Having traced the main lines of the spiritual training of his disciples, St. Benedict now sets himself to organize liturgical and conventual prayer. He begins without any doctrinal introduction; but we may pause to ask ourselves what the Church and the old monastic legislators mean when, whether explicitly or not, they make the Divine Office the central and essential work of the religious and contemplative life. Whatever may be the etymology of the word "religion" (ST II-IIq81a1), it implies, in its broadest acceptation, the idea of a relation towards God. In this sense the whole creation has a religious character. All things, in the very measure in which they possess being, are bound to God their Creator, Providence, and Last End. Ontologically all are true, beautiful, and good; all are in conformity with the ideal of the divine Artificer; all are a created expression of uncreated Beauty; all are in accord with His will and are good of Him and for Him, lending them selves with facility to His designs. The whole of this vast creation speaks of God and obeys Him; it is a sweet song in His ears, a surpassing act of praise. "The Lord hath made all things for himself" (Prov. xvi. 4). Not even moral evil can disturb the harmony of God's plan. Unwillingly and with disgust does creation endure the profanation of the wicked, who would turn it from its end; it groans in this servitude; and while waiting for its day of resurrection and recompense (Rom. viii. 19 sq.) it co-operates in the work of redemption and serves as the instrument of God's vengeance. Nor is all this a mere dream or an exaggerated fancy. Creation as a whole possesses in a true and special way a liturgical character. It resembles the divine life itself: for the Holy Trinity is a temple wherein, by His eternal generation, the Word is the perfect praise of the Father, "the brightness of his glory and the figure of his substance"; where the communion of Father and Son is sealed in the kiss of peace and in the personal joy which is their common Spirit. Glory has been defined as clara notitia cum laude (clear knowledge conjoined with praise); by the twofold procession of which we have just spoken God finds in Himself His essential glory. It is enough for Him; and the glory which He must receive from His works is only necessary on the creature's side; for God it remains accidental and exterior. Yet He may not renounce it: "I will not give my glory to another."

Furthermore, we should notice that this accidental glory of God is only complete on condition that it is at once objective, formal, and expressed. Objective glory is the real manifestation of the perfections of God: all being, all life, all created beauty, whether natural or super natural, is ontologically the praise of God. Formal glory is paid only by rational creatures, who alone are capable of appreciating objective glory and of tracing it to its source; and only in this act do we get religion and liturgy. Without saying anything in this place about the religion of the angels, we may at least remark the truly sacerdotal position of man in the midst of the lower creation. The Apostle says in his Epistle to the Hebrews: "Every high-priest taken from among men is ordained for men in the things that appertain to God, that he may offer up gifts and sacrifices" (v.i). Man himself is taken out of creation, raised above it, and made its priest, so that he may offer to God, in his own name and in the name of the whole world, an intelligent homage. By his very nature an abridgement of the universe a "microcosm," as the ancients put it his function is to collect the manifold voices of creation, as if all found their echo in his heart, as if he were the world's consciousness; and his mission is to give life to all with his thought and love, and to make offering of all, whether in his use of the world or in explicit praise. The religious system of the world is completed and made perfect only in him; he is the link between the world and God; and when this link is broken, then the whole creation is affected and falls: "cursed is the earth in thy work" (Gen. iii. 17).

Man's religion is not aestheticism, nor emotion, nor a blind deference to prejudices of upbringing, nor a cosmological theory, nor self-love and the love of humanity; it is not even "an affirmation concerning matters which lie beyond experience," nor the idea of the infinite; yet all these definitions have been advanced. Religion is a moral virtue, the most noble of all the moral virtues, and is akin to justice. It disposes us to pay God the worship that is His due. And the formal object of this worship, the fundamental motive of all religious acts, is the sovereign eminence of God, His infinite excellence as it is in itself: "We give Thee thanks for Thy great glory," and as it manifests itself for our sake in creation, conservation, providence, and all benefits. If we had leisure to write the history of any religious act whatever, we should note with theologians that it always implies an intellectual appreciation of divine excellence, a humble self-abasement, the will to confess submission, and finally an actual recognition of the divine sovereignty, whether by way of an expressive act and confirmation of some sort, merely internal in character, or by an act which is at once internal and openly manifested. It is this last act which properly speaking makes the act of religion and worship, in which the glorification of God is consummated. However, a liturgy is something more than this; it is the sum of acts, words, chants, and ceremonies, by means of which we manifest our interior religion; it is a collective and social prayer, the forms of which have a character that is regular, definite, and determined.

