+ We are almost there—four and a half weeks of Lent and one week of Passiontide completed. Holy Week only remains. It will be a busy week and demanding one in many ways as we walk with Christ in triumph into Jerusalem and then follow Him from the garden of Gethsemane to Calvary. Our waiting at His tomb will itself not be without its burdens. And yet we shall somehow manage to muster all our strength to celebrate the definitive triumph over sin and death that is the substance of Easter day.
 
As we walk these grace-filled days, a constituent part of our monastic vocation days is the duty and privilege to sing the hours of the Divine Office in profound and unimpeded communion with the One True Church of Christ throughout the world. In some senses we have “chosen the better part” in spending these long hours with the Lord (cf. Lk 10:42) in these days—not, though, that we shall otherwise be idle: preparing to celebrate the offices of Holy Week in as worthy and solemn a manner as our modest resources permit shall save us from that danger.
 
Saint Benedict enjoins us: ut mens concordet voci (Rule, ch. 19), that our minds are in harmony with our voices as we sing. It is profitable to recall this injunction at the beginning of Holy Week, for all that we do externally, which we do first and foremost to worship Almighty God and to give Him glory, is also efficacious in our own spiritual upbuilding if our minds concord with our voices.
 
In his General Audience of 26 September 2012 Pope Benedict XVI observed that in this precept of Saint Benedict the external activity of singing has priority over our minds being in concord with our voices. It is an important point:
 
“The Saint teaches that in the prayers of the Psalms words must precede our thought. It does not usually happen like this because we have to think and then what we have thought is converted into words. Here, instead, in the liturgy, the opposite is true, words come first. God has given us the Word and the Sacred Liturgy offers us words; we must enter into the words, into their meaning and receive them within us, we must attune ourselves to these words; in this way we become children of God, we become like God... A fundamental, primary element of the dialogue with God in the liturgy is the agreement between what we say with our lips and what we carry in our hearts. By entering into the words of the great history of prayer, we ourselves are conformed to the spirit of these words and are enabled to speak to God.”
 
That the celebration the Sacred Liturgy disposes us to the penetration and integration of the realities it contains is part of its very sacramentality. If we wish our minds to be in harmony with our voices, our lives to be in concord with our words and other liturgical actions, we must plunge ourselves more deeply into the optimal celebration of the riches of the Church’s liturgical tradition.
 
To be sure, there is no shortage of opportunities for this in Holy Week!
 
But amidst all of these, I propose but one familiar liturgical text with which we might start: Psalm 50, the “Miserere,” which we sing every morning at Lauds, save in Paschaltide and on feasts. For Psalm 50 may be in some ways considered the leitmotif of the monastic vocation. The psalmist acknowledges before the Lord: “Against thee, thee only, have I sinned, and done that which is evil in thy sight, so that thou art justified in thy sentence and blameless in thy judgment.” (v. 4) He consequently implores:  “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me.” (v. 10) And finally, he willingly offers himself to the service of the praise of Almighty God with those words we sing every morning at the beginning matins as we begin our day’s work: “Lord, open thou my lips, and my mouth shall show forth thy praise.” (v. 15)
 
The “Miserere” is something of a feature of Tenebrae in Holy Week attracting the attention even of great composers. We shall sing it, as ever, each morning at Lauds—and at Tenebrae to be sure. May it penetrate us in the week to come so that we may become that sacrifice for which it prays: the sacrifice of “a broken and contrite heart” (v. 17). May it’s gritty realism, its utter reliance on the grace of Almighty God permeate us. And may the joy of singing the unending praise of Almighty God ever be ours! +

It is said that a little under 1,448 years ago, on 19 November 569, when a relic of the True Cross, sent by the Byzantine Emperor Justin II from the East at the request of St. Radegunda was carried in great pomp from Tours to her monastery of Saint-Croix at Poitiers, the hymn that the Church has adopted for vespers of Passiontide, Vexilla Regis, was first sung. Of all the texts and melodies of these liturgically rich, if not intense, days and weeks, it is one of the most beautiful and we shall do well if, this Passiontide, all that of which the Vexilla Regis sings comes to live and breathe in our hearts, minds and souls.
​
This evening let us ponder two of its verses. Its first:
 
Vexilla regis prodeunt,
fulget crucis mysterium,
quo carne carnis conditor
suspensus est patibulo
 
[The Royal Banner forward goes,
The mystic Cross refulgent glows:
Where He, in Flesh, flesh who made,
Upon the Tree of pain is laid.]
 
