. There are no grace days and no freeze days. If you kept a day and forgot to mark it, you may log it from the last seven days, and filling the gap restores the run.

The ninety-day review

Every ninety days the tool asks you to look back: it shows how often each anchor was kept, and you write what held, what slipped and one change for the next season. Your reviews are kept so you can read them again. Making the rule smaller is not failure; it is how a rule lasts.

Print it

Print my rule, a full page with each anchor, your plan and a line to sign, and a fridge card with this week's anchors and a box for each day.

When the rule has lapsed

If days have slipped by, the tool does not scold. It offers a word of Scripture and two choices: make the rule smaller, or begin again today with the floor. If what you are carrying is heavier than a missed week, the crisis protocol and the numbers to call are one tap away.

The anchors

The Morning Offering
Before the day can take you, give it to God: your prayers, work, joys and sufferings. Floor: one sentence of your own. Aim: the Morning Offering you know, kneeling.
The Angelus at noon
A pause at midday to remember the Annunciation, when the Word was made flesh. From Easter Sunday to Pentecost the Regina Caeli takes its place.
The Rosary
At least a decade a day. The tool shows the mysteries for the day of the week and opens the Rosary when you are ready to pray.
Holy Mass
The first precept of the Church asks Catholics to take part in Mass on Sundays and holy days of obligation (Catechism 2042). The floor keeps that precept; the aim adds one weekday Mass. A serious reason, such as illness or the care of infants, excuses (Catechism 2181). If one keeps you home, you have not sinned, and the Sunday count simply begins again. A Mass on Saturday evening, or on the evening before a holy day, keeps the obligation (canon 1248 §1): mark it on the Sunday or holy day itself.
The examen
A short look back over the day with God before you sleep: thanks, sorrow, and a resolution for tomorrow. It opens the Daily Examen, and a night you keep there is counted here.
Spiritual reading
A page or ten minutes a day from the library below. Reading a portion in the tool keeps this anchor for the day.
Monthly Confession
The Church's precept asks for Confession at least once a year (Catechism 2042). Going monthly is a habit you choose beyond the precept. A Confession you record in the Examination of Conscience is counted here. Every Confession is prepared for by an examination of conscience (Catechism 1454); the Examination of Conscience tool helps.
The Friday penance
Every Friday is a day of penance (canon 1250), which the bishops of the United States ask us to keep in remembrance of the Passion of Christ. In the United States you may keep the Fridays outside Lent by abstaining from meat or by another act of penance, and the bishops gave abstinence first place; the Fridays of Lent are days of abstinence, and Ash Wednesday and Good Friday are days of fasting and abstinence. Abstinence binds from age 14, and fasting from age 18 until age 59; the sick and women who are pregnant or nursing are excused.
A work of mercy
One act of mercy each week, done quietly. The Church lists the spiritual works of mercy (to instruct, advise, console, comfort, forgive and bear wrongs patiently) and the corporal ones (to feed the hungry, shelter the homeless, clothe the naked, visit the sick and imprisoned, and bury the dead) in Catechism 2447.
Your own
Up to three anchors of your own, every day or on one day of the week: a chaplet, a holy hour, a visit to the Blessed Sacrament.

The reading library

Sixty daily portions from two books, read inside the tool. Each text was fetched from the source named below and checked word for word when the library was built; only the typography was changed, and the translators' footnotes are left out. Where a page was written for another state of life, or could be misheard, a short note in our own words comes before it.

  • The Imitation of Christ, Thomas à Kempis, in the translation of the Rev. William Benham: Books I and II, one chapter a day. It was written in the fifteenth century for men living in religious community; St Thérèse carried it everywhere as a girl.
  • The Story of a Soul, St Thérèse of Lisieux, in the translation edited by the Rev. T. N. Taylor (1912): chapters I and II, on her mother and her home, and chapters IX to XI, on her little way, her trial of faith and her vocation of love, in readings of about ten minutes.

Questions

What counts as a kept day?

A day on which you kept at least one of the anchors that were due that day. A day on which none of your anchors falls neither keeps nor breaks your streak.

Can I mark a day I forgot?

Yes, any of the last seven days. Log it only if you kept it. Filling a missed day restores the run; nothing else does.

What if my rule is too much?

Make it smaller. Keep only the floors, or fewer anchors. A small rule kept is better than a large one abandoned.

Where is my rule kept?

On this device, in this browser. Nothing is sent anywhere unless you turn on encrypted sync. Your data explains what is kept and how to remove it.

Sources

  1. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2041 to 2043, the precepts of the Church: vatican.va
  2. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2447, the works of mercy: vatican.va
  3. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2181 and 2184 to 2185, Sunday Mass and Sunday rest: vatican.va; 1434 and 1438, the forms and seasons of penance: vatican.va; 1454, the examination of conscience: vatican.va; 624, Holy Saturday: vatican.va
  4. Code of Canon Law, canons 1246 to 1253, holy days and days of penance: vatican.va; canon 1191, vows: vatican.va; canon 1153, separation of spouses: vatican.va
  5. Second Vatican Council, Sacrosanctum Concilium 110, the paschal fast: vatican.va
  6. Universal Norms on the Liturgical Year and the Calendar (1969), 18 to 19, 25 and 28: catholicculture.org
  7. United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Liturgical Calendar for 2026 (the Ascension in five provinces; Hawaii's holy days, Miscellaneous Notes 4): usccb.org
  8. United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Pastoral Statement on Penance and Abstinence (1966), 23: usccb.org
  9. United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Lenten Fasting and Abstinence (2021), the ages and who is excused: usccb.org
  10. Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ, tr. William Benham, public domain: Project Gutenberg #1653, corrected in one word (Book I, Chapter XIX) from the Harvard Classics, vol. 7 (P. F. Collier & Son, 1909): Internet Archive; on its author, the Catholic Encyclopedia, Thomas à Kempis
  11. St Thérèse of Lisieux, The Story of a Soul, ed. and tr. T. N. Taylor (Burns, Oates & Washbourne, 1912; text of the eighth edition, 1922), public domain in the United States: Project Gutenberg #16772
  12. The verse on the "begin again" card is Lamentations 3:22-23 in the Douay-Rheims (Challoner): drbo.org

The Regina Rule is free, with no account. It is not a substitute for a confessor or a spiritual director; bring your rule to one if you can.