An exploration of the monastic cycle of prayer by Brother Alcuin Reid OSB*

 Spending some time in a monastery can be quite an unusual, if not a very frustrating experience, for it can seem that as soon as one is immersed in some study or other work, or has become engrossed in a book, or is enjoying an important conversation, another bell rings, and all must be put aside in order to attend the next liturgical Office.

Surely there is a better way of organising the monastic day, which interrupts less?

No doubt there is. Indeed, some monastic or semi-monastic communities do just that, and schedule times of prayer at either end of the day so that they are free to pursue a particular apostolate without such interruptions. But that is not our way. The bell, the voice of God calling us to prayer, together, using the postures, texts, sounds and other symbols that the Church’s liturgical Tradition has entrusted to us, punctuates – no, permeates – our day. Why?

The history of the infant Church that is the Acts of the Apostles affords a part of the answer. There we read that following the Church’s rapid expansion at Pentecost the first Christians: Devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. And fear came upon every soul; and many wonders and signs were done through the apostles.

And all who believed were together and had all things in common; and they sold their possessions and goods and distributed them to all, as any had need. And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they partook of food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favour with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved. (Acts 2:42-47)

A liturgical faith

There are two observations to be made here. The first is that the elements of this primitive ordering of Christian life are the basic tenets of monastic life to this day. In saying this, one does not seek to devalue other ways of living the Christian life and its rich plurality of particular vocations. Rather, one is simply noting that in monasticism one meets something of the simplicity of the Apostolic Church .

The second observation, more specifically related to our topic, and which begins to answer our question, is that in this apostolic order of Christian life, Christians – all Christians and not one particular class or group of them – devoted themselves "to the breaking of bread and the prayers ... day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes.”

This is the reason for the punctuation of the monastic day with specific times of set, liturgical prayer (that official, communal prayer handed on from the Apostolic age and developed in Tradition). Liturgical prayer is of the very fabric of Christian life. You can’t embrace Christianity fully without embracing liturgical prayer.

If we consider that the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is the apotheosis of liturgical prayer, and remember that the sacraments are themselves all celebrated in liturgical rites, then this fact seems obvious enough. But it is not. It’s possible never to miss Mass on Sundays, or even to assist at it daily, and to have frequent recourse to the other sacraments, whilst maintaining habits of prayer that have little if anything to do with the Liturgy.

We can be very busy about spiritual matters, and fulfil the precepts of the Church faithfully, whilst missing out on the very spiritual nourishment that the Church intends us to receive.

What, then, is the problem? What dichotomy exists between the liturgical prayer of the Church’s Tradition and the spiritual practices of so many? To answer this question we must first explore in more detail what liturgical prayer in fact is. Then we must consider some history, ancient and modern.

Firstly, quite simply liturgical prayer is praying the Liturgy. That might sound a little too obvious, particularly in an age where vernacular tongues wag incessantly in most Catholic churches, supposedly rendering all liturgical rites rather straightforwardly intelligible (and, purportedly, therefore more open to participation). But no so! How many people attend with mind and heart to, let alone are nourished by, the rites and texts, the sights and sounds of the liturgical celebrations at which they are present?

Admittedly some certainly do. But many - too many – people are oblivious to the riches set before them in the Liturgy.

Distraction, boredom, anger at liturgical abuses, or even otherwise praiseworthy acts of piety, can all prevent us from praying the Liturgy.

Sign of Incarnation

Secondly, we must be clear that liturgical prayer is prayer of the mind and of the heart, it is prayer of the soul and of the body, for Christianity is an incarnational faith, not a cerebral, spiritualist religion. Hence the Liturgy uses bread, wine, water, oil, wax, palms, ashes, incense, gilt vessels, fine cloth and embroidery, prose, poetry and beautiful music, uplifting architecture, indeed all manner of man’s noble crafts, to express our love and worship for God, and to sustain our fleshly selves in that attitude of love and worship for God that is itself the Christian life. To pray the Liturgy we must allow these earthly things to carry us heavenward, and not be hesitant to accept that the inspiration, the exhilaration, the delight, and the whole range of other thoughts and emotions that arise within us when we glimpse the Beauty and Transcendence of Almighty God in liturgical celebrations is, in fact, nothing less than prayer.

