What is so deeply rooted in our humanity that makes us attentive to rules that tell us what to do rather than how to be? How is obedience to commands to do something better understood than commands to be something. Is doing more concrete and being more abstract? When the multitude was convicted in their hearts that they had rejected The Christ, they asked Peter, “What shall we do?” He answered, “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins…”[1] Through their obedience of doing, they gained a condition of being. Obedience to the sacrament commanded by Christ, they received the Holy Spirit of God and gained relationship with Him. An ancient church teaching says, “Lex orandi, lex credendi, lex vivendi.” This literally means the way we pray is the way we believe and live. What we do shapes our being.
So, beginning with Chapter 8, Benedict shifts from rules that speak to our being, how we relate with one another, to the more concrete measures of doing specific things – prayer and reading Holy Scripture. This chapter and the eleven brief chapters that follow, describes one’s devotion to prayer and study. Prayer and study are two of the four pillars of Benedictine life. The other pillars are work and community, but work and community are shaped by each citizen’s discipline to prayer and study.
Benedict begins this section of doing prayer by setting a time to begin the day in prayer. Those early monks who walk the way of Benedict as they formed community with God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, as well as one another, rose early before sunrise to pray and study. In winter and early spring, the “eighth hour of the night” was 2am. That sounds oppressive to the modern ear, but Joan Chittister reminds us that sixth century life was very different. Without electricity, darkness followed sunset very quickly. Early monastics could sleep eight hours between 6pm and 2am. She also points out differences in our life patterns. We tend to remain active long after sunset, extending our days well into the night. They extended their days before sunrise by beginning their daily activities early to gain the greatest use of sunlight.[2] Bishop Terrell Glenn once shared, “early cultures practiced the Sabbath and rose up from their rest to work, but we fall exhausted to rest from our work.” Before dismissing this wisdom as semantics, consider this perspective as Lex Orandi. Words are able to powerfully shape our beliefs and lives.
There is strength in personal discipline of beginning the day with the day. As the rest of nature wakes from its nightly rest, we have the opportunity to prayerfully commune with our Father who creates, blesses, and desires to commune with us. The value in Benedict’s call to early morning prayer and study is discovered in our personal commitment to ordering our lives in prayer and study. Sr. Chittister offers three important points of prayer provided by St. Benedict that challenges the way many view prayers. First, just as he follows the chapter on humility with rules of prayer, prayer follows the humble. Second, prayer is shared in community, as well as in private. Third, prayers are scriptural, as well as personal. She eloquently concludes, “Prayer is, then, the natural response of people who know their place in the universe.
How do I follow the lesson of Chapter 8? I sacrifice that late night program or invitation and go to sleep so that I wake up before the sunrise, find a place where I can see, hear, and feel the dawning of a new day and begin the Liturgy of the Hours with Vigils. By centering myself in this way, I am strengthened to begin the new day from a place of rest.
[1] Acts 2:37-38.
[2] Chittister, Joan, A Spirituality for the 21st Century, New York, NY: Crossroads, 2016. pg. 102.
