Monastery Rythms in a Mom's Life

Monasteries have ancient rhythms.  Daily fixed-hour prayer has been one of the most prominent features of monastic life since its beginning.  The "hours" noted in the Gospels, the first, third, and sixth, refer to specific times of prayer in ancient Judaism.  Further, St. Luke in the Acts of the Disciples refers to the disciples going to the Temple to pray at set times, showing the integration of this tradition into the beginning rituals of Christianity.


Although the current Roman Breviary contains only Morning, Evening, and Night Prayer (Lauds, Vespers, and Compline), I have set my phone alarm with a Church Bell ringtone to toll at the "little hours" of the day: 9:00am, noon, 3:00pm and 6:00pm.  At noon and six I recite the Angelus, the prayers commemorating the Annunciation.  Three is the Hour of Mercy, when Jesus died, and nine is a reminder to me to offer my workday to God.

Communal fixed-hour prayer "is the sanctification of time." In different words: we are told that we are the Church, one body, with Jesus as our head.  That means all of us, those who are alive now, those who lived before us, those who will live after us. When any two or more of us are praying together, saying the same prayers, in a mysterious way we who are inside Time connect the body with Him our head who is in Eternity, and we bring our "time" into that "sacred Now."

When our children were little we always recited certain family prayers together:  grace before sitting down to dinner; the "Our Father" followed by "God bless. . ." with a fixed litany of people starting with immediate family members and extending out to godparents, ending with "and God bless EVERYbody." But as the kids enter high school our schedules, including bedtimes, diverge and I found we very seldom prayed together.  So now I try to bring my whole family together at night to recite Compline, "bedtime prayers," before the first person goes off to bed, nowadays usually me!

Cloistered Mom

 For those of you who wonder about now-archaic words, "Cloistered (or claustral) life is also another name for the life of a monk or nun in the enclosed religious orders." Enclosed religious (another term for cloistered nun/monk) spend their days in prayer, mostly, and do not leave the enclosed place where they leave.  There are actually physical barriers such as walls and gates between them and the world outside.

Other words that may confuse in this particular vocabulary are "Convent" vrs. "Monastery."  Both have religious women who live in them, in "community" as we say.  The difference is that a convent is home to sisters who minister "in the world," in schools or hospitals or anywhere their particular order is engaged.  A monastery houses a religious community of men or women whose ministry is that of contemplation and prayer.

Across the street from where I work is a monastery of cloistered Dominican nuns.  The buildings are over 100 years old, and typical of traditional monastic architecture.  The chapel is divided in half, with a wall behind the alter that has openings which can be closed off with large wooden doors. Once a Sister takes her final monastic vows, she enters the monastery never to leave again.  Even after she dies, her body is displayed on the enclosed side of the chapel grill, and she is laid to rest in a crypt under the Monastery itself.