These days are marked by the Cross! Indeed, the origin of the hymn itself and its liturgical use for the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross (September 14th) leave us in no doubt: these days of Passiontide are lived under the shadow of the Cross—albeit under the shadow of the veiled cross, that we shall look upon again only on Good Friday in its sombre yet glorious finality.
 
Sombre: because there is no disguising the brutality and excruciating suffering for which it stands. And in these most concentrated days, when not even the Cross itself is exposed to our gaze, let our prayer include the supplication that not only that we may be able fruitfully to carry the crosses laid upon us, but that those who suffer far more than we, particularly our persecuted brothers and sisters and those who bear the burden of grave illness, may in their need, be given the necessary grace to persevere in faith and hope.
 
And yet glorious: because whilst in these days we linger somewhat in the shadow of the Cross, and rightly, we nevertheless know its finality. We know the truth taught in the very person of He whom others sought to annihilate by nailing Him to a cross, that the darkest shadows of the Cross are cast by the light of Easter morn. And we know that we also may share in that light, in that invincible joy, if but we persevere through these shadows. So our prayer in these days ought also to beg for the grace of perseverance in both ourselves and others, most especially in those for whom terrible suffering casts the shadows of doubt.
 
The second verse I wish to ponder but a little is the one for which we kneel:
 
O Crux ave, spes unica,
Hoc passionis tempore
Auge piis justitiam,
Reisque dona veniam.
 
[O Cross! all hail! sole hope, abide
With us now in this Passion-tide:
New grace in pious hearts implant,
And pardon to the guilty grant.]
 
Rather than ending the rigours of Lent, Passiontide implores “new grace:” it calls us to an intensification of our Lenten austerities. It may be that our Ash Wednesday resolutions are long past and somewhat forgotten. Many things – some just, some unjust – may have distracted us from them. In hoc passionis tempore, it is time to focus anew on our one hope: the Cross. The Sacred Liturgy of these days beckons us to walk in the way of the Cross more intensely, more purely than heretofore in Lent.
 
The via crucis is one of pain and suffering. It is expiatory. As the Vexilla Regis teaches us so beautifully, by the mystery of the Cross we are saved. It is the path to Salvation. For the grace to persevere along this path ourselves, and for this grace in others, let us pray more earnestly in these ‘covered’ days of Passiontide. +

+ Lent has been rather interrupted this week by the first class feasts of St Joseph and St Benedict, and now this evening finds us in the chapter room for a Lent conference having already celebrated solemn first vespers of the Annunciation. Almost in spite of our good resolutions to keep a strict Lent, our Holy Mother the Church insists this week that we feast rather than fast.

And for good reason; for amidst our penitential practices there is joy: the joy of the saints who have persevered in the Christian life and who live in heavenly glory, assisting us in our perseverance by their intercession; there is the joy of knowing that our hopefully-more-than-meagre efforts in Lent, insufficient in themselves, are not the whole story: the manifold graces given to the saints are available to us also. And there is joy in the celebration of news borne to the Blessed Virgin Mary by the Archangel Gabriel: “behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus” (Luke 1:31).

At matins tomorrow morning Pope St Leo the Great and St Ambrose will teach us much about the cosmological and soteriological significance of the Annunciation, and we should attend to their voices with the ears of our minds and our hearts. This year, for the feast of the Annunciation I propose that we consider the sine qua non of the Annunciation, that element of it without which nothing would have happened: namely, the response of Our Blessed Lady to the news brought to her by the Angel Gabriel, more precisely her words: “fiat mihi secundum verbum tuum”—“be it done unto me according to thy word” (Luke 1:38), which are often referred to as Our Lady’s “fiat”.

