On the Town: The tenebrae candelabrum was lit, as singers from Trinity Chapel Choir, under the direction of research student Helen Byrne, walked up the aisle.
Then, uilleann pipers Seán Potts and Peter Browne played Sliabh na mBan.
Sister Stanislaus Kennedy, founder of Focus Ireland and head of the Immigrant Council of Ireland, said it was time to enjoy some "moments of stillness". Her third book, Seasons of the Day: A Book of Hours, was launched this week in the university's vaulted chapel, which was consecrated in 1798.
The book "is based on the traditional Book of Hours which is chanted by monks and nuns who are enclosed eight times each day . . . I've taken the psalms and put a modern reflection with them," said Sister Stan. She is hoping the book will help people to introduce "moments of stillness and quietness into their lives".
"I believe everybody is hungry for a spirituality of some kind. This is a way of meeting that need," she said.
The chaplain, Rev Katherine Meyer, and Joe O'Gorman, chapel crucifer, sat in the carved Carolingian Seats in the aisle.
"In God alone is my soul at rest," read actor Bill Golding from the psalms. "To know the light we must know the dark," read actor Ruth McCabe from her lectern across the aisle.
Friends who sat in the pews included the book's publisher, Treasa Coady; Father Paul Andrews, a child psychologist who wrote Changing Children; writer Siobhán Parkinson, whose book, The Thirteenth Room, was published recently, and Marie Heaney, TownHouse editor, with her sister, Claire Devlin.
Today, most people's lives are "saturated with information," said Sister Stan. "Our day is deprived of meaning and we are caught in a never-ending swirl of duties and demands, things to finish and things to put right." The psalms show "that there is another way to live in this noisy, distracted world of ours and that this way is not as far out of our reach as we think".
Seasons of the Day: A Book of Hours by Sister Stan is published by TownHouse (€12.99 hardback).