Of course, it’s rather difficult to pray thus when Father Average hurries through Mass in his new ‘worship centre,’ wearing a mini-alb and coloured scarf, whilst looking at his watch in disdain at the length of the (trite) songs (badly) sung by the guitar strumming group who have sung incessantly in the parish since 1976. But that is another problem! Liturgical prayer is also allowing the Liturgy to inform (direct) one’s Christian life. This means living and praying according to its seasons and its feasts. It means fasting and feasting at the appropriate times of the liturgical year.

Lent should be difficult. Easter should be sublime. Pentecost, and Christmas should be prepared for spiritually and celebrated thoroughly.

Allowing the Liturgy to inform one’s Christian life also means following the Liturgical times of prayer each day, which our bell so faithfully announces: morning, noon , evening and night. Now that is not to say that every Christian ought drop the God-given obligations of their particular state of life or of their vocation, or even the responsibilities of their employment, at certain times of the day regardless of the gravity pertaining to those obligations and responsibilities in the particular circumstances in which they find themselves. We would be rightly peeved if our dentist or surgeon or taxi driver abandoned us at the sound of a bell in order to pray without regard to the implications of so doing.

Yet, even here, devout Islamic lay people put us to shame in their observance of their traditional times of prayer amidst the demands of modern life. And if we do not have a habit of praying at these times, frankly, we should.

One problem with liturgical prayer – to consider an aspect of modern history first – is that if one attempted to nourish oneself on the rites and texts, the sights and sounds of many contemporary liturgical celebrations one would suffer spiritual food poisoning! Father Average is not likely to offer a rich liturgical fare. Indeed, what he offers may be thoroughly off. In this day and age, it is sadly true that the baptismal right of the faithful to the Catholic Liturgy celebrated faithfully is frequently denied.

The bane of necessity ...

Part of the reason for this (leaving aside the enormous questions that can be raised over the production and translation of the new liturgical books following the Second Vatican Council), is the cancer of liturgical minimalism. In how many churches is the Liturgy celebrated as fully and as beautifully as possible, at least on Sundays and Solemnities? The answer, in contemporary Western Catholicism, is: pitifully few. (An error the Eastern Churches have almost completely avoided.) This minimalism is, perhaps, partly due to history. Recusant English Catholics and persecuted Irish Catholics had little chance to celebrate the Liturgy as fully and as beautifully as possible – ever. And the possibility of the public celebration of the other liturgical Offices was negligible. Such vicissitudes of persecution and the contingencies of missionary life in new lands underlined the popular doctrinal definition that "it’s the Mass that matters," where by "the Mass" is meant low Mass muttered quickly.

All perfectly understandable, valid, and indeed heroic and saintly and held to the point of martyrdom at times. But necessity ought not determine the norm, and until the norm that the Liturgy as handed on to us in Tradition (and here I am by no means excluding its appropriate, organic, development), is to be celebrated as fully and as beautifully as possible is accepted and implemented by laity and by clergy alike, this problem will remain. Such a change of attitude and of expectation, such a raising of standards, is fundamental. We may feel ourselves quite powerless to effect such a change, but this ought not diminish our expectation, for God’s Providence has its ways which often we cannot see.

… and of devotionalism

Another problem is that, historically, liturgical prayer became smothered by other types of prayer, good in themselves, but intrinsically private and subjective (as opposed to the communal and objective nature of the Liturgy), and frequently unrelated to the Liturgy being celebrated.

Hence one could have the non-sense of someone devoutly following the Stations of the Cross in their prayer book whilst the Mass of Pentecost was being celebrated. The pious person could be doing much worse, certainly, but they could also be doing much better (as a glance at the sublime texts of the Mass of Pentecost would demonstrate).

