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      Mt. Marty College—noon  lunch lecture—11/4/03 
S. Ann Kessler

The former abbot of the great monastery of Ampleforth in England, Patrick Barry, reflecting  on Chapter 48 of the Rule states that during Benedict’s 6^th century, For the Romans, each day [from dawn to dusk] and each night [from dusk to dawn] was divided into twelve hours.  The actual length of these ‘hours’ varied according to the season; in summer they were longer during the day and shorter  at night, but in winter they were shorter during the day and longer at night.  Only at the two equinoxes did the actual length of the hours even out. Timekeeping, therefore, called for a special expertise and        flexibility.” ( Benedictine Handbook, Collegeville: Liturgical Press,2003, p.  70.)

There were no watches, clocks as we know them those days.  Sundials, hour glasses of various sorts (sand, water etc), cocks crowing—or the course of the stars had to suffice.  The one delegated by the  superior to ring the bell had to be an expert at division as, e. g. if  the sun rose at what we call 5 a. m. and set at what we know now as 9 p. m. the day hours could be 90 minutes in length  and  the night hours 9-5  (only 8, not 16)—would mean much shorter time—anywhere from 40-50 minutes long, or less.

Cassian, the famous monastic founder who preceded Benedict by a century, a man who spent much time in Egypt and Palestine before founding monasteries in Marseilles, France, and from whom Benedict borrows a great deal, mentions that the one who wakes others for vigils should do so by the course of the stars.  How did they watch the stars and sleep at the same time?  Maybe they had a night watch-monk who had charge of alerting the sleepy-head who was to ring the bells for the Night Office –sometime, depending on the length of the night—between one and four a. m.? At one point in his Rule, Cassian  ( Bk III Chap 8) says that because of the long winter nights the monks might go back to sleep after Vigils  until the  4^th cock-crowing. Monastics had regulated hours centuries before Benedict, and moderns didn’t invent daylight saving time—that was a given already a couple thousand years ago.

So how did the daily monastic schedule integrate the Liturgy of  the Hours (Divine Office, Work of God) – the “ora”  monastic prayer and the “labora” the work, the monks’ and nuns’ ministry with the other components—lectio--  holy reading, and the need to eat and sleep?  “Seven times a day have I praised you” is a phrase that occurs often in the Old and New Testatments.  Some of  the  Hebrews and the most ancient as well as modern monastics, the early Church as a whole—regulated the day around seven specific so-called “hours” of prayer—comprised of  hymns, psalms, excerpts from the Old, then New Testatment, and readings of various lengths. And there was a  Night Office, also known at different times by different writers  as Vigils or (later) Matutina—in (Latin)  Matines  –“morning” –anytime between one and three hours after midnight.  Cassian kept his monks and nuns a long time at what he called “Nocturnes.”  He presecribed 12 psalms for that Night Office and also for Vespers. Three are usually found at most of the Morning and Evening Prayers  nowdays.

The Day Hours, as indicted by St. Benedict,  were as follows:

Lauds (Praise)---  Benedict’s Latin—also “matutino”  (chap. 16). prayed before 1^st hr) often after a short break following Vigils—the Night Office. Some Rules allowed the monastics to get another hour or two of sleep before Lauds.   Cassian is most confusing in labeling—uses the word “Matins” for Lauds and Prime.

Prime    First “hour” varied according to sunrise—definitely at dawn!  usually followed by Lectio –to which Benedict allots several hours daily,

Terce    Third hour—depending on sunlight, probably most between 8-10 a. m. It is surmised that if there were a daily communion—reserved from the Sunday liturgy, it would be at Terce—however Benedict and Cassian mention Mass and communion only in reference to Sundays.  No early Rule writer mentions any breakfast—food or drink.  

Sext   Sixth hour—usually followed by meal if two meals “in season”  and a siesta—about  an hour.

None  Ninth hour—might be between 2-4 p. m. more or less  (Usually prayed in 8^th hr—scheduled after the siesta and allowed more time for doing assigned tasks before Vespers. 

