A Prayerful Rhythm

Learning the Wisdom of Benedictine Prayer

In June, I traveled with my contemplative practice community to St. John’s Abbey, a Benedictine monastery in Collegeville, Minnesota. A concrete, spaceship-like structure greeted my carpool friends and me as we made our way to the Guesthouse. Built in the liturgically innovative days of Vatican II, this enormous building serves as the Abbey Church. Every day, three times a day, we meandered by the sidewalk from the Guesthouse to the Church for prayer. We joined the Benedictines in their prayerful rhythm of the “divine office.”

Image: picture taken of St. John’s Abbey Church from across the nearby lake.

The divine office is a prayer rhythm practiced in the Catholic Church at fixed times, from the earliest dark morning hours to evening. I’ve learned about this practice through monastic orders following the Rule of St. Benedict. St. Benedict of Nursia, active in the late 5^th and early 6^th centuries, is nicknamed the “father of Western Monasticism” because he wrote a “Rule” or book of guidelines to shape collective monastic life. One of the practices Benedict recommends for communities is the praying of Psalms. The Rule of St. Benedict prescribes Psalm recitation eight times per day. Benedict didn’t originate this practice—people like the desert fathers and mothers in fifth-century Egypt had long been continuously praying Psalms throughout the day. But Benedict codified the practice by writing it down.

Different followers of Benedict have various ways of applying the Rule to their lives. The Trappists (or Cistercians) follow the Rule of Benedict strictly, rising not a little before dawn for “Matins” and following the rhythm typically six further times throughout the day, from the short and sweet midday “Sext” to evening “Vespers” and before-bed “Compline.” But St. John’s Abbey is not Trappist; it’s “Benedictine,” which means that, like the Trappists, they follow the Rule of St. Benedict, just with a touch less severity. No 3:30 am prayers, for example. The monks at St. John’s Abbey, busy leading and teaching at the adjacent college as they do, held morning, midday, and evening prayer, with a daily mass in the afternoon.   

At a Trappist monastery that I visited a couple of years ago, I rose at 3:15 am to stumble, bleary-eyed and uncaffeinated to Matins. There’s something about the ridiculousness of such a morning hour for prayer that appeals to me. No one should be up at that time! But there the monks were day after day keeping the prayer in rhythm and tune. I tried to follow seven fixed prayer times once on a solo retreat, but it was not the same. I woke at 3:30 am, chanted Psalms, rolled out my yoga mat for sun salutations, and started the day. But at the end of my experiment, I realized the obvious: it’s fun to try out different prayer rhythms and practices on a retreat, but praying all seven offices is manifestly impossible for someone with a life structured like mine. The “divine office” hours are created for a sustained communal prayer rhythm, not the overly zealous commitment of an individual. Plus, monks don’t have to put children to sleep at night.

The monks at St. John’s Abbey kept the Psalm-praying tempo slow. They took an elongated pause after each Psalm line; if you weren’t paying attention, you might barrel forward and find your voice out of sync with the unhurried rhythm—that awkward moment many churchgoers are familiar with when someone’s singing jerks ahead. The guest house master, eager to support our efforts, helped us ensure we could find our way through various books of canticles and the like. I looked forward to prayer every time. After praying with the monks in this way for about four days, I began to feel that I was genuinely joining their rhythm. The prayer hour became a reliable invitation to center myself in God’s presence. I didn’t have to do anything, feel anything, or exert effort. The prayer services were just there for me, and the Psalms were there for me, regardless of how I felt or what was taking place that day.  

I find the rhythm of the “divine office” grounding. On regular days, I pray a morning and evening prayer, serving the same purpose of creating set-apart times each day that I can look forward to time with God. They sandwich my day so that my work and busyness are caught up in a larger rhythm that churches and monastics keep. None of us pray alone. We pray with living saints and we pray with the ancestors or “cloud of witnesses.” Of course, the essence of prayer is not saying words to God, reciting Scripture, or attending a liturgy. As renegade theologian Matthew Fox says, prayer is a “radical response to life” itself. But the fixed hours of praying help me pray by quickening my response to life.

Image: the view of the altar from the choir pews at St. John’s Abbey, Collegeville, Minnesota.

If you’ve been praying the hours for years, I’d love to hear in the comments what you’ve found helpful to incorporate in your daily life. What prayer books do you recommend for others? And if you’ve never prayed the hours, I’d recommend starting with at least a morning or an evening prayer. Using the Book of Common Prayer is probably the easiest; my favorite is “The People’s Companion to the Breviary.” There’s a reason that God-seekers have been chanting Psalms for hundreds of years. It focuses the vicissitudes of the mind and heart on what we really desire, which is the Loving Presence who desires us.

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