Once you have acquired your Office book, such as the Monastic Diurnal, the next challenge is to learn to use it effectively.
There are basically two components to this: learning the normal day-to-day, or ferial Office; and learning how it can differ from the norm, due to feasts, seasons and other special days.
Getting started quickly
If you are completely new to the Divine Office, and to the Extraordinary Form calendar, I strongly recommend starting slowly - ideally just learn to say Prime and Compline - and work through the notes provided here reasonably systematically.
But if you are impatient to get going, there are a couple of shortcuts you can take to this process, especially if you already have some familiarity with another form of the Divine Office.
First, jump to the post on finding your way around your Office book.
Once you've worked your way through that, read through the post on Diurnal traps and shortcuts, so you know what 'missing' pieces you need to fill in at each hour.
Once you've done that, you could try using the Quick reference sheets for each day of the week, that provide the page numbers in the Diurnal for the 'ordinary' texts of the Office, for days not affected by feasts or special seasons.
Feasts and seasons
To work out when and how the Office changes on feasts and seasons, the quickest and safest approach is to use an Ordo.
If you an Oblate, your particular monastery may put out a calendar or Ordo which you can use for this purpose.
If not, there are, as far as I know, three other options.
First, the Divinum Officium website's 'monastic' option includes an Ordo keyed to the 1962 General Calendar of the Benedictine Confederation. It is only available in Latin though, but you can go to the relevant date and use it as a check to make sure you have the correct texts for any relevant day.
Secondly, the monastery of Le Barroux Ordo makes public its Ordo. It too is in Latin only, and provides very limited detail on rubrics (mostly just that a particular day is a feast or requires a commemoration). It is worth noting though, that Le Barroux not strictly follow the 1962 rubrics in all cases (including I Vespers for Class II feasts for example), and includes feasts particular to the monastery and its location.
Finally, you can purchase my own version from Lulu in PDF or hard copy form, or use the abbreviated version that appears each week on the Saints Will Arise blog.
The full version of my Ordo provides page numbers for texts in the Monastic Diurnal, and chants in the Antiphonale, where the Office of the day differs from the 'ferial' or ordinary day Office.
So for the First Sunday of Advent, you get:
Sunday 29 November – First Sunday of Advent, Class I
Matins: Invitatory antiphon (Regem venturum Dominum), hymn (Verbum supernum), antiphons, versicles and canticles of Advent; readings, responsories and collect of Sunday I of Advent.
Lauds: Antiphons, chapter, responsory, hymn, versicle, Benedictus antiphon and collect of the First Sunday of Advent, MD 4*/AM 187 ff.
Prime: Antiphon 1 of Lauds, MD 6-7*/AM 187.
Terce to None: Antiphon, chapter, versicle and collect of Sunday Advent I, MD 7-8*/AM 189-90 ff.
2 Vespers: Antiphons, chapter, responsory, hymn and collect as for 1 Vespers, MD 1*/AM 186 ff; versicle and Magnificat antiphon of 2 Vespers, MD 8-9*/AM 190.
Good luck!