Vespers   Prayerd just before final or one meal of the day—depending on dusk 

Compline   After meal and sunset so from memory.  Cassian just mentions a psalm being    recited after the evening meal—and does not name a Compline as Benedict does.

 Sundays  -- Mass, lectio, the Hours, and no work except those with in-house tasks—   cooking, serving, care of the sick etc. The Eastern Rules often had Saturday as a festival day with Mass and freedom from work as well as Sunday.

After 1938 in our monastery after the full Latin Monastic Breviary was adopted replacing earlier shorter Offices of St. Gertrude and of the Blessed Mother the day began at  4:45 a. m. (6:00 on Sundays!)  Lauds at 5:15 followed by lectio,  Prime, Mass, Terce and Sext then breakfast.   None  was at 11:50, then lunch and Vespers varied—12:45 or 5 p. m.  Compline 7:45 followed by Matins—also known as the Night Office, Vigils—Nocturnes.

In 2003 –Morning Praise is now  at 6:30 (merging Lauds, Prime, Terce and Sext.  Daily Mass is at  7:00, Vespers at 5:15, Compline  after the evening meal.  No late night Office.  Saturdays and Sundays vary—Morning Praise usually at 8:30, Mass Sundays  at 10:00. Vespers at 7:00. p. m.

Some monks’  monasteries  and often those of cloistered nuns still keep Vigils at early hours—between 3 and 5 a.m. But, as we mentioned above, someone had to  ring the bells for the Night Office which could even be as early as 1 or 2  a. m. Actually, when  you or the younger or older generations sang a certain brief ditty—sometimes in the round, from the Golden Song Book—a translation from an original French composition, unknown to the singers generally was the fact that you  and they were actually performing a  “monastic musical.”

The English version is a mistranslation. Brother (Frère) Jacques (John or James) is being awakened not to the sound of the morning bells “Morning bells are ringing” but to sound, to ring the morning bells (“sonnez les matines”) for the Night Office—matins. Brother John is the delegated waker of the others but is still sleeping.  So he is asked “dormez-vous”?  --are you sleeping?   Obviously Brother John was of higher rank than the one who was trying to wake him, as the respectful “vous” is used instead of the familiar “tu” in French.  So—when we sing this little ditty, we take the place of the one who wakes the bell-ringer  for the Night Office.  The French is pronounced differently from conversational French to match the notes—“Frère Jacques, Frère Jacques, Dormez vous, Dormez vous, Sonnez les matines, Sonnez les matines,  Ding, Ding, Dong” etc.

Some of  you may have  read – and I recommend this monastic whodunit, if you haven’t—Umberto Eco’s (trans. from Italian)  The Name of the Rose (book great,  movie is terrible even if Sean Connery starred) you will find that  Eco’s chapters,  instead of being  numbered, have the Liturgy of the Hours as  titles—so it was as the monks filed into choir stalls in the chapter headed “Lauds” and  another titled “Vespers”  that one of the monks would be absent  and then found soon thereafter—dispatched by someone to his eternal reward.  It happened at all the Hours!  Eco claims that the manuscript of the story  was found in the archives of the present ancient  Austrian abbey of Melk—which is fictional of course, as are the monks he portrays,  but it is a great read. I’m always impressed how familiar some  writers, oblates and others,  are with the Liturgy of the Hours,  medieval monastery  architecture and traditions.

Why all this concentration on schedule—on the use of time?  Fr. Demetrius Dumm O.S. B. ( Benedictine Handbook p. 103 ) says  that “Time is one of the most precious gifts that we humans receive from God”  and  that  “Wasting time on God becomes the wisest  possible use of this precious gift.”  The writers of Rules scheduled the day so as to have harmony, order among the monastics.  Monks  and nuns, have always had time schedules—a monastic rythym of times for eating, sleeping, ministering, recreating, all revolving around the times of prayer.

