Chapter 17
Many of the Church Fathers apply to the person of Jesus psalm xc, which in the interpretation of St. Benedict voices all the hopes of the monk. Evi dently long before him, Origen preferred not to put the psalms in the mouth of the Lord. Clearly, too, St. Benedict derived the symbolism of his psalmody from the tradition of the East. And one cannot deny that the psalms, when we pray them as if they voiced our own sentiments, have a direct power of evok ing and expressing the feelings of the sinful as well as of the happy heart.
In the Holy Rule, when the devout monk prays the psalms, he has direct recourse to Christ and not to God the Father. St. Benedict's piety in rela tion to the psalms rests not upon the Augustinian law of the "psalm as the voice of Christ speaking to the Father," but as the "voice of mankind speaking to Christ." In his mind the "God," the "Lord," of the psalms is in the first place Christ. In praying them, it is to him that the monk has recourse; it is to him he turns as to his Lord, his Father, his Teacher, his Trainer, Shepherd, and Physician. It is to him that he prays, to him he gives thanks, to him he turns for help (cf. chap, ii, Excursus I). Prayer direct to Jesus was the most familiar and conventional form with the/early monks. And the roots of this devotion, as we have seen, in so far as it concerns the psalms, go back through the monastic tradition of the East directly to Origen. His sermons to the peo ple contained the most beautiful and intimate prayers to Jesus.
With St. Benedict, then, the psalm remains, as it is in reality, the voice of the human heart, the voice of man's sin and of his happiness, the cry of his distress and of his bliss, of his hope and yearning for security. "Obviously, the psalmody of St. Augustine also remains a legitimately possible variation of Christian devotion at psalmody . . . Wherever in the history of psalm-praying the common folk have chanted or prayed the psalms, it is safe to say that they prayed them always without exception to Christ; only it must have been neces sary ever and again to tell them that the path of the simple prayer of their hearts to the Christian prayer of the psalms was not so very far, and that the way to it was only cluttered up (that is, rough, or made to seem far), so long as one wished to pray them in accordance with the Old Testament meaning of the Scriptural texts, or exclusively in the topological sense of St. Augustine"
(B. Fischer).
SEVENTEENTH CHAPTER
How many Psalms are to be said at these Hours We have already laid down the order of psalmody for Matins and Lauds. Let us now see to the periods of prayer which fol low them.
For the office of Prime, let three psalms be chanted, each with its own Gloria Patri, etc.,'1 not all three under one; but be fore the psalms are begun, a hymn proper to the hour is sung after the Deus in adjutorium meum, etc. At the close of the psalms, a single lesson shall be recited, then the versicle, the Kyrie eleison, and the concluding prayers (missae).2
But at the third, sixth, and ninth hours, the prayers shall like wise be said in that order, viz., the opening verse, the hymn, three psalms at each of them, the lesson, a versicle, Kyrie ele ison, and the conluding prayers.1
Should the community be fairly large, let the psalms be chanted with an antiphon. On the other hand, if the brother- ' Undoubtedly, in the midst of the Arian encompassment (Ostrogoths, Visigoths, and Burgundians), the "Glory be to the Father, etc.," was an impressive profes sion of faith that could not be repeated too often.
2 The term missae (from which we get our word "Mass"), occurring as it does seven times in the Rule (four times in chapter xvii and once each in chapters xxxv, xxxviii, and lx), does not mean here the Sacrifice of the Mass, but is to be under stood in a very general sense as the concluding prayers, (both in the case of the Eucharistic Sacrifice and in the case of the canonical hours). These closing pray ers at the end of the offices were as follows: the Kyrie eleison (then called Litania and addressed most likely to our Lord) and the "Our Father" (St. Benedict called it the benediction prayer;" cf. chaps, xiii and xviii). In chapters xii and xiii, in stead of the word missae, he uses the word completum (— closing), which means essentially the same thing. The weekly servers at table, who received their bless ing at the end of Lauds, were permitted to take a little refreshment (chapter xxv) an hour or so before their stint on weekdays, when there was no Mass; but on Sundays and Holy Days they were to wait until the end of the Eucharistic Sacrifice.
The table reader also asked for a blessing at the end of Mass on Sundays (xxxviii).
The priest-monks, when so ordered by the abbot, could conduct the closing prayers
(chap, lx), namely, the Kyrie eleison and the benediction prayer (Our Father"), perhaps also the customary benediction at the end of the prescribed canonical hour e.g., the benedictions over the outgoing and returning travelers, (cf. chap, lxvii), and over the excommunicated (cf. chap. xliv). The custom of asking and receiving the blessing played an important part in monastic practice, even outside the canonical hours and the penal discipline of the Rule. The monk requested a blessing of the occasional guest (liii); a junior asked his senior for a blessing when he encountered him in the cloister (lxiii); and a superior imparted his blessing to the monk who came to accuse himself of some fault (chap, lxii and Ixxi). The monk lived in the sacred precincts of "God's house." from which everything secular and profane was kept at a distance, and in which a code of mutual respect was considered very important. He received the blessings with a deep bow or prone upon the ground. Under certain circumstances, he begged for the blessing in that lowly posture (cf. chaps, xxxv, xliv, liii, lxvii, and lxxi).
1 This simple psalmody was in order whenever some of the brethren were at work or came too late, so that the community present was too small for the solemn chanting of the antiphons. Today, all the minor hours are chanted or recited with an antiphon, Compline excepted.