The raising of man to the supernatural order made his relation to God more intimate and his religion more exalted. Nor has God been content with the priesthood of man for the uniting of Himself to creation. This link was fragile, and it broke; and perhaps God's very motive in allowing it to break was that He might replace it by another priesthood and make another humanity, no longer resting on Adam and on man, but on Jesus Christ and the Man-God. When He consented to run the risks of creation, it was because He was thinking of the incomparable glory that would be paid Him by His Word Incarnate, the Redeemer. It would be easy to show how the Incarnate Word completes the hierarchical series of the three sorts of glory of which we have spoken, how the whole creation, both natural and supernatural, is united to Him and incorporated with Him, the unique and eternal High-Priest, so as to offer to the Holy Trinity a single sacrifice of expia tion, adoration, and thanksgiving, filling both time and eternity. To participate in His death and in His life by baptism is, in reality, according to St. Peter (I Peter ii. 4 ff.), to share in His royal priesthood, so as to co-operate in the great liturgical act of which He is at one and the same time, and eminently, altar, priest, and victim. Nor has the Apostle Paul laid down any other programme for the Christian: "By him therefore let us offer the sacrifice of praise always to God, that is to say, the fruit of lips confessing to his name" (Heb. xiii. 15).

But all particular liturgies centre round, are merged in, and draw their strength from, the collective liturgy of that great living organism the Church, which is the perfect man and the fulness of Christ. The whole life of the Church expresses and unfolds itself in its liturgy; all the relations of creatures with God here find their principle and their consummation; by the very acts that in the individual as in the whole mass realize union with God, the liturgy pays God "all honour and glory." In it the Holy Spirit has achieved the concentration, eternalization, and diffusion throughout the whole Body of Christ of the unchangeable fulness of the act of redemption, all the spiritual riches of the Church in the past, in the present, and in eternity. And as the bloody sacrifice, and the entry of our High Priest into the sanctuary of heaven, mark the culmination of His work, so the liturgy has its centre in the Mass, the "Eucharist." The Divine Office and the Hours are but the splendid accompaniment, the preparation for or radiance from the Eucharist. It may be said that the two economies, the natural and the supernatural, meet in this synthetic act, this "Action" par excellence. So our Holy Father and other ancient writers are well inspired when they call the liturgy in its totality the Opus Dei (Work of God): the work which has God and God alone for its direct object, the work which magnifies God, the work which works divine things, the work in which God is solely interested, of which He is the principal agent, but which He has willed should be accomplished by human hands and human lips.

There are differences and special privileges among those who are consecrated priests and religious by the same baptism. God, by the sacrament of Holy Orders, associates some more intimately with the priesthood of His Son. Others are religious, not merely in the adjectival sense, like ordinary Christians, but substantially and essentially. Every authentic form of the religious life has for its first object the unifying of the powers of the soul, so as to make them combine for the contemplation and service of God. To be a religious is to belong to God alone, by a consecration and holocaust of one's whole self. "Religion, since it is a state in which a man consecrates his whole self and all his belongings to the worship of God, and so to speak immolates all, is without doubt a state of perfection." (ST II-IIq186a1) We can well understand why the Church has entrusted the celebration of her liturgy especially to religious. In fact, apart from rare exceptions or dispensations, the Divine Office remains the first duty of every religious family. Religious, therefore, remain such in substance, even though the Church, desiring to secure full success for apostolic or charitable work, puts it into their consecrated hands. Yet, they are then religious "with addition," in view of work which is superadded and which, though religious because of its motive and relation to God, is not so directly and in its object.

