The Rule of Benedict Read online

  Every Sunday morning, just as day breaks, Benedict asks us to say five specific psalms: Psalm 67 asks for God’s continuing blessings; Psalm 51 gives voice to our contrition; Psalm 118 recounts God’s goodness in times past; Psalm 62 pours out a longing for God; and Psalms 148–150 bring the soul to a burst of praise. The structure itself, in other words, models the disposition of the soul before its God. At the beginning of the week, we ask for the energy of grace to go from this Sabbath to the next; we acknowledge the struggles of the week before us and the failings of the week that is past; we remember God’s eternal fidelity in good times and bad; we recognize publicly that the great desire of our life is the desire for God, whatever else distracts us on the way; and, finally, we give our lives in thanksgiving to the One Who has brought us this far and Who is our final goal and our constant hope.

  Sunday Lauds in the monastic liturgy is a soul-splitting commitment to go on. The point is that every life needs points along the way that enable us to rise above the petty daily problems, the overwhelming tragedies of our lives and begin again, whatever our circumstances, full of confidence, not because we know ourselves to be faithful, but because our God is.

  CHAPTER 13

  THE CELEBRATION OF LAUDS ON ORDINARY DAYS

  Feb. 15 – June 16 – Oct. 16

  On ordinary weekdays, Lauds are celebrated as follows. First, Psalm 67 is said without a refrain and slightly protracted as on Sunday so that everyone can be present for Psalm 51, which has a refrain. Next, according to custom, two more psalms are said in the following order: on Monday, Psalms 5 and 36; on Tuesday, Psalms 43 and 57; on Wednesday, Psalms 64–65; on Thursday, Psalms 88 and 90; on Friday, Psalms 76 and 92; on Saturday, Psalm 143 and the Canticle from Deuteronomy, divided into two sections, with the doxology after each section. On other days, however, a Canticle from the prophets is said, according to the practice of the Roman Church. Next follow Psalms 148 through 150, a reading from the apostle recited by heart, a responsory, an Ambrosian hymn, a versicle, the Gospel canticle, the litany, and conclusion.

  At the break of dawn, every day of the week, Benedict, through his organization of the morning psalms, reminds the monastic of two unfailing realities. The first is that life is not perfect, that struggle is to be expected, that the human being lives on the brink of danger and defeat at all times. As proof of that, the first Psalm of Lauds, every day of the week, is a cry for help (Psalm 5), a cry for vindication (Psalm 43), a cry for protection even from secret enemies (Psalm 64), a cry to be saved from depression, the death of the spirit, and on Friday, in Psalm 76, a review of the power of God in their lives.

  In the second Psalm of Lauds, Benedict arranges a paean of praise, one after another, every day of the week in Psalms 36, 57, 65, 90, and 92 until, on Saturday, having lived through everything life had to give that week, the community bursts into unending praise for having survived it, learned faith in God from it again, and been saved one more time by a loving God.

  Lauds becomes an unending lesson in reality and faith, in accepting what life brings, sure in the knowledge that the God who loves us is with us upholding us all the way.

  Feb. 16 – June 17 – Oct. 17

  Assuredly, the celebration of Lauds and Vespers must never pass by without the prioress or abbot reciting the entire Prayer of Jesus at the end for all to hear, because thorns of contention are likely to spring up. Thus warned by the pledge they make to one another in the very words of this prayer: “Forgive us as we forgive” (Matt. 6:12), they may cleanse themselves of this kind of vice. At other celebrations, only the final part of this prayer is said aloud, that all may reply: “But deliver us from evil” (Matt. 6:13).

  “Each of us should have two pockets,” the rabbis teach. “In one should be the message, ‘I am dust and ashes,’ and in the other we should have written, ‘For me the universe was made.’”

