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.)
Starting out slowly, and building to a rhythm over the week, the psalms are like a river of praise. In a similar way, it seems to me, meditation requires patience and fidelity to merge with the divine energy flow of life.
(“ . . . what we are renouncing in prayer is, essentially, unreality. And the pain of the renunciation will be in proportion to which we have committed ourselves to unreality . . .” (John Main, Gethsemani Talks, Kindle loc 362). You are Reality, Abba. You are my real Self. My commitment to meditation, the Office, lectio, is my commitment to you alive, here within me and within everyone I meet today.
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