But we monks are religious "without addition," we are religious only; we are given up to God to belong to Him solely. In our life no distraction and division is possible; our work is of the same nature as our life. We are not religious for the Work of God and for study, any more than for manual labour: for then our condition would be far inferior to that of the secular clergy who are directly concerned with souls. We do not deny that a contemplative can and should study; we do not dispute that erudite labours or apostolic works may be lawfully under taken and successfully accomplished by monks. We content ourselves with the affirmation that the proper and distinctive work of the Benedictine, his lot and his mission, is the liturgy. He makes his profession so as to be in the Church which is an association for the praise of God one who glorifies God according to forms instituted by her who knows how God should be honoured and possesses the words of eternal life. He is wholly a man of prayer, and the diverse forms of his activity take spontaneously a religious colour, a quality of adoration and praise. Theologians enquire whether every good act which is performed with the formal design of honouring God becomes an act of religion and worship. St. Thomas, while recognizing a special value in acts which are produced directly by the virtue of religion and are its proper fruit, replies that all acts which are prescribed or determined by it take from this source a religious character. (ST II-IIq81a1&4) Actions of this last sort are innumerable in a religious life; and especially because of the profound and total consecration of our very being to God's service there can scarcely be an act which escapes this transformation, provided the soul is careful often to renew and ratify its profession. "If a man devote his whole life to the service of God, his whole life will belong to religion." (ST II-IIq186a1ad2)

But, beyond this personal and inclusive consecration which we share with all religious, we have, let it be repeated, a special vocation to prayer; the whole practical organization of our life is connected with and converges towards worship. The holy liturgy is for us, at one and the same time, a means of sanctification and an end. But it is especially an end. Our contemplation nourishes itself therein without cessation, and so to speak finds in the liturgy its adequate object and proper term. [See The Spiritual Life and Prayer according to Holy Scripture and Monastic Tradition, chaps, x., xx., xxii., xxiii, By Madame Cecile Bruyere, Abbess of Ste Cecile de Solesmes] This should be well understood. It is not a small matter, even from a practical point of view, to know our end with all exactitude, to find a definition so successful as to include both God and ourselves, His interests and ours, His glory and our happiness, the work of time and the work of eternity. There is no lack of definitions: we are told that our business is to "secure our salvation," "to procure the glory of God," "to realize our sanctification," "to attain union with God and His eternal life." These definitions are precise but of unequal value; though it is true that with a little explanation we may find the fulness of doctrine implied in all, and, for enlightened and generous souls, the first loses its tendency to lead in practice to lukewarmness and a commercial spirituality. The last is the best, and it is the one which our Holy Father adopts, in company with all the ancient writers. But none, save the second, suggests the idea of liturgy. And it is a pity; for after all our union with God is itself ordained for praise.

The supernatural beauty of Our Lord in us, that perfect resemblance to Him which the whole supernatural economy is engaged in forming, that divine imprint which the liturgy like some press is ever stamping on our souls, is not given to us that we should take our joy in it by ourselves, in selfish complacency. If we share more than others in the life and the experience of Him who has for His personal mission to reveal and glorify the Father, it is that we may share in His destiny, may with Him exercise that priesthood of which we have just spoken, may, like the ancients of the Apocalypse casting their crowns, or, like Our Lord on the Last Day, throw down before the throne of God our participated splendour. The value of the act depends upon the value of the agent; the adoration depends upon the adorer. And it is only because God "seeks those who will adore in spirit and in truth" that He has made us one with His Son by means of His Holy Spirit. In the wonderful passage with which the Epistle to the Ephesians begins, St. Paul makes it plain that the supreme end of creation and redemption, of that "recapitulation" of all things in Christ, is the liturgical witness to infinite Excellence and infinite Beauty: "He chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and unspotted in his sight in charity, who hath predestinated us unto the adoption of children through Jesus Christ unto himself: according to the purpose of his will: unto the praise of the glory of his grace, in which he hath graced us in his beloved son." Therefore there is a close connection between the three elements: union with God, the praise of God, the glory of God. Our individual and conventual sanctity expresses itself in that same liturgical prayer which realizes it most effectually; it is our blessedness to enter even here below into the life and joy of our God; it is to make all that created and uncreated being, which comes to us from the Father by way of the Word and Holy Spirit, flow back eternally by this same road of the Word and the Spirit towards its beginning that has no beginning, the Father.

