Daily Reading for June 29 • The Seventh Sunday after Pentecost
Benedictine life is full of reminders that each monk is a sacrament of the presence of God to his brethren. The times of community prayer, for example, are a daily affirmation of the commitment of the community’s members one to another. Sheer physical presence—something that abbots always have to nag monks about—matters immensely. I remember being very struck as a novice by hearing of an abbot who told his community: “Fathers, please do try to fit the office into your timetables.” The comment might surprise those who have never lived as monks. But it can seem that by being in the choir for office we are achieving nothing, and—especially if we are not the world’s greatest singers—we might suppose that really we would accomplish more by being somewhere else. The school, the parish, the retreat house—anywhere.
There is, in fact, a vital significance in the community being physically together in the same place at the key moments of our lives. A former abbot of my own community used to say that attendance at office was the way each monk gave himself to the brethren. Certainly in common prayer the monk tries to give himself to God, but there is an important sense in which we are giving ourselves to one another in these times—supporting one another’s prayer, simply being there because presence matters. Monks go to God together, and are the vehicles of grace to one another, just as spouses are. The parallel is very far from exact, but there are common features. It was such an experience of the power of the presence of monks to one another that gave me the insight I needed to enter religious life.
From Crossing: Reclaiming the Landscape of Our Lives by Mark Barrett. Second edition. Copyright © 2002, 2008. Used by permission of Morehouse Publishing, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. www.morehousepublishing.com