A Reflection

Maxine offers her reflection following our retreat one month ago. A few free days following our retreat in Prescott allowed Corps Members to take on disciplines that made sense in their own vocational discernment process. For Maxine, that was visiting a Monastic Community.

I have been thinking a lot about customs and routines lately. Last week was our retreat week, which meant that with most of the house traveling, our cycle of prayer and work were paused for an entire week. My experience of the shifting routines was further heightened by my traveling to the monastery of the Order of the Holy Cross at Santa Barbara, and my experience there of a different community routine.

Due to the common shape of each community's liturgy, both routines begin and close the day with walking to the chapel to say the morning and evening offices of prayers, psalms, readings, and canticles. In both routines all three gospel canticles are prayed daily -- the morning’s Benedictus and the evening’s Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis. Despite differences, the shape of our daily prayer was broadly similar.

The shape of the day and each liturgy was quite familiar, however, the brothers at OHC use an office book made by a Roman Benedictine order, so their translations of these common psalms and canticles were different. I’m familiar with both translations of canticles and psalms in our modernized and traditional language rites, so I’m not completely stuck with just one version, but it was still a shock to hear these songs that were so familiar to me sounding so different. It is comforting to me that our routine is so established that deviation from it, even something as small as the translations of a song can be so affecting.