Does our Holy Father speak of the liturgy immediately after describing the individual training of the monk because all our training and all our virtue are connected with our prayer? Is there purpose in this order? We may be allowed to think so, though it would be hard to prove it. What is certain is that St. Benedict has himself defined the monastic life as the "school of the Lord's service"; that he places the regulation of the liturgy in the forefront of his legislation; that he regulates this public prayer with more precision and care than anything else, leaving to individual initiative the measure and manner of private prayer; that he urges us finally "to set nothing before the Work of God." In fact all other monastic occupations depend upon this; the liturgy fixes our whole horarium; it claims almost all the hours of our day, and those the best hours. While a life devoted to study profits by the silence of the morning hours and the mental clarity that sleep has restored to push forward its learned researches at its ease, we for our part set ourselves to repeat the same psalms in the presence of the same God. Would a monk be faithful to the Rule and his conscience who should not give himself readily to this seeming waste, who should as far as possible husband the hours of the day so as to measure out parsimoniously what shall be given to God ? Though our Holy Father calls the Office our servitutis pensum (meed of service), we never consider it as a task or forced labour; and if, at times, in an active and very busy ministry, some clerics are tempted to fulfil the duty of their Office with haste, or even to groan under the weight of this additional burden, there can never be any excuse for the monk to regard the Divine Office so.

What if the world does not understand this work of prayer and does not appreciate its purpose, except it be from an aesthetic standpoint? And yet how few are affected by the real and supernatural beauty of the rites of the Church or the sacred chant! We shall never be tempted so to reduce our life that the world may comprehend it; for our life is what God and St. Benedict and our own free act have made it. Discord with the world is a principle of ours, as old as the Gospel and as old as our Rule: A saeculi actibus se facere alienum (To keep aloof from worldly ways). The world is irreligious of its nature, professedly atheistic, sometimes with an atheism which is measured and knows its limitations, but at others with an aggressive atheism which stops at no lengths and at no measures. If the world does not understand the life of contemplatives, then why does it single them out for its persecution? Because the hatred of him who inspires the world is more clearsighted. Besides irreligion there is the vague religious sentiment of so many Christians, and, in a period of feverish activity and utilitarianism, an almost universal misunderstanding of the function of prayer. Fas est et ab hoste doceri: in the face of this naturalistic and impious conspiracy we are more than ever bound to be religious, completely and solely, and to assert what men deny or forget. And this not in a reactionary spirit, or from rivalry and contrast with other Orders, but from a fine and delicate sense of fidelity. Since we are, by special title, God's religious, we must, so to speak, offer Him compensation, and make our fidelity all the more loyal the more God is deserted: "You are they who have continued with me in my temptations. And I dispose to you, as my Father hath disposed to me, a kingdom; that you may eat and drink at my table, in my kingdom" (Luke xxii. 28-30).

Our ambition goes no farther than that. Yet we believe in the apostolic and social value of our prayer, and we believe that by it we reach directly not only God and ourselves, but our neighbours also. Even without speaking of its secret influence on the providential course of events, is not the spectacle of the Office worthily celebrated a very effective sort of preaching? Since the days of the primitive Church (Acts ii. 42-47) the Catholic liturgy has been a principle of unity for the people of God, and social charity has been created by it. (Read the general Introduction to the Liturgical Year by Dom Gueranger.) Can we hope to see the true and deep solidarity of Christendom restored, apart from that reunion of all around God, sharing in the same prayer and the same living Bread? However this may be, yet we are content to be makers of nothing that is visible or tangible, and to have no other usefulness than that of adoring God. We are glad and content to attain by the Work of God nothing but the essential end of all things, the end of the whole rational creation, the very end of the Church. So to act is to take here and now the attitude of eternity, and to rehearse for heaven; for, according to St. John, the work of those who are admitted into the heavenly Jerusalem is contemplation and a royal service: "The throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it. And his servants shall serve him. And they shall see his face: and his name shall be on their foreheads.... And they shall reign for ever and ever" (Apoc. xxii. 3-5).