For without these words, without this grace-filled human consent, the Annunciation is a non-event. The Angel Gabriel would have had to return to the heavenly court downcast, with the saving plan of Almighty God frustrated (at least temporarily) because God chose to lay as its cornerstone the free cooperation of a human person. We know, of course, that the Virgin, “full of grace” did consent, and in this great feast of the Annunciation we celebrate that and its salvific import. The Annunciation is, one may say, the feast of the fruits of human consent to the will of Almighty God—what wonders Almighty God can work when man says “yes” to His divine plan!

This is particularly true for the monk. Whether it be in our vocational discernment, during the different stages of formation, or in the ongoing living of vowed monastic life, we cannot begin to even imagine what Almighty God can do with and through us if only we say, inspired by the same grace of Almighty God given to the Blessed Virgin Mary, “fiat, yes, let what you have in store for me happen, I trust You.” For it is only then that God can truly work with us as He truly wills.

Our small monastic foundation has a vision and hopes and plans, and we seek to ensure that they conform to the Will of Almighty God. But He has more than ‘a’ vision: He sees all, He knows all, including much if not most that we do not. That His holy will may be realised here, in us, we need to embrace and integrate the virtue of the Blessed Virgin in her unhesitating and faith-filled response of “fiat” to the Angel Gabriel. If we do that, His plan will unfold unimpeded by our own limitations and bear fruit in ourselves and in others that we cannot presently imagine.

It may be that the falling of the feast of the Annunciation in Lent does us well this year, for our Lenten discipline may serve to strip away worldly or other distractions and enable us to listen more attentively to the voice of God. As we pray daily in the invitatory psalm (94) of matins: “O that today [we] would hearken to His voice,” that we would “harden not [our] hearts...”  It may be that the sharper focus that Lent affords us may enable us to respond to Him more generously, so that the plan of Almighty God might indeed bear fruit in us and through us.
​
For the grace of an unhesitating and fruitful acceptance of God’s will let us continue to pray, particularly on this feast of the Annunciation. And when, on Sunday, we come to sing the introit “Laetare Jerusalem...” may we have reason to rejoice indeed at God’s holy will being done in and through us, if even in ways that as yet we do not fully understand. +

+ We are more than two weeks into Lent; two uninterrupted weeks of the rich diet of Lenten gospels savoured and digested, as it were, by the patristic homilies at matins and by the liturgical texts proper to each day.

Saint Benedict teaches us that our life ought always be Lenten (Rule, ch. 49). One way in which we are faithful to this injunction is by living the liturgical contemplation so beautifully exemplified in the Sacred Liturgy of these days. If the Lent of 2017 leaves us with but one lesson well-learnt, let it be this: that this central tenet of our vocation: to live and breathe the Church’s sacred rites; to allow them and the realities which they celebrate to capture us and permeate us and thereby to bear even greater fruit in our prayer and work.

The Sacred Liturgy gives us just so much to savour in these days! On every day of what Eastern tradition calls “the great fast,” we are presented with a true feast! Before Saint Joseph and Saint Benedict and indeed the Archangel Gabriel interrupt the fast next week with even further feasting (in a manner most welcome, of course), I would like to ponder one liturgical text a little: the matins hymn for Lent in the monastic office, Ex more docti mystico, which it is our joy to sing each morning according to the Ambrosian melody.

In this ancient hymn, variously attributed to St Ambrose and to St Gregory the Great, the Church wisely places upon our newly-opened lips each morning nine stanzas which are tutorial for our Lenten observance. Each teaches us much, but of them I would like highlight but two. Firstly, its third verse: 

Utamur ergo parcius / Verbis, cibis et potibus, / Somno, iocis, et arctius /
Perstemus in custodia.