  These ideas are clearly Benedict’s as well. Two things he does not want us to omit from our prayer lives are Psalm 67’s plea for continued blessing and Psalm 51’s need for continual forgiveness; a sense of God’s goodness and our brokenness; a sense of God’s greatness and our dependence; a sense of God’s grandeur and our fragility. Prayer, for Benedict, is obviously not a routine activity. It is a journey into life, its struggles and its glories. It is sometimes difficult to remember, when days are dull and the schedule is full, that God has known the depth of my emptiness but healed this broken self regardless, which, of course, is exactly why Benedict structures prayer around Psalm 67 and Psalm 51. Day after day after day.

  Then Benedict arranges the rest of the morning psalmody for the remainder of the week to remind us of the place God takes in human life. On Monday Benedict requires the saying of Psalms 5 and 36 to remind us at the beginning of every week that God is a God who “hears the voice” of those who “at daybreak lay their case” before the holy temple and who “maintains a faithful love.” On Tuesday he prescribes Psalms 43 and 57 to remind us in the weight of the day that God is our hope, our joy, our defense. On Wednesday he prescribes Psalms 64 and 65 to recall to us when we are tempted to give in to our lesser selves, out of fatigue, out of stress, out of the ennui of the week, that God does punish evildoers, those who “shoot at the innocent from cover,” and God does indeed “calm the turmoil of the seas.” On Thursday, as the week wears on, Benedict’s prayer structure assures us in Psalms 88 and 90 that distress is that part of life in which God is present in absence but that God “is our refuge” who each morning “fills us with faithful love” so that “we shall sing and be happy all our days.” On Saturday, at the end of the week, with new lessons learned and new problems solved and new deaths survived, Benedict puts Psalm 143 and the Canticle of Deuteronomy in our hearts.

  Moses reminds us by an excursion through history that God is “a trustworthy God who does no wrong.” Whatever has happened to us in these days has been for our good, too, we are very subtly instructed, so that we can pray Psalm 143 in confidence of the week to come: “Show me the road I must travel for you to relieve my heart.”

  Monastic morning prayer is not an idle ordering of psalms. It is a treatise on the monastic mind-set that is to characterize those who claim to be giving their lives to God.

  Finally, Benedict’s prayer form requires a realistic appraisal of community life. “The celebration…must never pass by without reciting the entire Prayer of Jesus at the end for all to hear, because thorns of contention are likely to spring up.” The Prayer of Jesus is designed to heal and cement and erase the pain and struggle of community life, of family life, of global life where we all live together at one another’s expense.

  Benedictine prayer is not an escape into a contrived or arcane life. It is prayer intended to impel us through the cold, hard, realities of life in the home, life in the community, life in the world, life with people whom we love enough to hate and whom we hate enough to dampen every other kind of love in us.

  CHAPTER 14

  THE CELEBRATION OF VIGILS ON THE ANNIVERSARIES OF SAINTS

  Feb. 17 – June 18 – Oct. 18

  On the feasts of saints, and indeed on all solemn festivals, the Sunday order of celebrations is followed, although the psalms, refrains, and readings proper to the day itself are said. The procedure, however, remains the same as indicated above.

  The meaning of this chapter is not so much in its content as in its existence. The fact that it is here at all in a document written when the identification of saints was largely a matter of public acclamation and their number far fewer than now says something about Benedict’s ideas both about church and the meaning of prayer. Benedict’s theology of prayer is as much attuned to the Communion of Saints, to our connectedness to those who have gone before us in the faith, to those who stand as sign to us that the Christian life is possible, as it is to the feasts that mark the Paschal Mystery of Christ.

  We all need heroes. We all need someone in our lives who brings courage. We all need to get to know how the Christian life looks at its
best, at its most difficult, at its most joyous.

  The lesson is that we must keep the human dimensions of the faith very much in mind and find in models from the past proof that daily chaos can be ordered and the ordinary transfigured for us, too.

  CHAPTER 15

  THE TIMES FOR SAYING ALLELUIA

  Feb. 18 – June 19 – Oct. 19

  From the holy feast of Easter until Pentecost, “Alleluia” is always said with both the psalms and the responsories. Every night from Pentecost until the beginning of Lent, it is said only with the last six psalms of Vigils. Vigils, Lauds, Prime, Terce, Sext, and None are said with “Alleluia” every Sunday except in Lent; at Vespers, however, a refrain is used. “Alleluia” is never said with responsories except from Easter to Pentecost.

