Prayer in the Rule of St Benedict, Session 1

Mother Anne Clarke, Abbess OSB, Malling Abbey

Yesterday we looked at ways that early Christians responded to Paul’s call to us to ‘pray without ceasing’. Today we will look specifically at how St Benedict picked up on these ancient traditions in his rule for monastic life. There will be some repetition of material that I shared yesterday but I see no harm in that. Repetition is a big part of Benedictine life, a way for words and concepts to go deeper. So I make no apology for repeating myself.

I wonder what brought you to this day on Prayer in the Rule of St Benedict? At each step of my monastic life I was asked ‘What do you desire?’, and I responded by affirming my desire to seek God in the monastic life. You may not be heading for monastic life but I think it’s a helpful question to ponder at the start of this day, what do you desire?

Let’s take a couple of minutes of silence to sit with that question and in our hearts to offer this day to God, that God might draw us closer to what we desire.

[2 mins silence]

O God, we offer ourselves to you this day and open our hearts to hear your voice. Bless our time together and draw us deeper into your desire for us. Amen.

So what does the Rule of St Benedict teach us about prayer?

When I first turned to the Rule, a long time ago now, for inspiration for my prayer life I was rather perplexed. So much of it seemed to be about practical arrangements for sleeping, the length of one’s clothing and so on. There is also ascetical teaching about keeping silent, not laughing too much and love of fasting and discipline.

I struggled to connect this with the techniques of prayer I was looking for. I don’t know about you but I was looking for magic answers as to how to pray and maybe yet another technique would give me what I wanted.

Many years later, having lived by the Rule in community for some time now I can see the subtlety of what is going on – the whole Rule is shot through with prayer, how we live is how we pray, and how we pray is how we live. They are inseparable. The Rule lays out a way of life within which prayer happens. Prayer is a gift of God not something I do by finding some magic technique and prayer is given when we place ourselves where God can find us.

John Climacus, who was writing about a hundred years later than Benedict, wrote that ‘Prayer is God’s gift to him who prays’.

That’s not to say techniques are irrelevant, they can indeed be very helpful as I have found, but ultimately our prayer needs to be grounded in a whole way of life that is oriented to God.

And Benedict’s Rule provides a framework for such a life as it was lived out by young men living in the 6th Century. Even given that historical distance it is amazing what wisdom we can still find in that Rule, and today we will be focusing on his wisdom about prayer.

To understand prayer in the Rule of St Benedict it is helpful to look back to Jesus’ own teaching and also the earliest Christians and how they prayed. So I will recap some of what we looked at yesterday.

Jesus’ own teaching on prayer is very simple – he gives us what we know as the Lord’s prayer and also exhorts us to avoid ostentatious display when praying. It is interesting to hold that together with Chap 20 of the Rule, on ‘Reverence in prayer’ which you have in your handout:

Whenever we want to ask some favour of a powerful man, we do it humbly and respectfully, for fear of presumption. How much more important, then, to lay our petitions before the Lord God of all things with the utmost humility and sincere devotion. We must know that God regards our purity of heart and tears of compunction, not our many words. Prayer should therefore be short and pure, unless perhaps it is prolonged under the inspiration of divine grace. In community, however, prayer should always be brief; and when the superior gives the signal, all should rise together.

The simplicity that Benedict encourages echoes the simplicity and brevity of the Lord’s prayer. We humbly ask for our needs to be met and for forgiveness of our sins. Another gospel echo is the tears of compunction that follow the example of the tax collector who could not raise his eyes to heaven but could only pray for mercy for his sins. We see this again in Chap 52 on how we should behave in the oratory, when we are exhorted to pray with tears and heartfelt devotion.

Something that is very notable in the Rule is the emphasis given to liturgical prayer at particular times. It is a central feature of any form of Benedictine life and a significant part of the Rule lays out Benedict’s scheme for praying psalms and hymns at these hours of prayer.

Christians inherited the rhythm of the Jewish Temple prayers at certain hours as we read in the Acts of the Apostles chapter 3 (Acts 3:1) although there is no indication that Jesus followed this pattern. He didn’t leave us any set order. For Christians this praying at certain hours has always been held in tension with the teaching that we should pray without ceasing, for example as St Paul urged in 1 Thess 5 (v 17).

Early Christians explored various answers to the question of how to pray without ceasing – some refused to work because it meant that they could not pray all their waking hours.

There were also communities who prayed in relays and we see that even today in communities devoted to continual adoration of the Blessed Sacrament – whenever you go to the chapel there will be a brother or sister there praying whatever the hour of day or night. It is a very powerful witness to the continual prayer of the church but it doesn’t necessarily help the individual towards continual prayer.

