RB Reflection 25 June 2008

The remaining psalms not accounted for in this arrangement for the day hours are distributed evenly at Vigils over the seven nights of the week. Longer psalms are to be divided so that twelve psalms are said each night.

Above all else we urge that if anyone find this distribution of the psalms unsatisfactory, he should arrange whatever he judges better, provided that the full complement of one hundred and fifty psalms is by all means carefully maintained ever week, and that the series begins anew each Sunday at Vigils. For monks who in a week's time say less that the full psalter with the customary canticles betray extreme indolence and lack of devotion in their service. We read, after all, that our holy Fathers, energetic as they were, did all this in a single day. Let us hope that we, lukewarm as we are, can achieve it in a whole week.

And so ends for days worth of Chapter 18. I am not sorry to see it go. It is not easy to squeeze spiritual meaning out of an arrangement of psalms to be said at certain hours. Especially as it seems that no particular spiritual reason was at work in their selection. But, as Benedict told me in our dialog the other day, it's not the when and how many, it's the psalms themselves which are important.

There is a matter of obedience in this chapter. Benedict sets out the prayers so that we don't have to waste time figuring out what goes where, and when. He also makes certain that we understand there should be no shirking of the full 150 psalms. It's not the psalms he's so worried about, I think, so much as our prayer. Do we pray enough? Do we join our prayer with the church by praying the psalms?

As Lay Cistercian's of Gethsemani we are a varied group of people who keep our rule of life in many different ways. Our meetings are different, our focus in group is different, but we share the charism which is the same no matter what group you belong to. When the Mixed General Meeting of Abbots and Abbesses next year, hears the results of the meeting at Huerta, they will make a decision, and that decision is something by which we must abide.

There is always wiggle room, just like Benedict allows when he says, and I paraphrase without remorse, if someone can find a better way of doing it, then go for it, just get it all said in one week.