The Rule of Benedict: A Spirituality for the 21st Century - Chapter 19 The Discipline of Psalmody
June 26, 2024
Today when reading from the Rule of Benedict, we are called to examine how and why we pray. Benedict quotes:
“Serve the Holy One with reverence” (Ps. 2:11), and again, “Sing praise wisely” (Ps. 47:8); and, “in the presence of the angels I will sing to you” (Ps. 138:1).
I find often my prayers tend toward recitation with little self-examination, thought or reverence. I fall into habit. How often are prayers truly a song of thanksgiving, a joyful noise, a reverent plea? I hide behind a mask of indifference and sloth rather than take the path of self-examination and of true and faithful prayer. It is easier to hide behind a mask and put on a performance than to actually form, build, live and honor the true relationship we are called to. The relationship which we are called is that of love. To Love our selves. To love our neighbor. To love our enemy. To love our Heavenly Father. We cannot honestly and fully live that which we are called until we drop the mask we may be hiding behind and know those we claim to love. Our prayers, our lives, should be a true, heartfelt, reverent song of love.
I believe that the below extract from: Chittister, Joan. The Rule of Benedict: A Spirituality for the 21st Century - Chapter 19 The Discipline of Psalmody, sums up this nicely.
Prayer in the Benedictine tradition, then, is not an exercise done for the sake of quantity or penance or the garnering of spiritual merit. Benedictine prayer is not an excursion into a prayer-wheel spirituality where more is better and recitation is more important than meaning. Prayer, in the spirit of these chapters, if we “sing praise wisely,” or well, or truly, becomes a furnace in which every act of our lives is submitted to the heat and purifying process of the smelter’s fire so that our minds and our hearts, our ideas and our lives, come to be in sync, so that we are what we say we are, so that the prayers that pass our lips change our lives, so that God’s presence becomes palpable to us. Prayer brings us to burn off the dross of what clings to our souls like mildew and sets us free for deeper, richer, truer lives in which we become what we seek.