frequently apply himself to prayer: Orationi frequenter incumbere 1. He says furthermore that a brother who wishes to pray by himself after the recitation of the Divine Office shall have leisure to do so 2. Again he writes a very beautiful though short page upon the qualities which prayer ought to have3. Nowhere, however, does he fix for his monks one hour rather than another to give themselves to private prayer. There are people of a certain turn of mind who cannot refrain from evincing their surprise at this: but they are wrong. The existence of the monk, such as St. Benedict has organised it, with its separation from the world, its solitude, the Divine Praises, holy reading, is in view of creating, and at the same time supposes, a life of prayer. The holy Legislator did not therefore feel the necessity of determining one hour or half hour for the exercise of prayer. Monks who live in perfect obedience to the prescriptions enacted by St. Benedict necessarily attain to the life of prayer. In the conception of the holy Patriarch as in that of all monastic tradition, prayer is not simply a transitory isolated action accomplished at such or such an hour and having only a virtual relation with the other actions of the day; it should be the very breath of the soul without which there is no true inner life. But when a man lives this life of union with God, he quite naturally consecrates an interval of specified time during the day for communing specially with God, for the soul that loves God wishes to be united with Him in a more exclusive manner at certain moments. This hour of prayer is as it were the intensifying of the life of prayer in which the soul habitually moves.

No day should pass without our applying ourselves to this prayer, for our holy Father desires that "daily in prayer" cotidie in orationi, we should confess our sins to God. Even "frequently" in the day, the monk should turn to God to commune with Him, Orationi frequenter incumbere. Moreover, according to the Rule, the monk is to consecrate two to four hours a day to "holy reading 5 ". This last expression has, with St. Benedict, a very elastic meaning, allowing of the possibility, foreseen for certain souls, of devoting a very long time to prayer.

We know too how the holy Patriarch has himself set us the example. Each day he poured out his soul before God in sublime prayer which was the well-spring of magnificent

1. Rule, ch. IV. — 2. Ibid. ch. LII. 3. Ibid. ch. xx. — 4. Ibid. ch. IV, 5. Ibid. ch. XLVIII.

graces. It was assuredly whilst he was in prayer that God one day showed him the entire universe gathered up as it were in one ray of light1; it was as a sequel to his prayer that he raised to life a monk crushed by the falling of a wall, and, at another time, the son of a peasant; again it was during prayer that he saw the soul of his sister St. Scholastica ascend to Heaven under the form of a dove 4.

If then we want to be true disciples of the great Patriarch, we must often give ourselves to prayer, in view of that life of prayer which he certainly desires each one of us to lead. Our Blessed Father, in fact, has no other aim than to cause us to find God: Si revera Deum quaerit 5. As we said in our first conference where we tried to show the greatness of this aim, we shall only attain it by the entire gift of ourselves. We quoted the words uttered by St. Catherine of Siena on her death-bed; we cannot truly possess God, said she, save by giving ourselves to Him by an undivided love. But the Saint immediately added that she had also recognised "that without prayer one cannot arrive at that state where the whole heart is given to God without ever taking anything back". There is nothing in this that ought to astonish us. Man is naturally weak and unstable, and it is only in habitual contact with God by means of prayer that he practically learns the emptiness of created things in themselves; and the plenitude of God Who, alone, is worthy of the whole of our love. Therefore our Blessed Father wishes us to give ourselves frequently to prayer in order never to lose sight of the Sovereign Good nor let ourselves be turned away from Him by the ephemeral attraction of the creature.

We have need of prayer to keep ourselves constantly at the height of that seeking after God which constitutes our vocation. When Our Lord called us to the monastic life, He illumined us with the light of His Spirit; we understood in this Divine light that He is the Supreme Good and we left all to follow Him. On the day of our profession, we, in the simplicity of our hearts, "joyfully offered all these things upon the altar: In simplicitate cordis mei, laetus obtuli universa. We vowed stability, conversion of our manners and obedience: this act constituted a supreme homage of love and adoration, extremely pleasing to God. If throughout life we could maintain ourselves in the dispo

1. S. Greg. Dialog. lib. II, c. 35. 2. Ibid. c. II. 3. Ibid. c. 32. Ibid. c. 34. - 5. Rule, ch. LVIII. 6. Life by Bl. Raymund of Capua. 7. I Par. XXIX, 17.

4.

sitions we had at that moment, we should become real saints. This is absolutely beyond doubt. Now, only an intense life of prayer can keep us unfalteringly in this attitude of unreserved self-donation. Two reasons will con

vince us that this assertion is well founded.

First of all, the life of prayer makes us live constantly in that Divine light whereof a ray enlightened us on the day of our monastic vocation and profession. Shut out from this light, we should come little by little to have no longer any esteem for the thousand details of religious life, which is meaningless if it is not supernatural; and, on the other hand, religious life is too much opposed to fallen nature, for a man to be able to bear it long without Divine help. It is from this light that we draw the strength and joy for the practice of the abnegation of which our life is composed; that we nourish our hope of one day attaining to God; that we find the love which makes us love Him here below in faith.

