Chapter 13: Lauds on ordinary days (paragraph 1)
On ordinary days Lauds should be celebrated like this: the sixty sixth psalm should be said with its antiphon but rather slowly, as on Sunday, to make sure that all are present for the fiftieth psalm which is said with its antiphon. (From para. 1 of Ch. 13 of Saint Benedict's Rule, trans. by Patrick Barry, OSB, 1997.)
Rather slowly -- those are the words I respond to here. "Run while you have the light of life!" is one of Benedict's admonitions. Yet he also understands that those of us who would be ardent are often simply absent. I so often take my time to get ready and I run late. And yet, all of this experience can be blessed, too, if I remember what Fr. John teaches, that the purpose of time is to learn patience --with myself and with others. To truly learn patience paradoxically dissolves the concept of time, I believe, so that I could always live ready, always at one, always in the moment.
“On ordinary days . . . “: these words, Abba, remind me that today the Divine Office, like my twice-daily Meditation, can be more than an extraordinary event in my Benedictine pilgrimage in this so highly distraction-filled world you and I live in.
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