Liturgy in the monastery
Holy
Mass:
(See
also the Daily
program)
Why and how to pray?
The purpose of life is to grow in the likeness of God. Only if this
purpose is fulfilled, can a man contemplate God and live with God in joy
and peace. This is the only way to overcome death. To achieve this likeness
to God, one has to be brought before the presence of God . This means that one has always to call oneself into the presence of
God and correct one’s actions in accordance with this picture.
The most beautiful and, at the same time most difficult, thing in life is to maintain true relationships. To live a life without relationships, i.e. with one’s attention focused on oneself alone, leads to the slow death of one’s personality and in the end is an offense against God. The key relationship that no one can or should avoid is a personal relationship to God. The meaning of prayer is maintaining and deepening this relationship from our side. The care of this relationship from God’s side is, in turn, called grace.
The most actual expression of a living relationship is reverence for the others, i.e. God and his creation. The best way to express reverence for God is by means of the praise that we call liturgy. Liturgy, however, is not simply an external, public and common praise in religious services. It is, in a broader sense, the form of expression of our entire life. Our whole life is therefore to be conceived as liturgy. One cannot approach God in any other way than with undivided heart.
The
monastic tradition dealt in the first place with the instruction of the Gospel
“to pray without ceasing.” When people understood this in a simplistic manner, they
prayed in shifts without a break or they got rid of everything that was not public
and obvious praise of God. Gradually monasticism adopted a deeper interpretation
of the aforementioned instruction, which was accepted and acknowledged as the
correct one by the church. According to this interpretation, incessant prayer
means to interweave the common human activities frequently and suitably with
profound ideas of God that finally the inner separation will disappear. To
achieve this, the following means were developed in monasticism:
There are common and private/personal prayers, like relationships. Why is common prayer so important? An old proverb says: “You go to heaven together, but everybody goes to hell alone .” Since the very beginning of the church, psalms have proved to be the most suitable means of common prayer,. The word “Psalm” comes from Hebrew and means roughly “hymn of praise”. Jesus himself prayed to his Father with psalms. Prayer with psalms is personal and common at the same time. It involves the entire creation, recalls redeeming events of the past and goes as far as the completion of time. It praises the as yet unfulfilled promises of God and awaits the Redeemer, who will bring the world to perfection. There are 150 psalms of the Holy Scriptures, in a book called the Psalter.
God’s word turns into the prayer of men in the Psalter. While the other books of the Old Testament put the deeds of God into words and explain the mysteries contained in the works of God, with the Psalter man sings for God and the words of the Psalms express the redemptive actions of God . The Holy Spirit himself inspires the answers of man about the deeds of God. Christ combines both of them, i.e. divine deeds and prayer to God, and we learn in Him the way to pray with them.
The importance of the common prayer
The
word chorus/choir means a corps or an ensemble. The common prayer of monks in
choir is their common public praise of God. The monks fulfil, through common
prayer, their task in the organism of the church. They belong to God in a
special way and are destined for service to Him, through their calling to
monastic life. Everything that they do, not only the Holy mass, is
valuable before God because it may lead to God’s honor. Therefore it is called
“service” and St. Benedict speaks, to characterize it, about the “Work of God”
(Opus Dei). By this phrase he means what has been done for God and because of
God.
There are two kinds of public service: the Holy mass and the divine office (common prayer). The combination of both also appears in the fact that collect (prayer) of the daily mass repeats in every prayer at canonical hours of the office. St. Benedict emphasises the liturgical service in an unprecedented manner. Fervor in the service is one of the features of vocation to monastic life. The common praise, i.e. in choir, is the most sublime, beneficial and holiest what men can do on this earth. In the choir psalmody prayer, heaven and Earth are combined to pursue the same objective, which is to worship and praise God.
The
glorification of God is the first and most important duty of every man. For that
reason, people should put the service before every other activity. To make the
service appropriate to human power, the spiritual and natural needs of monks
are, according to the Rule of St. Benedict, divided wisely and in an
extraordinary balance.
If man praises the greatness, glory and goodness of God, he must do so in a manner that is worthy of the highest being. Human manners of expression are too low and insufficient. Only God can praise and glorify himself in a dignified manner. He taught us this by becoming man.
For that reason Psalms, God’s words, are read in the common prayer. According to the tradition, St. Benedict requires that his monks pray all Psalms within a week. Apart from Psalms, the monks also use other parts of the Holy Scriptures and texts from the church tradition, like antiphons, hymns etc. This is accompanied by reading texts from the Church Fathers, mostly explanations of the Bible.
This service is compulsory for the monks by means of their religious vows to the rules of the order. They owe it to God and it makes them God’s servants. These prayers are conducted on behalf of the church, and thus they have a liturgical and official character among all those who execute them with the permission of the church, whether they are clerics or not. For that reason the prayer of monks and nuns is of the same value. It is especially in the common prayer that the words of Christ,“Where two or three come together in my name, there I am with them,” are applied in their best and deepest sense. The public prayer of the community is at a completely different and higher level than private prayer. Regrettably, people are too little aware of this nowadays.
The value of the Holy mass
There
is nothing more beautiful, elevated and precious in this world than the
sacrifice of the Holy mass. Jesus himself gave us his Church and his sacraments
as an aid for the restoration of our relationship with God. The best among
sacraments is the Eucharist. We receive this sacrament in the Liturgy.
Christians named it “Mass” due to His imponderability according to its last
words “Ite, missa est!” (Go!). God’s son, who became Man for our sake, is sacrificed in
it for us. His sacrifice is therefore of an unlimited value. Christ endowed His
church, by means of the Liturgy, with a means to visualize His sacrifice anew
for all time.
We give ourselves to God in our prayer, and thus he gives Himself to us in the Holy mass.