The second reason which flows from the preceding is that the means we have of ever tending to God and remaining united to Him, the Sacraments, Mass, Divine Office, the life of obedience and labour, only attain the summum of their efficacy if we lead a life of prayer. All these means are valuable and fruitful only if we do not put any obstacle in the way of their action, but bring to it the interior dispositions of faith, confidence, love, compunction, humility, and abandonment to God's will. Now it is above all by the life of prayer, by habitual union with God in prayer, that we gather strength to thrust obstacles aside and keep ourselves in dispositions favourable to grace. A soul that does not live this habitual life of prayer needs a great effort each time it wants to be recollected and to arouse the affections upon which, generally speaking, depend the fruitfulness of the supernatural means that we have for sanctifying ourselves. On the other hand, a soul that leads a life of prayer never lets the Divine fire go out but keeps it ever smouldering; and when the regular hours of prayer or moments of inspiration arrive where this fire is put more directly or more exclusively in contact with grace occurs in the Sacraments, the Holy Sacrifice, the Opus Dei, the orders of obedience, the trials sent or permitted by Godthese smouldering embers burst into flame and become a glowing furnace wherein the soul sees its love for God and the neighbour increased and transformed, sometimes in a very high degree. Love of God being the only source, and

as

its intensity being the only measure of the fruitfulness of our acts, even of the most ordinary ones, the life of prayer which maintains and increases this love within us, becomes the secret of holiness for us.

You see how right our Blessed Father is in telling us to apply ourselves often to prayer. It is by the faithful and frequent exercise of prayer that we come gradually to lead this life of habitual union with God in view of which St. Benedict has established everything in his monastery : Dominici schola servitii1.

II.

I have elsewhere commented at length 2 on the nature of prayer and pointed out the elements that constitute it. Taking it for granted that we have grasped the substance of the teaching on prayer let us content ourselves here with touching upon some points that concern the characteristics of prayer, such as we find them in the letter and spirit of the Rule of the holy Patriarch.

Prayer, as we have said, is the intercourse of the child of God with his Heavenly Father; thereby we adore Him, praise Him, tell Him our love for Him, learn to know His will, and obtain from Him the necessary help for the perfect accomplishment of this will. Prayer is the normal outcome, under the Holy Spirit's action, of the affections resulting from our divine adoption.

This definition affords us a glimpse of the primary qualities which prayer ought to have. If prayer be the conversation of the child of God with his Heavenly Father, it will bear the impress both of a high degree of piety and of a deep reverence. Indeed for the child of God, for the brother of Christ Jesus, no tenderness, no intimacy is too great, but on the condition that it be always accompanied and sustained by a sense of unutterable reverence before the immense majesty of the Father: Patrem immensae majestatis. This is to adore the Father in spirit and in truth 4.

And it is this double character St. Benedict requires in his Rule. What does he tell us, in fact, in that chapter on the reverence we ought to have at prayer? He would have us first of all " offer our supplications to the Lord God of all things with all lowliness and purity of devotion:

1. Prologue of the Rule. 2. Christ, the Life of the Soul, 2nd Part., ch. X, Prayer. 3. Hymn. Te Deum. 4. Cf. Joan. IV, 23.

"

that is the note of reverence. We are to draw near to God with that sense of respect before His infinite perfections which is expressed by a humble attitude and the longing to be pure in the presence of holiness itself. St. Benedict knows of and wishes for no better manifestation of this reverence than tears of compunction shed in remembrance of faults whereby, miserable creatures as we are, we have offended a God full of majesty tears accompanied by entire purity of heart.

He wishes our prayer to be pure and short unless he adds, and here comes in the note of submission of heart proper to an adopted child of God — " it be perchance prolonged by the inspiration of Divine grace": Nisi forte ex affectu inspirationis divinae gratiae protendatur 1.

Our holy Patriarch requires then that we come before God with respect and humility, as befits creatures, and creatures who have sinned; but this deep reverence which holds us prostrate before Him in all submission, does not prevent the heart from opening out, under the movement of the Holy Spirit, in confidence, love and tenderness. This confidence is so much the surer in that it rests exclusively on the goodness of our Father in Heaven.

In the Prologue, our Blessed Father recalls these Divine ords 2: My eyes will be upon you, and My ears will be open to your prayers, and before you call upon Me, I will say unto you: 'Behold, I am here!' What can be sweeter, dearest brethren," the great Patriarch immediately adds, "than this voice of the Lord inviting us and shewing unto us the way of life?"

Thus appears the double aspect of piety as St. Benedict understands it. These affections are both necessary; they are inseparable, as our condition of creatures and our character of children of God are inseparable. If an unrestrained familiarity, forgetful of reverence, is perilous, fear, separated from confidence, is not less so; each of these two attitudes is a wrong done to God: irreverence, to His infinite sovereignty servile fear, to His boundless goodness.

This reverence and this confidence are possible and are maintained only if we take care to prepare ourselves for our intercourse with God. Some might say: Since it is the Spirit of Jesus Who prays within us, we can come into God's presence without preparation. To think in this way, would be to make a great mistake; we cannot expect the 1. Rule, ch. xx. — 2. Cf. Ps. xxxIII, 16; Isa. LXV, 24 ; LVIII, 9.