The desert mothers and fathers were known for their continual praying of psalms whilst they worked, and perhaps this is moving closer to uninterrupted prayer. Gradually an understanding developed of interior prayer, a state of prayer that was continual whatever one was doing but that did not involve ‘saying prayers’ all the time.

The monastic way draws together these various responses to the biblical call to uninterrupted prayer in a life that provides a regular pattern of prayer that supports the development of a state of continual interior prayer. As I have heard said, you can pray whatever you are doing but if you never specifically focus on prayer from time to time you will soon find that you are not praying at all at any time.

As in a good marriage there need to be times when you are simply together enjoying one another and sharing what is on your heart. Our relationship with God is nurtured by times specially set apart for prayer.

In the Rule the call to prayer at set hours takes priority over everything else – as we see in Chapter 43 on Tardiness at the work of God or at table:

On hearing the signal for an hour of the divine office, the monk will immediately set aside what he has in hand and go with utmost speed, yet with gravity and without giving occasion for frivolity, Indeed, nothing is to be preferred to the Work of God.

‘Nothing is to be preferred to the Work of God’ is a key phrase for monastics, and as a monastic I have committed myself to this in the whole structure of my daily life. The bell rings, I must go, unless I am engaged in a matter of life or death – which of course does happen, especially in an elderly community. But our corporate offices are not lightly to be skipped over. There is a rhythm of liturgical prayer that provides the framework for our life together and we are all present together for this prayer as far as possible.

This corporate prayer is a way that we support one another. If I am feeling down and disconnected from prayer I know that others will be feeling quite differently and can carry me through. We only have to hope that we don’t all go down at the same time! To pray together we need a structure, hence the amount of space that the Rule gives to laying out the pattern for the offices. This gives a robust scaffolding for our lives and keeps prayer at the centre with everything else revolving around it.

But there is also space for personal prayer in whatever form we are called to, provided we are sensitive to others in the way we pray. In chap 52 of the Rule, on the Oratory of the Monastery we read:

The oratory ought to be what it is called, and nothing else is to be done or stored there. After the Work of God, all should leave in complete silence and with reverence for God, so that a brother who may wish to pray alone will not be disturbed by the insensitivity of another. Moreover, if at other times someone chooses to pray privately, he may simply go in and pray, not in a loud voice, but with tears and heartfelt devotion. Accordingly, anyone who does not pray in this manner is not to remain in the oratory after the Work of God, as we have said; then he will not interfere with anyone else.

Although Benedict is writing about the physical Oratory where we gather for prayer, the tradition also sees this as referring to the Oratory of our own hearts, the ‘inner room’ that Jesus talks of where we go for prayer – nothing else should be done or stored there. That is quite a challenge! How much that is not of God are we storing in our hearts?

Purifying our hearts through prayer and living a disciplined life are central for a monastic – the more we can purify our hearts of things that are not of God the more easily we can be people through whom God’s love can shine.

The early monastics were inspired by the Beatitude ‘Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.’ [Matt 5v8]

There is a virtuous circle where consciously seeking to serve those with whom we live and the guests who come to us helps us to set aside self and be open to Christ wherever he is to be found. The more we are open to Christ’s presence and the more we are formed into the likeness of Christ, the less self-conscious we become in our service of others. So we grow more and more into living the Gospel from the depths of our being.

For Benedict’s monks the way of growing in Gospel living was through prayerful engagement with the scriptures in Lectio Divina. He sets aside many hours for this each day and it would have been the foundation of the monks’ personal prayer. I think it is a vitally important practice for us modern Christians to incorporate into our lives and so I will use it as the basis for our time of prayer together in this session.

It may already be familiar to you? But maybe new for some of you? For those who are familiar I think it still helpful to go through the basics and I hope that you will all get something new from the way I approach it. As I was saying earlier, repetition is always of value.

[A session of group Lectio Divina was then introduced as described in the handout Lectio Divina and Contemplative Prayer, using the passage John 15:1-5]

Some questions for reflection

I offer these questions if you wish to use them to open up your reflections during this morning’s quiet time, there are no right or wrong answers!

Further Reading

Korneel Vermeiren OCSO, ‘Praying with Benedict: Prayer in the Rule of St Benedict’, Translated by Richard Yeo OSB, Darton, Longman and Todd Ltd, 1999

For Lectio Divina

John 15: 1-5

I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinegrower. He removes every branch in me that bears no fruit. Every branch that bears fruit he prunes to make it bear more fruit. You have already been cleansed by the word that I have spoken to you. Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing.

© The Benedictine Community at Malling Abbey 2025