Once upon a time, in what feels like another life, I was a missionary with Life Teen. I lived in community with other missionaries and families at Camp Covecrest, in Tiger, GA. It was there I first encountered St. Benedict. We missionaries lived by a Rule of Life modeled after the Rule of Benedict. It was many things, but what I appreciated most was how freeing it was. Having a Rule of Life put everything into perspective and right order, which made decision making easier. We were encouraged to be intentional about all that we did, and our days were structured around Benedict’s trinity of prayer, work, and study. We had a holy hour every morning, prayed Liturgy of the Hours three times a day, and had formation class. In addition we gave retreats, worked kitchen duty, and did all manner of service. Living in community is not for the faint of heart, and calls one to holiness if only because of the ways that personalities rub up against each other. But it was an amazing, beautiful, raw, year of tremendous growth for me.
My life looks incredibly different now than it did than. I haven’t made it through an entire holy hour in years, though we do attempt to take the kids as often as possible. I can no longer spend hours in the chapel each day with the Lord, and my daily structure is built around the needs of little people.
Spiritually, it has been a struggle for me to make peace with that. I miss the chapel. I am by nature someone who prays best in front of a monstrance, in the quiet of an adoration chapel. It’s tough for me not to compare my prayer life now by the yardstick of the past, when I had so much time and energy to devote to prayer and prayer alone. I beat myself up for not praying more, sacrificing more, finding more time. And to a certain degree, that’s good. I should be consistently checking to make sure that I am putting the Lord first in all I do. But what I have been failing at, is the comparison, and I’ve been putting the Lord into a box because of it. He is absolutely calling me deeper, but that deeper looks very different now than it did 10 years ago.
A few months ago, Mark and I were given a set of booklets from the Knights of Columbus’ Building the Domestic Church Series. Our parish was thinking of purchasing them in large quantities and wanted some feedback from couples. We’ve been diving into them and reading them slowly, and each one has been full of practical, positive ways to improve the domestic church and build our family’s faith life. But the one I have loved the most is a little essay called St. Benedict for Busy Parents by Fr. Dwight Longenecker.
I firmly believe that the saints come into our lives as we need them, and St. Benedict’s reappearance in mine has been balm to my soul. It has been interesting to delve back into Benedictine spirituality through the lens of motherhood, and I’ve found that so much of the riches found in Benedict’s Rule are applicable to my life and my heart today. I have underlined whole pages of the Fr. Longenecker’s writing, and it would be impossible to do it justice with a summary, so I’m not going to try. There is so much to learn and pray with, especially about the three Benedictine vows. Please, please, please, look it up and read it yourself. You won’t be sorry.
What I do want to share is small paragraph that I have been turning over in my mind and pondering in my heart. Fr. Longenecker writes of Benedictine prayer that, “instead of a single great service each day the monks punctuate the day with prayer. The monastic day is punctuated by prayer so that the monk learns to refer to God many times throughout the day- and that prayer is not just for when he is in the chapel or praying the Divine Office.”
This paragraph, so simple at first glance, struck my heart profoundly. My biggest struggles in prayer as a mother have been because I have been fighting against this very notion, the idea that punctuating life with prayer is not only valuable, but necessary. In my head, I’ve set up the idea of a weekly holy hour and large chunks of time for prayer journaling and spiritual reading each day on a pedestal, and I’ve fallen for the lie that spiritual growth can’t and won’t happen without it.
Those things are well and good, and I’m not going to stop striving to make time for them. But here’s the truth that God has been speaking to my heart lately- He has plans for me. He is growing me and pushing me and forming me in ways that would not have been possible a decade ago when I was a missionary. My prayer life is meant to echo my stage of life.
Right now, what He’s asking of me is to offer Him my piles of laundry and dishes, the education of my children, the third time I read the same story in a row, the moments spent listening to Gram reminisce. Those moments are the moments I can be a channel of God’s grace to my family, to our little domestic church. The more I focus on the Lord, the more I remember to stop and say the quick prayer that begins the Divine Office, “God come to my assistance, O Lord make haste to help me” as I begin a task, the more aware of how He is already working I become. He is working in my children’s hearts, in my husband’s medical training, in my Grandmother in her final years, in my parish, in my neighborhood, and I have the opportunity to be a part of that, to work with Him in His vineyard.
Ten years ago I loved how practical Benedict was when he wrote his Rule, how down to earth and realistic he was about human nature. I love it even more today and am grateful for the friendship of St. Benedict, who is a model for even those outside of a monastery.