More sparing therefore let us make / the words we speak, the food we take / deny ourselves in mirth and sleep / our bounden watch more strictly keep. (Translation: Hymns Ancient and Modern: Historical Edition, London 1909)

We don’t have the textual sources to confirm this, but one could be forgiven for thinking that here the author has provided a metrical recapitulation of the provisions of the Holy Rule for Lent: “let him stint himself of food, drink, sleep, talk and jesting” (ch. 49). Might this even argue for St Gregory as the author? No matter: we are now more than half-way through the ‘Lent-part’ of Lent – Passiontide being a little over a week away. In the days remaining to us to sing Ex more docti mystico let it prompt us to a more fervent observance of our Lenten duty as outlined in the Rule.

The second verse I wish highlight is the penultimate one:

Laxa malum, quod fecimus: / Auge bonum, quod poscimus, / Placere quo tandem tibi / Possimus hic et perpetim.

Put all our evil deeds away / Enlarge the good for which we pray / that we, though late, our wanderings o’er / may please the Thee now and evermore. (Translation: ibid.)

Do we not hear echoes of the Prologue of the Holy Rule here, with its call to conversion of life, to stability in the school of the Lord’s service?

The Prologue teaches us: “If, for good reason, for the amendment of evil habit or the preservation of charity, there be some strictness of discipline, do not be at once dismayed and run away from the way of salvation, of which the entrance must needs be narrow.” This discipline of the monastery is the discipline of Lent. Let us not run away from it, for what we sing teaches us this discipline is not an end in itself but a means to an end.

 The words “auge bonum quod poscimus” – increase the good for which we pray – take us beyond our Lenten discipline, indeed beyond all our monastic discipline, towards the Good to which they are ordered. The Prologue makes this more explicit: “As we progress in our monastic life and in faith, our hearts shall be enlarged, and we shall run with unspeakable sweetness of love in the way of God’s commandments; so that, never abandoning his rule but persevering in his teaching in the monastery until death, we shall share by patience in the sufferings of Christ, that we may deserve to be partakers also of his kingdom.”
​
Let our more faithful Lenten observance be a sign and a reminder of these great realities of our monastic vocation. As Ex more docti mystico prays in its final words (ut fructuosa sint tuis / Ieiuniorum munera), may Almighty God bless our fast in this Lent of 2017, and our ongoing perseverance in our vocation, with abundant fruit so that we may be pleasing to Almighty God, now and in eternity. + 

Domenica Secunda Passionis - in Palmis
03h30: Ad Matutinum
06h00: Ad Laudes
07h15: Ad Primam
08h00: Ad Tertiam
08h45: Ad Benedictionem Ramorum, Processionem et Missam Solemnem
12h45: Ad Sextam
14h30: Ad Nonam
18h00: Ad Vesperas
20h00: Ad Completorium
 
Feria II
04h00: Ad Matutinum:
06h00: Ad Laudes
07h30: Ad Primam
08h45: Ad Tertiam
09h00: Missa Lecta
12h45: Ad Sextam
14h30: Ad Nonam
18h00: Ad Vesperas
20h00: Ad Completorium
 
Feria III
 04h00: Ad Matutinum:
06h00: Ad Laudes
07h30: Ad Primam
08h45: Ad Tertiam
09h00: Missa Lecta
12h45: Ad Sextam
14h30: Ad Nonam
18h00: Ad Vesperas
20h00: Ad Completorium
 
Feria IV
04h00: Ad Matutinum:
06h00: Ad Laudes
07h30: Ad Primam
08h45: Ad Tertiam
11h00: Missa Cantata
12h45: Ad Sextam
14h30: Ad Nonam
 
[19h00: Missa Chrismatis]
 
Feria V in Coena Domini
             06h00: Ad Matutinum et ad Laudes (Tenebræ)
08h30: Ad Primam
09h00: Ad Tertiam
12h45: Ad Sextam
14h30: Ad Nonam
            16h00: Ad Missam Solemnem Vespertinam
20h00: Ad Completorium
 
