Gotta love those Benedictines!

I am conscious that I have not blogged for a while, and that I have promised to write more about my New Norcia experience, and am still yet to do so. Hopefully this will stop the gap just a little (but only a little, as I have other writing - of a study nature- to which I need to attend more urgently and diligently).

One of the things that I really loved about my time in New Norcia was joining with the monks in their daily Holy Offices (times of communal prayer). In New Norcia, there are 7 Offices observed throughout the day, which are: Vigils (5:15am), Lauds (6:45am), Mass (7:30am), Midday Prayer (12pm), Afternoon Prayer (2:30pm), Vespers (6:30pm) and Compline (8:15pm).

And yes, I did attend all of these each day, AND coped with getting up at 5am each morning!

The style of prayer, which consisted mostly of psalmody (Gregorian chant of the Psalms) as well as some other readings, anthems and canticles for the different liturgies, took a little while to get used to, but once I started to recognise and feel comfortable with the rhythm of it all, there was a lovely sense of just relaxing, and letting the words ascend to God.

There were five UCA candidates in the group who went to New Norcia, and when we returned to Melbourne we were all keen to share some of the prayer we had learned with our community here at the theological college. So the first Friday of second semester, we led morning prayer as a group, and set up the CTM chapel in 'choir formation' (two rows facing each other) and used the Friday Lauds liturgy from New Norcia (which Fr John kindly emailed to me with advice on how we might adapt it to our circumstance.).

That was well received (although with only a single experience, it was probably less than ideal for those who had never experienced such prayer before... after all, those of us who went to New Norcia felt that after a week, we were just starting to get the hang of it). Hopefully we will have the opportunity to do it again sometime.

Tonight, I had another reason the thank the Benedictines. I was asked to lead Evening Prayer at Queen's College Chapel tonight (I was asked this last Sunday, when it became evident that the person who had been lined up to preach and preside had pulled out at short notice, and the chapel coordinator was going to be away). It was suggested that instead of working on a sermon for the night, that we have a service of readings- from Scripture and selected poetry. Then one of the choir suggested that it would be nice to do a Lectio Divina style reading in lieu of a sermon, and this is what I ended up doing.

I basically followed the standard Evening Prayer order of service that is used each week at Queen's, but before the Gospel reading, I gave a brief introduction to the method and aims of Lectio Divina (sacred reading), and then had two sizeable chunks of silence after each of the two readings of the Gospel passage, finishing up with a blessing. After this, I resumed the standard order of service.

The feedback I received from people was that most had appreciated the opportunity to be silent and meditate on the reading (because, let's face it, in the Uniting Church we really don't do silence enough... or well). A number of people also suggested that it would be good to do something similar again sometime.

So once again, I find myself indebted to Fr John from New Norcia, who led our group in two sessions on Lectio Divina whilst we were there; the first to outline the hows and whys of Lectio Divina, and the second to actually DO it in the group. This experience was invaluable for me in preparing to lead tonight's service.