Time is a sacred commodity.
Every day is a sacred event.
One of the things that I have grown to appreciate about the
Church is her emphasis on liturgical
time.
An emphasis on liturgical time was something that was direly
lacking in my evangelical Protestant experience. Christmas and Easter were
elevated to a class of special status. We considered them seasons. They were,
in reality, more like weekend events that came and went.
Beyond these two notable events, the rest of the year was essentially
ordinary time with no real liturgical significance or directional flow that
encouraged or fostered cohesiveness and unification within the greater Body of
Christ.
It is not my intention to brandish a hot iron toward my
Protestant brothers and sisters. I am merely reflecting upon my own experience
as a former Protestant who, by the grace of God, was led home to the Catholic
Church.
Fixed times of daily prayer punctuated the day in the lives
of Christ’s followers in the infant church.
Fixed-hour praying is the oldest
form of Christian spiritual discipline. Fixed-hour praying has its roots in the
Judaism out of which Christianity came. When the psalmist sang, “Seven times a day I praise you for your
righteous ordinances.”[1],
he was referring to the fixed-hour praying that was common in ancient
Jewish life.
The Apostles and early disciples brought this practice of
“sanctifying time” into the Church as a normal and acceptable aspect of daily
Christian life.
The early Church fashioned their schedule of fixed-praying
around the daily work schedule of the Roman Empire. Bells rang at six in the
morning to announce the beginning of the work day. Bells sounded mid-morning for
break, at noon for lunch, again at three to re-commence trade, and at the close
of the work day at six. The addition of night and early morning prayers
completed the fixed-hour praying form of the early Church – a form of
fixed-hour praying that has survived the centuries and is still in practical
use today.
Saint Benedict, in his rule written in the early 6th
century, prescribed eight fixed-prayer hours for monks in monasteries to
follow: Matins or Vigils, Lauds, Prime, Terce, Sext, None, Vespers, and
Compline. Benedict’s monks prayed and worked. The focus has not changed.
Benedictine monks still pray and work under the tutelage of and in the spirit
of Saint Benedict.
I, as an Oblate of Saint Benedict, made a holy promise to
enter into and with, as best as my ability and station in life allows, the
prayer life of my spiritual fathers and brothers in the monastery. I have no
separate Rule to follow as an Oblate. The Rule of my Benedictine fathers and
brothers applies to me, as well. Life, as an Oblate living in the world, has variables
– some of them uncontrollable - that are not common within the cloister of the
monastery where schedules are much easier to keep. My fathers and brothers in
the monastery recognize and understand the differences.
I must admit that there have been times when the ordinary
things of life have rushed in on me to hinder me. There have been times when my
own will has exerted itself and hindered me in progressing in Benedict’s school of the Lord’s service. There have
also been times when I have allowed myself to get so involved in doing good works in the life of the Church
that the Benedictine balance of ora
and labora (prayer and work) was so
direly affected that I lost focus.
Living to the age of retirement from the labors of making a
living has afforded me a new world of opportunity where integrating and living the
ideals of Benedictine spirituality meets fewer “outside” challenges.
Time does not belong to us.
The Apostle Paul makes mention of time and says to the
Ephesian Church, “Look carefully then how
you walk, not as unwise men but as wise, making the most of the time, because
the days are evil.”[2]
Time is a sacred commodity that belongs to God. We enter
into time for a short while then pass from it. The onus is on me to do what I
have to do to consciously redeem time and use it as a tool that draws me closer
to God.