Feria VI in Morte Domini
            06h00: Ad Matutinum et ad Laudes (Tenebræ)
08h30: Ad Primam
09h00: Ad Tertiam
12h45: Ad Sextam
14h30: Ad Nonam
            17h15: Ad Solemnem Actionem Liturgicam
20h00: Ad Completorium
 
Sabbato Sancto
             06h00: Ad Matutinum et ad Laudes (Tenebræ)
08h30: Ad Primam
09h00: Ad Tertiam
12h45: Ad Sextam
14h30: Ad Nonam
18h00: Ad Vesperas
            23h30: Ad Vigiliam Paschalem
 
Dominica Resurrectionis
 07h30: Ad Primam
08h45: Ad Tertiam
09h00: Missa Solemnis
12h45: Ad Sextam
14h30: Ad Nonam
18h00: Ad Vesperas
18h45: Ad Completorium

+ In chapter 49 of the Holy Rule, to which we have just listened, Saint Benedict teaches us that “the life of a monk ought at all times to be Lenten in its character.” Ever the realist, Our Holy Father immediately adds the observation that “few have the strength for that.”

His perspicacity should console us: the Rule of Saint Benedict was written for the likes of we who aspire to much but so often find ourselves without the strength, perhaps even without the will, to do what is necessary to reach the goals to which we aspire.

So too Saint Benedict’s realism should console us. For he goes on to instruct we less than perfect monks that at least “in these days of Lent [we] should live lives of great purity, and should also in this sacred season expiate the negligences of other times.”
​
This, then, is our task in the coming forty days; a task to be accomplished by refraining from all sin, in prayer with tears, in reading, compunction of heart and abstinence.

This Lent I would like to underline the importance of the reading in which we are to engage. Certainly, as chapter 48 of the Rule commands, we are each to receive a ‘Lent book’ from the library as food for our lectio divina in these holy days. It is a book to be more digested than read—and that during those precious, beautiful and fruitful hours of silence following matins.

It may come as no great surprise that our Lent books are chosen for their close relation to the liturgy of this holy season. But beyond the books given I wish to ask that this Lent we ‘read’ the book of the Sacred Liturgy as well. That is to say, let us make a renewed effort to listen with the ears of our hearts as well as of our minds to the daily Gospel, to the commentary on it by the Fathers of the Church at matins, to the proper readings, antiphons, hymns and other liturgical texts that shall be on our lips seven times a day and once in the night. If we read thus this Lent, if we allow the realities with which the Sacred Liturgy of this blessed season is so heavily pregnant to penetrate our hearts and minds, we shall be well fuelled and instructed for that conversion of life to which these days call us with Evangelical urgency.

Let us not make the mistake, though, of thinking that Lent is solely about “me,” even though it does demand a good deal of frank self assessment. Yes, our first duty is to do all that we can for the salvation our own soul. If we do not attend to that first we are heading for a dead-end.

But we seek our own conversion and purification so as to live our God-given vocation and mission in the life of the Church, for in persevering in generous fidelity to that call lies the unique pathway to our salvation.

For the monk this vocation is one of prayer above and before all else. How much better can and should our prayer be! How much more efficaciously can we serve those in the world and those who carry its burdens if, when we come to choir, our hearts and minds are the purer with which to plead their needs!

Work is the second pillar of our Benedictine life and it too can and must profit from the cleansing and concentration to which Lent calls us. For whether our work involves the small details of life in the enclosure or necessarily engages us without, Almighty God looks even—especially—here for our purity of heart and mind. Let him find it all the more in us in these days.

This is our vocation. This is the witness we are called to give.

​Our small community does not rank amongst the great Benedictine houses of today, nor of yesterday. Let us ensure nevertheless that increasingly the Lord shall find here, particularly during this Lent, that greatness which is measured in fidelity to our vocation in matters both large and small. +