  The Navahos wrote, “We felt like talking to the ground, we loved it so.” Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, “The earth laughs in flowers.” Benedict of Nursia wrote, say “Alleluia” always, no matter the time of day, no matter the season of life.

  The use of the Alleluia dates back to the earliest of liturgical formularies, both Jewish and Christian, as an endless chant of joy. In the Christian community it was an expression of praise and a foretaste of eternal gladness. “We are an Easter people,” Augustine wrote, “and Alleluia is our cry.”

  Benedict of Nursia did not originate the use of the Alleluia but one thing he did do was to extend its use to every day of the year except during Lent.

  The prescription is a telling one. To the Benedictine mind, life in all its long nights and weary days is something to be praised, death is the rivet of joy, there is no end to the positive. Even life in hot fields and drab offices and small houses is somehow one long happy thought when God is its center, and blessings, however rare, however scant, are blessed.

  CHAPTER 16

  THE CELEBRATION OF THE DIVINE OFFICE DURING THE DAY

  Feb. 19 – June 20 – Oct. 20

  The prophet says: “Seven times a day have I praised you” (Ps. 119:164). We will fulfill this sacred number of seven if we satisfy our obligations of service at Lauds, Prime, Terce, Sext, None, Vespers, and Compline, for it was of these hours during the day that it was said: “Seven times a day have I praised you” (Ps. 119:164). Concerning Vigils, the same prophet says: “At midnight I arose to give you praise” (Ps. 119:62). Therefore, we should “praise our Creator for just judgments” at these times: Lauds, Prime, Terce, Sext, None, Vespers, and Compline; and “Let us arise at night to give praise” (Ps. 119:164, 62).

  “Prayer is the service of the heart,” the Talmud says. Benedict clearly thought the same. In forming his communities in prayer, Benedict had two realities with which to deal. The first was the biblical injunction “to pray always,” around which the monastics of the desert had centered their lives. The second was the reality of community life itself: “We earn our bread by the toil of our hands,” the Rule says.

  The problem was that Benedict’s monks were not hermits who scratched their daily fare out of a dry desert, living on locusts and honey. They were not gyrovagues, wandering monks, who, to demonstrate their dependence on God, begged their way through life. Benedict’s monks were cenobites, community people with a family to support. They were each as responsible for their inexperienced young and worn-out elderly as they were for themselves. They were, in other words, just like us.

  To sanctify both situations Benedict instructs his communities to rise early in the night, as his culture allowed, to study and to pray and then, during the day, to recite brief, simple, scriptural prayers at regular intervals, easy enough to be recited and prayed even in the workplace, to wrench their minds from the mundane to the mystical, away from concentration on life’s petty particulars to attention on its transcendent meaning.

  Benedict scheduled prayer times during the day to coincide with the times of the changing of the Roman imperial guard. When the world was revering its secular rulers Benedict taught us to give our homage to God, the divine ruler of heaven and earth. There was to be no stopping at the obvious, at the lesser, for a Benedictine.

  The point is clear: there is to be no time, no thing, that absorbs us so much that we lose contact with the God of life; no stress so tension producing, no burden so complex, no work so exhausting that God is not our greatest agenda, our constant companion, our rest and our refuge. More, whatever other people worship, we are to keep our minds and hearts on God.

  CHAPTER 17

  THE NUMBER OF PSALMS TO BE SUNG AT THESE HOURS

  Feb. 20 – June 21 – Oct. 21

  We have already established the order for psalmody at Vigils and Lauds. Now let us arrange the remaining hours.

  Three psalms are to be said at Prime, each followed by Glory Be. The hymn for this hour is sung after the opening versicle, “God, come to my assistance” (Ps. 70:2), before the psalmody begins. One reading follows the three psalms, and the hour is concluded with a versicle, “Lord, have mercy,” and the dismissal.

