Benedictine Spirituality: Morning Session
Three weeks ago we looked at ways that early Christians, especially the Desert Fathers, responded to Paul’s call to us to ‘pray without ceasing’. Today we will look specifically at how St Benedict picked up on these ancient traditions in his rule for monastic life. There will be some repetition of material that I shared before but I see no harm in that. Repetition is a big part of Benedictine life, a way for words and concepts to go deeper. So I make no apology for repeating myself.
Of course there is a huge distance in time, ways of living, thinking and being between us and St Benedict so we have to take care when we look at his rule. I am not a scholar of the Rule but having read it repeatedly and tried to live a life inspired by it, today I would like to bring my own experience into dialogue with the Rule. I hope this may help you to reflect on whether the Rule has something to say to you too.
I won’t spend much time on things you can read in books but just to give you a little context for Saint Benedict. He founded his monasteries in the early 6th century in Italy at a time when the Roman Empire was falling apart. It was a violent time and his monasteries provided places of stability and order in the midst of disorder.
What we know of Benedict’s life is recorded in the ‘Dialogues’ of St Gregory the Great who in the late 6th century made a record of the saints of Italy, including Benedict. In brief, the Dialogues tell us that Benedict dropped out of his studies in Rome in disgust at the worldly life of the city. He went out to live in a cave to seek God in solitude and gradually others were drawn to him, leading him to found a number of monasteries.
He developed a rule for his monasteries, based on other rules that were around at the time, adapting them to provide a humane and moderate pattern of ascetical life. The wisdom embodied in his rule has enabled it to withstand the test of time and it still provides us with inspiration for community life today.
He was providing a structure for a life founded in the Gospel, seeking the purity of heart that leads to the vision of God. He drew on the wisdom of the Desert Fathers and particularly on the writings of John Cassian who spent time with the monks in the Egyptian desert. Cassian ended up in Marseilles where he founded the Abbey of St Victor in the early 5th Century and provided a model for later developments of monasticism in the western church.
At the end of his Rule Benedict points us to Cassian’s Institutes and Conferences to learn more. So Benedictine life as handed down over the centuries provides a living link back to the prayer of the desert that I spoke about three weeks ago.
There are many themes we could explore in the Rule of St Benedict but as our topic today is Benedictine Spirituality I decided we would look at what Benedict teaches us about prayer.
When I first turned to the Rule, a long time ago now, for inspiration for my prayer life I was rather perplexed. So much of it seemed to be about practical arrangements for sleeping, the length of one’s clothing and so on. There is also ascetical teaching about keeping silent, not laughing too much and love of fasting and discipline.
I struggled to connect this with the techniques of prayer I was looking for. I don’t know about you but I was looking for magic answers as to how to pray and maybe yet another technique would give me what I wanted.
Many years later, having lived by the Rule in community for some time now I can see the subtlety of what is going on – the whole Rule is shot through with prayer, how we live is how we pray, and how we pray is how we live. They are inseparable. The Rule lays out a way of life within which prayer happens. Prayer is a gift of God not something I do by finding some magic technique and prayer is given when we place ourselves where God can find us.
John Climacus, who was writing about a hundred years later than Benedict, wrote that ‘Prayer is God’s gift to him who prays’.
That’s not to say techniques are irrelevant, they can indeed be very helpful as I have found, but ultimately our prayer needs to be grounded in a whole way of life that is oriented to God.
And Benedict’s Rule provides a framework for such a life as it was lived out by young men living in the 6th Century. Even given that historical distance it is amazing what wisdom we can still find in that Rule for living together as a Christian community that has prayer at its heart.
To understand prayer in the Rule of St Benedict it is helpful to look back to Jesus’ own teaching and also the earliest Christians and how they prayed. So I will recap some of what we looked at three weeks ago.
Jesus’ own teaching on prayer is very simple – he gives us what we know as the Lord’s prayer and also exhorts us to avoid ostentatious display when praying. It is interesting to hold that together with Chap 20 of the Rule, on ‘Reverence in prayer’ which is in one of the handouts:
Whenever we want to ask some favour of a powerful man, we do it humbly and respectfully, for fear of presumption. How much more important, then, to lay our petitions before the Lord God of all things with the utmost humility and sincere devotion. We must know that God regards our purity of heart and tears of compunction, not our many words. Prayer should therefore be short and pure, unless perhaps it is prolonged under the inspiration of divine grace. In community, however, prayer should always be brief; and when the superior gives the signal, all should rise together.
