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A Word From Our Associate . . .
Praying the Word& and Wordless Prayer
Last week I had the good fortune of spending five days on retreat at Blue Cloud Abbey in South Dakota. It is a Benedictine monastery with thirty-five monks, of which about half are brothers and the other half are also priests. It was a great experience for me, partly because I do enjoy praying so much. The monks have a regular routine of corporate prayer, which includes lauds (6:45am), daytimeprayer (12:00 noon--with Mass), vespers (6:00pm), and vigils (7:30pm). They gather in choir stalls in the church, facing each other across the aisle; and an organ leads the hymns and chants. All guests, including myself, were able to sit in the stalls next to the monks, and pray with them. The prayers were essentially composed of the Word of God (scripture): after a hymn, two Psalms and on Scriptural canticle are changed; then there is a reading from the bible, followed by a short response; petitions, the Our Father, a Gospel canticle and a closing prayer comprise the rest of the prayer. Almost in its entirety, is the prayer Scriptural. This is beautiful, because Scripture is alive! And with the words comes the Word. That is, accompanying the text is a powerful presence: Jesus, the Word made flesh. So also the Father, and the Holy Spirit, Whose Presence bring such delight to the monks.
"It is good to give thanks to the Lord,
to sing praises to your name, O Most High;
to declare your steadfast love in the morning,
and your faithfulness by night" (Psalm 92).
The Psalms are of great import in the Christian Tradition, offering a way to worship God, and capturing almost every Christian emotive and intellectual response to God possible: e.g., from a place of distress, comfort, consolation, desolation, abandonment, sorrow, humiliation, joy, fervent love, adoration, etc. So we can find great comfort in the fact that others have suffered and experienced similar circumstances to ours, and there is so much hope. The monks offer these prayers not only for themselves, but for the whole world. Thus, while they live in a monastery, set apart from the hustle and bustle of society, yet they are at the heart of the world, interceding for our greatest needs. I admire this type of calling, and long to emulate its spiritual discipline.
It is not an easy life, however. One of the greatest difficulties is facing oneself, i.e, the problem is ME! When you step out of the busyness of life, with all its distractions, you are left even more, with what is on the inside: fighting certain demons from within, and this battle is a major part of the monks journey towards sanctification. Deep in our hearts lie patterns of lust and greed and bitterness and pride and vainglory, and if this isn't apparent enough for me in daily life, it certainly was/is on a silent retreat. Resting in my cubicle I could get so frustrated that I had just spent the last half hour daydreaming about an almost ancient high school basketball game, in which of course I had to be the hero, making the winning shot, or a
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