  Prayer is celebrated in the same way at Terce, Sext, and None: that is, the opening verse, the hymn appropriate to each hour, three psalms, a reading with a versicle, “Lord, have mercy,” and the dismissal. If the community is rather large, refrains are used with the psalms; if it is smaller, the psalms are said without refrain.

  At Vespers the number of psalms should be limited to four, with refrain. After these psalms there follow: a reading and responsory, an Ambrosian hymn, a versicle, the Gospel Canticle, the litany, and, immediately before the dismissal, the Lord’s Prayer.

  Compline is limited to three psalms without refrain. After the psalmody comes the hymn for this hour, followed by a reading, a versicle, “Lord, have mercy,” a blessing, and the dismissal.

  Perhaps the most important point to be made about the structure of prayer during the day hours, during the periods of distraction and the times of work, is simply this. Even then, prayer is to be prayer, not a glancing thought, not a shrug or a gesture or a mindless moment of empty daydreaming. It is to be brief, yes. It is not, however, to be superficial. Benedict wants us to pray the psalms. His own monks, many of them illiterate and all of them without manuscripts, memorized the psalms of the day hours so that they could be prayed in the fields as well as in the prayer place.

  This chapter, consequently, of all the chapters in the Rule on prayer is a real challenge to a modern society. What psalm prayers can we say without reading? What prayers ring in our hearts? What do we think about when we’re not thinking about anything special? Do we ever simply stop the work we are doing during the day, look straight ahead, and pray? What memorized material does run through our minds and why do we memorize what we do but not our prayers?

  CHAPTER 18

  THE ORDER OF THE PSALMODY

  Feb. 21 – June 22 – Oct. 22

  Each of the day hours begins with the verse, “O God, come to my assistance; O God, make haste to help me” (Ps. 70:2), followed by the doxology and the appropriate hymn.

  Then, on Sunday at Prime, four sections of Psalm 119 are said. At the other hours, that is, at Terce, Sext, and None, three sections of this psalm are said. On Monday three psalms are said at Prime: Psalms 1, 2, and 6. At Prime each day thereafter until Sunday, three psalms are said in consecutive order as far as Psalm 20. Psalms 9 and 18 are each divided into two sections. In this way, Sunday Vigils can always begin with Psalm 21.

  The psalms for Prime and the day hours of the psalmody—Terce, Sext and None—are relatively ordinary. They simply recite Psalms 1–20 in order. But they do it with two major emphases. The first is the opening of the Office with the verse, “O God, come to my assistance,” the continuing reminder that even prayer is a gift from God.

  The second is to form a kind of drumbeat for the highlight of the next week, the Vigil of Sunday that opens always with Psalm 21, which stands as both warning and promise. It details the underlying truth of life: the monastic is to remember, however powerless they may feel, that no ruler is as powerful as God; no ruler deserves our praise as
does God; no ruler really rules anyone. However powerful particular rulers may seem, we know that in the end it is God who will prevail, it is God in whom we must put our trust.

  Feb. 22 – June 23 – Oct. 23

  On Monday at Terce, Sext, and None, the remaining nine sections of Psalm 119 are said, three sections at each hour. Psalm 119 is thus completed in two days, Sunday and Monday. On Tuesday, three psalms are said at each of the hours of Terce, Sext, and None. These are the nine Psalms 120–128. The same psalms are repeated at these hours daily up to Sunday. Likewise, the arrangement of hymns, readings, and versicles for these days remains the same. In this way, Psalm 119 will always begin on Sunday.

  The minor hours—Terce, Sext and None—are descants in the structure of Benedict’s daily office. They repeat the same messages over and over. Over and over, every day of their lives the monastic hears the same message: God delivers us, God is our refuge, God will save us from those who seek to destroy us, God will bring us home. The words are haunting: “When I am in trouble, I call to Yahweh and God answers me…”; “Pity us, Yahweh, take pity on us.…”; and finally, “What marvels indeed Yahweh did for us…for those who once sowing in tears now sing as they reap.”

  In the minor hours, the psalms carry us from hardship to joy, from inner captivity to liberation, from despair to trust. It is a message to us all that remembering to trust in God can be enough to carry us for a lifetime.