The simplicity that Benedict encourages echoes the simplicity and brevity of the Lord’s prayer. We humbly ask for our needs to be met and for forgiveness of our sins. Another gospel echo is the tears of compunction that follow the example of the tax collector who could not raise his eyes to heaven but could only pray for mercy for his sins. We see this again in Chap 52 on how we should behave in the oratory, when we are exhorted to pray with tears and heartfelt devotion. This simplicity and humility of prayer is very much in the tradition of the Desert that we were looking at last time I was with you.
Something that is very notable in the Rule is the emphasis given to liturgical prayer at particular times. It is a central feature of any form of Benedictine life and a significant part of the Rule lays out Benedict’s scheme for praying psalms and hymns at these hours of prayer.
Christians inherited the rhythm of the Jewish Temple prayers at certain hours as we read in the Acts of the Apostles chapter 3 (Acts 3:1) although there is no indication that Jesus followed this pattern. He didn’t leave us any set order. For Christians this praying at certain hours has always been held in tension with the teaching that we should pray without ceasing, for example as St Paul urged in 1 Thess 5 (v 17).
Early Christians explored various answers to the question of how to pray without ceasing – some refused to work because it meant that they could not pray all their waking hours.
There were also communities who prayed in relays and we see that even today in communities devoted to continual adoration of the Blessed Sacrament – whenever you go to the chapel there will be a brother or sister there praying whatever the hour of day or night. It is a very powerful witness to the continual prayer of the church but it doesn’t necessarily help the individual towards continual prayer.
The desert mothers and fathers were known for their continual praying of psalms whilst they worked, and perhaps this is moving closer to uninterrupted prayer. Gradually an understanding developed of interior prayer, a state of prayer that was continual whatever one was doing but that did not involve ‘saying prayers’ all the time.
The monastic way draws together these various responses to the biblical call to uninterrupted prayer in a life that provides a regular pattern of prayer that supports the development of a state of continual interior prayer. As I have heard said, you can pray whatever you are doing but if you never specifically focus on prayer from time to time you will soon find that you are not praying at all at any time.
As in a good marriage there need to be times when you are simply together enjoying one another and sharing what is on your heart. Our relationship with God is nurtured by times specially set apart for prayer.
In the Rule the call to prayer at set hours takes priority over everything else – as we see in Chapter 43 on Tardiness at the work of God or at table:
On hearing the signal for an hour of the divine office, the monk will immediately set aside what he has in hand and go with utmost speed, yet with gravity and without giving occasion for frivolity, Indeed, nothing is to be preferred to the Work of God.
‘Nothing is to be preferred to the Work of God’ is a key phrase for monastics, and as a monastic I have committed myself to this in the whole structure of my daily life. The bell rings, I must go, unless I am engaged in a matter of life or death – which of course does happen, especially in an elderly community. But our corporate offices are not lightly to be skipped over. There is a rhythm of liturgical prayer that provides the framework for our life together and we are all present together for this prayer as far as possible.
This corporate prayer is a way that we support one another. If I am feeling down and disconnected from prayer I know that others will be feeling quite differently and can carry me through.
When we can find no words the words we are given in the offices can speak for us, and for all those for whom we pray. To pray together we need a structure, hence the amount of space that the Rule gives to laying out the pattern for the offices. This gives a robust scaffolding for our lives and keeps prayer at the centre with everything else revolving around it.
But there is also space for personal prayer in whatever form we are called to, provided we are sensitive to others in the way we pray. In chap 52 of the Rule, on the Oratory of the Monastery we read:
The oratory ought to be what it is called, and nothing else is to be done or stored there. After the Work of God, all should leave in complete silence and with reverence for God, so that a brother who may wish to pray alone will not be disturbed by the insensitivity of another. Moreover, if at other times someone chooses to pray privately, he may simply go in and pray, not in a loud voice, but with tears and heartfelt devotion. Accordingly, anyone who does not pray in this manner is not to remain in the oratory after the Work of God, as we have said; then he will not interfere with anyone else.