At this point it is appropriate to make some principles clear with regard to the relationship between the Liturgy and the various devotional practices found in the Church. The first principle is that the Liturgy has absolute priority over devotions. Hence, it is an inversion of the proper order of things to be disregarding the rites and texts of the celebration of the Mass because I’ve got some other prayers to say or to finish. Don’t misunderstand me: other prayers are fine, but they are not the prayer of the Church. I am not obliged under pain of mortal sin to say certain prayers, but I am thus obliged to be present at Sunday Mass, as religious and clergy are bound to celebrate the Divine Office.

The second principle is that the Liturgy should inform my private prayer.

Here, I should like to suggest that we depart from the concept of prayer as saying words or reciting texts and revisit what I said above: the inspiration, the exhilaration, the delight and the whole range of thoughts and emotions that we meet when we glimpse the Beauty and Transcendence of Almighty God in the Sacred Liturgy, is in fact prayer. Mere words ought to fall away – as they do between those in love. This, of course, is what we mean by contemplation, and the Liturgy is essentially and primarily a loving contemplation of what Almighty God has done and continues to do for us.

Spring of contemplation

And so, if the Liturgy is to inform my private prayers, I ought have the means for it to do so. Practically speaking, a missal or an office book is very useful here to preview, follow or revisit the treasury of Tradition that is the texts of the Liturgy. The Liturgy is, however, an extremely rich treasury, and we ought not make the mistake of trying to take in too much too quickly. But quietly going over one or other of the readings from Sacred Scripture, or one of the different liturgical prayers, before and/or after Mass, and throughout the day, will yield a rich spiritual harvest. The Mass collect (or opening prayer) is often a rich distillation of the meaning of a feast or of a day in a particular liturgical season. Pondering a psalm, an antiphon or other text from the Office that seems to have a particular impact upon me, will prove similarly profitable. Doing this quietly is important, because busying oneself with studying such texts risks stifling the activity of the Holy Spirit within us, as does getting on with other, unrelated prayers that I feel I ought to be saying.

The Holy Spirit needs to be allowed the space in which to penetrate our minds and hearts. Creating this space might well mean leaving some prayers to which we have become accustomed unsaid. We ought not to scruple at this. Private, devotional prayers, howsoever good, are extras. If there is room for favourite prayers or devotions, that is good. If there is not, then our priority is to the Church’s prayer – the Sacred Liturgy.

In those extraordinary times following the Second Vatican Council  

some priests afforded their congregations the disgraceful spectacle of denouncing the Rosary and other private devotions from the pulpit, insisting that the people must henceforth "participate" in the Liturgy.

Their zeal was indeed scandalous and intemperate. Yet, at the time, there was a need – which exists still – to remind people that it is the Liturgy which is the prayer of the Church – indeed as the title of our recently published book† states, the Liturgy is the life of the Church – and that it is to the Sacred Liturgy that we must turn and return for sound spiritual sustenance.

The bell tolls

To recall to our bell, and its "interruption" of our various daily pursuits: its sound is not an "interruption," but a call. It is a call to observe the proper order inherent in the life of the Christian. It is a call to punctuate each day with the contemplation of the mysteries of our Salvation in Christ, by praise and supplication for ourselves, for the Church, and for the world, howsoever brief. If we can respond to the bell by being present at Mass or one of the other liturgical Offices, we can do no better. But if that is not possible, the bell ought at least to remind us to lift up our minds and hearts to God and at least to renew our consciousness of these mysteries (which is, of course, the very purpose and origin of such excellent but nevertheless substitute prayers as the Rosary and the Angelus). Only with such regular and regulated spiritual sustenance, can a healthy Christian life be lived fully, and enjoyed, according to our different vocations and states in life.

*Brother Alcuin Reid is a member of the Community of the Benedictine Abbey of Saint Michael, Farnborough , England , and holds a Doctorate in Philosophy from the University of London.

† Lambert Beaudin OSB, "Liturgy the Life of the Church," St Michael’s Abbey Press, Farnborough, 2002

Return to Oriens, Summer, 2003-4

Return to Oriens home page