Surely one of the greatest differences between life inside and outside the monastery is this: those who knock on the Abbey doors immediately find that they are no longer wishing they had a disciplined devotional life – they now have one! Rather than endlessly planning to spend more time in prayer and worship, regretting that they so seldom kept their spiritual trysts with God . . . the Abbey has become the “closet” where they meet with God continually.
When the garden needs to be planted in spring and apples need to be picked in the fall, those tasks must and will be accomplished between the hours of monastic devotion.
How might our days and our lives change if we would keep our devotional appointments each time, every time, that we can? That is to say, what would it be like never to miss an opportunity of worship or prayer that was stolen only by our own excuses, our willingness to be distracted, our love for things other than the nearness of God? Oh glorious monastery of the heart!
In heat and cold, when the body is bone tired, the Matins Office is still sung in the early morning hours inside the cloister. When the larks are singing and inviting the entire community to come out into the fresh air, Terce and Sext stay in place. The community arrives in the chapel on time for Vespers no matter how many things have been left undone during the day. Life is devotion, and work, sleep, meals and recreation must fit into it.
The sick and those who nurse them may escape the unending rhythm of the Office, but by all accounts, most nuns find their enforced absence from worship more difficult than illness. Their Divine Office, their monastic hours, are not to them a burden but a blessing.
The nuns pray every day, traditionally four to seven times each day, and many orders include a “watch” during the night. They worship with songs of joy and praise and thanksgiving continually. They spend free hours searching the Word of God, looking for ever greater depths of truth concerning the Lord’s love and majesty. While we do not have the hours they have, we have minutes that we can devote to God, if we will.
We cannot perfectly duplicate a Benedictine or Cistercian horarium in Cor Unum. Most of us are “servantless Americans,” and without a contingency of extern nuns to answer the telephone, do the shopping, and attend to our correspondence! We will be reminded again and again throughout the year . . . ours is the more difficult endeavor! So say monastics everywhere, but “oh well, never mind” will not suffice for us. We can walk with God!
We will have to start very small, and as we have seen, the small start which never looks back is always better than the grand plan that never moves forward. We may have to settle for very short intervals of devotion, especially at first, with a few longer periods of study and prayer, but this we know we can do, just as the Scripture admonishes: we can train our minds and hearts to “stay” upon God, and we will find His peace and Presence there.
“Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee. . . ” (Isaiah 26:3)
“Love Me Where You’re At”, Abbey photo
(title of a Francis Frangipane work)
Cor Unum Abbey 