Although Benedict is writing about the physical Oratory where we gather for prayer, the tradition also sees this as referring to the Oratory of our own hearts, the ‘inner room’ that Jesus talks of where we go for prayer – nothing else should be done or stored there. That is quite a challenge! How much that is not of God are we storing in our hearts?
Purifying our hearts through prayer and a disciplined life open to the needs of those around us are central for a monastic – the more we can purify our hearts of things that are not of God the more easily we can be people through whom God’s love can shine. We hope that over time we become people who create a loving and peaceful atmosphere around ourselves that brings blessing to others.
There is a virtuous circle where consciously seeking to serve those with whom we live and the guests who come to us helps us to set aside self and be open to Christ wherever he is to be found. The more we are open to Christ’s presence and the more we are formed into the likeness of Christ, the less self-conscious we become in our service of others. So we grow more and more into living the Gospel from the depths of our being.
As I’ve said the Rule of St Benedict does not give many clues as to what form personal prayer should take beyond simplicity and heart-felt devotion. But there are some interesting vignettes of Benedict at prayer in the Dialogues of St Gregory which reveal the link back to the prayer of the Desert Fathers that I spoke about last time.
Long before the night office began, the man of God was standing at his window, where he watched and prayed while the rest were asleep… he suddenly beheld a flood of light shining down from above more brilliant than the sun… the whole world was gathered up before his eyes in what appeared to be a single ray of light.
Here is Benedict standing at prayer as the Desert Fathers did too. There is another lovely example in the description of his death:
[On the day he died] he had his disciples carry him into the chapel, where he received the Body and Blood of our Lord to gain strength for his approaching end. Then supporting his weakened body on the arms of his brethren, he stood with his hands raised to heaven and as he prayed he breathed his last.
For Benedict as for faithful people going back to earliest times in the Biblical tradition to pray was to stand with hands outstretched to God. You may recall the story of Moses praying during a battle with the Amalekites in Exodus 17. When he held his hands up the battle went in favour of the Israelites and when his arms tired and dropped then it went the other way. In the end Aaron and Hur had to support his arms so that he could continue to pray. We can see for Benedict too that to stand in prayer with hands raised to heaven was so important that his brethren supported him.
It is a sad loss in the Western Church that we have lost this habit of standing for prayer, and indeed even kneeling is less common now. I have found that engaging my body in traditional postures and gestures has been a powerful way of deepening my prayer. My whole being comes to be involved in the prayer, not just my mind. Free expressive movement can also be very powerful but I think that traditional postures and gestures carry a particular spiritual energy that link you with the whole company of saints who have gone before. Those who have been to other quiet days with me will realise that sharing this is a particular passion of mine!
It’s now time for me to stop talking about prayer and for us to take some time to pray together. I have decided to repeat the prayer exercise that we did at my previous day as it is a practice that bears repeating. It embodies the form of prayer that I have just been talking about.
In this prayer exercise we will embody the prayer ‘Lord have mercy’ by standing with outstretched hands.
This brief prayer has been part of Christian tradition since earliest days.
Benedict expresses a similar sentiment in the short prayer he suggests for the opening of offices: ‘O God, make speed to save us; O Lord, make haste to help us.’
Such simple prayers can be very helpful when we feel overwhelmed and don’t know what to pray. We can simply pray ‘Lord have mercy’ or ‘O Lord, help us’.
We will do this now whilst I give guidance and explanation to familiarise you but I will keep it fairly short. When we go to the church later I will give more time for us to share this prayer in silence.
We will start our time of prayer standing up but please only stay standing for as long as is comfortable. If you wish to remain sitting throughout that is fine. Please don’t do anything that you find uncomfortable.
We will start with a simple awareness exercise that helps to awaken a whole-body awareness. I feel that doing such an explicit awareness exercise is helpful for we modern people because we have been thoroughly educated into living in our heads. I suspect it was all much more natural for the early Christians.
After this I will then lead you into the time of prayer, which will last no more than 5 minutes and then I will end it by singing the Kyrie Eleison from our office.
In my own prayer times I like to mark the transition into sacred space by making the sign of the cross. There are various words that you can attach to this but I like to use those that open our Sunday litany… in the power of the spirit, in union with Christ let us pray to the Father.
[see handout Prayer Practice: "Lord have mercy"]
Mother Anne Clarke, Abbess OSB, Malling Abbey
© The Benedictine Community at Malling Abbey 2026