Although Benedict seems explicit about some things in his Rule, he also assumes, at times, that the monastics of his and later times are so well acquainted with what is already in place as a result of the decades of  the use of the pre-Benedictine Rules—mostly non-western, of people like Pachomius, Basil, Cassian and Augustine.    Abbot Jerome Theisen who died in Rome while Abbot Primate once  described the Rule of Benedict as “an inspired distillation of earlier monastic doctrine and practices.” (Turunga, 1991 p. 6).   That is so true—not only of the Divine Office, the Hours of Prayer, but also of times  for and kinds of meals etc.  However, Benedict put his own compassionate stamp on what he used from other sources—naming some of them in his Chapter 73-- the Church Fathers, the Conferences, Institutes (of Cassian, especially and St. Basil’s Rule. He  does not mention what has become  known as the Rule of the Master which some scholars insist  postdates Benedict (contrary to earlier sources which generally postdated it).  There are still some of us—a definite minority who continue to maintain that the Master indicated in the Rule’s title was Benedict – that it was one of his first drafts,  possibly written early at Subiaco when he had little experience as an abbot, then in the 520’s  at Monte Cassino revised and modified as the gem we have today. The Rule of the Master is longer, much more detailed, and allows very few, hardly any exceptions.  The Rule of Benedict  puts most final  decisions in the hands of the Abbot with the Rule as a Guide.  He  allows the superior (abbot, abbess, prior or prioress) to make changes when and where needed.  Nothing seems to be written in stone except the basic values of our Founder.

Although Benedict does not mention St. Augustine by name, he certainly knew his Rule as well.  The editor of one of the most recent issues of Augustine’s Rule,  George Lawless, an Augustinian himself  (Augustine of Hippo and His  Monastic Rule,  Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987 p. 130) states that (correctly in my and some others’ opinions)  the Rule of Benedict  “remains primarily in the tradition of Egypt as mediated by Cassian and the Rule of the Master” but that “the second most important influence upon  it is that of  Augustine.”  Some reflection on the Rule of Augustine will help us understand at least how and maybe why Benedict adopted or modified what the earlier law-giver prescribed. 

Augustine not always named, but indicated the number of psalms to be prayed at dawn, and the Hours of  Terce, Sext, and None—as Benedict does.  He mentions time for Compline which must have been so common, that Benedict assumed everyone knew when that was prayed so required it but assumed everyone knew it was the night prayer after the evening meal. It was a given, evidently.    Augustine, earlier, explicitly stated that  Compline be said after lighting the lamps before bedtime.  Because the psalmody was memorized no lamp or candle light was necessary when the early monks and nuns prayed Compline. (I was quite embarrassed to have to squint at my Compline psalms under a small night light when I was in the choir stalls of the Trappist monastery in Virginia a couple years ago—standing beside the Abbot –having a place of honor as their lecturer of the week on Benedictine reform—but not being able to chant a psalm from memory!)

There are other key statements in Augustine’s Rule that have a connection with the three chapters 41, 47, and 48 of the RB on which we are reflecting today.  These chapters,  as you may note show the integration  (word preferable to balance) of  the ora and the labor prayer and work (all kinds of ministry in response to others’ needs).  An aside, here—ora et labora  is not  the Benedictine motto as we are constantly  misinformed. Benedict’s motto is “That in all things God be glorified”—found in the chapter on the artisans, (57).  As young Sisters we were encouraged to head our essay papers etc. with the Latin acronym for that motto UIOGD “Ut in omnibus glorificetur Deus.  Now  most of us realize it’s almost impossible to reverse what has been misquoted as our motto by too many writers so  we’re not going to change that opinion any more than we will be able to convince the world that Benedict  and Scholastica were brother and sister, but  not twins.

