Before I entered the monastery I fantasized that community prayer would be like praying with the angels. While some aspects of community prayer and some liturgies do invoke images of angelic beings among us, most days our prayer is pretty much a human endeavor. Very human.
St. Benedict addresses mistakes in common prayer today. Although reading Chapter 45 from a modern perspective makes some of his suggestions and remedies seem somewhat harsh, the basic idea he was trying to get across was that prayer requires our full attention. It is not the minor errors that he was trying to avoid (those happen naturally) but the mistakes that are due to inattentiveness. For Benedict, community prayer required everyones full attention.
I need to ask myself regularly if I am being fully present at prayers. Or is it just my body that is present.
Sr. Catherine, OSB
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