Not that Chapter 41 of the RB advises the times for meals.  Benedict is most compassionate always.  Monastics cannot just pray, they must also eat and sleep. And then there are  “the necessities of nature” needs as he put it in Chapter 8.  Humans need to use a rest-room occasionally!  I found not accounting of that need as I  perused  the daily schedule of the medieval monks of  Cluny, who were required to spend almost all day in chapel—chanting the  whole of the  Divine Office of the Day and of the Dead (in return for donations from benefactors in memory of  their relatives or as a legacy to assure they themselves didn’t spend too much time in purgatory making up for their less than holy lives!).           

Benedict says that from Easter to Pentecost  there should be two meals--noon and evening.  (Over a hundred of the monasteries I have visited throughout the world in the last 50 years also assume monastics today  need a light breakfast as well as two more meals daily).  In summer the schedule allowed for one mid-afternoon meal on Wednesdays and Fridays unless  working in the fields  or oppressive summer heat called for the regular noon meal.  Always, the superior was to do the final regulation—taking into account the needs of all. Benedict wrote that the abbot “should so regulate and arrange all matters that souls may be saved and the brothers may go about their activites without justifiable grumbling.”  (Is he hinting that sometimes grumbling could be justifiable?)

During Lent, only one evening meal was prescribed.  That was considered the Lenten fast. Meat of  four-legged animals was not allowed—for the sake of asceticism—self-denial. Exception was made for the sick.   The Trappists and Trappistines today –Cistercians generally—never eat meat. I never saw chicken either, the week I spent with the Trappists—and throughout France in the four decades of my research travel, I was never offered wine at the guest table, only fruit ciders although Benedict says wine can be taken in moderation.   

Chapter 47—“Announcing the Hours for the Work of God” is a brief paragraph saying that only those who could should lector etc. and that a conscientious brother could be delegated to announce (that is, ring the bells) to summon the monks to chapel. (Obviously there were Brother Johns who sometimes overslept!)

Chap. 48 on  “The Daily Manual Labor” indicates that time was allotted for ministry, labor with  one’s hands—at other hours than the liturgy or prayerful reading—lectio. Augustine had been very adamant about the monks’ attending to the needs of othersas well as the scheduled common prayer.   He once told his monks on the  island of Capraria not to “ prefer  your own monastic holy leisure, (otium)  to the  needs of the Church” (Lawless p. 60).

Benedict, speaking of work of one’s hands, and in  chapter 4 on the Good Works of the monastics  makes allowances for the needs of others by many exceptions to the general rule. Monastic tradition has always allowed for response to others’ needs.  Conversions of whole European countries and peoples  to Christianity are credited more often than not to the Benedictine missionary monks and nuns particularly that of Italy, England,  Germany, Norway and Denmark. The first centuries after Benedict were dedicated to the spread of the Gospel in most of Europe.   Some of these apostles of nations are very  familiar to some of us: Augustine, first Archbishop of Canterbury, Boniface, Lioba, Walburga, and Thecla in German territories, and Ansgar in Scandinavia as well as Cyril and Methodius who spent time at Monte Cassino before taking up  missionary labors in Eastern Europe.  Russia still uses the Cyrillic alphabet.

These monks and nuns  come to mind as I reflect  on  St. Paul’s letter to the Romans: (14:7)  “The life and death of each of us has its influence on the rest of us.”   What Benedict  taught and scheduled, what those who preceded him advocated, what the monks and nuns  did with the Rule in the last 1500 years, still affects our life and its rhythm today. Note that in Chapter 4  on the monastic good works, number 26 in most translations reads: “never….turn away when someone needs your love.”  Benedict anticipated all kinds of ministry would be demanded of monastics.  Thomas Merton. the great Cistercian contemplative author  insisted that contemplation must always end in action.

Earlier, Cassian had also mandated work for his monastics at Marseilles, but he indicates that it is generally done alone in the room or cell.  In Bk II Cassian titles his  Chap 14 ”Of the way in which they devote themselves in their cells, , equally to manual labour and to prayer.” In chap. 15 he refers to “the work which he is wont to carry on in (it) his cell”    --and again, the exception—he must be ready also “for the performance of some necessary duty.” Even more explicitly in Bk 4:12, Cassian says monastices should be in their cell “devoting their energies equally to work and meditation” but if someone knocks to summon them to prayer or some other task—even if practicing the “writer’s art”—don’t, finish leave at the bell. The early scriptorium was in the cell, later moved to a common room.  Cassian’s statements show that  monastics very  early did copy work—assumed when Benedict speaks of that not finishing the letter—--not correspondence, but a complicated calligraphic lettering most often of a biblical passage which could take hours sometimes often including  symbols of all kinds, portraits of  saints, animals, plants, or birds and often images of Christ.

Monastics were expected to earn their own livelihood and artisans (Benedict mandated) were to undersell their products so no hint of injustice or greed could surface. There were internal needs too, of course, so  Benedict, like Cassian, says that some may have an  “assigned  task.”   That would cover the duties of  abbot  or prior or  porter or kitchen cooks, or servers, or  guestmasters, or teachers of the youths at the monastery or  those who cared for sick etc. and also those who raised grapes and made wine (these are named only implicitly in the Rule)  Monasteries thoughout the ages have become  known for their vineyards and wineries (Benedictine, Chartreuse, Champagne (Dom Perignon).    Nuns in Germany tended to have breweries too—Eichstätt had one until the mid-nineteenth century when the nuns’ monastery was closed for a time by the anti-clerical government.  On its reopening they were told they could reinstall the brewery again,  but chose to keep their school only.  The present German abbey at Andechs today is best known for the beer it produces.  In fact our first German-American Abbot, Boniface Wimmer, founder of the Latrobe PA monastery, was once in trouble with the  Irish bishops promoting prohibition when he attempted to start a brewery at the monastery. In my book I gave into the temption to head that incident with the paragraph title “To brew or not to brew.”  Benedict mentions harvesting—could it have been grapes, perhaps? Contemplative and cloistered groups certainly  try to be self-sufficient. There are not only  Trappist fruitcakes, Trappistine candies and jellies, French Benedictine Cologne,  cheese, lace, etc. But, often like the Virginia Trappists, the monks and nuns following Benedict’s Rule without an active apostolate as we have, have had to open a retreat house like the Trappists did, to further supplement their income even if the Virginia monks do sell over 25,000 fruitcakes annually.

Benedict, the compassionate lawgiver was always considerate that exceptions be made  for the infirm and those in delicate health  (Latin “infirmis aut delicates” which I think is mistranslated by Kardong as  “sick or weak”.  “In delicate health”  (delicates) seems more  appropriate.  Maybe that is being too feminine but Benedict did have his feminine, nutritional, caring side and it shows.  Maybe Scholastica, his sister, had something to do with that?   

So Benedict would see that monks in delicate health were assigned tasks, but only those consistent with their physical abilities so that they were not idle, but would not be,  he says, overtaxed and tempted to leave the monastery.  All things, he says, must be “done with moderation on account of the fainthearted.”!!!  Usually tenants, or hired help harvested the crops  so that the monastics would be free for the Liturgy of the Hours, but Benedict allows that it may  be necessary to do their own because of  “local conditions or their poverty.

St. Luke (18:1) wrote that Jesus told his disciples about “the necessity for them to pray always.”  Paul repeats that in I Thess (17),  Cassian in Bk 1, chap. 1. Benedict says that we  must be doing “ whatever work needs to be done”—but to pray always.    St. Ignatius Loyola integrates prayer and work well when he writes:  “Everything that one turns in the direction of God is prayer.”  Community and  private prayer were and are to be  integrated with, not separated  from  Lectio and ministry.  Even at meals there was spiritual table reading—something we used to do and many monasteries still do.

So  “order”  a daily agenda is needed.  As someone has said, it is necessary for sharing life together--  living harmoniously  in the monastery, having—to quote the 2003 commissioning motto, and the stained glass piece reserved from our recently razed 1920 wing, having as we read in Chapter 4 of the Acts of the Apostles— “one heart and one soul seeking God.”  

(605) 668-6000/668-6169