Transcript of Abbot Clement’s Talk on Monday, February 2, 2004
Somewhere in the 20th century in France a cathedral which had the canons they were praying the office. There was a big storm. Lighting, thunder, rain, wind, the place was shaking. The dean, an equivalent to an abbot, knocks and says, "Let’s stop and pray." So is Divine Office a discipline or is it prayer?
Very early in the beginnings of monasticism, there was a document called the Book of Degrees which seems to have been written in the 300's. There it raises this particular question about the Office as prayer. It says there are three churches of prayer. It’s the way it’s described. First is the visible church, next is the church of the heart or Spirit, then the church of heaven.
Listening to Andre Louf and trying to understand what he’s describing took me some time. Then it dawned on me that what he’s talking about is the visible church is simply those who pick up the psalter, the hymns, and the canticles and simply recite them like vocal prayer. There is understanding, there’s participation because after all there’s a grasp of the material but it isn’t owned.
The second church of the invisible, the church of heart and Spirit means that there is a taking on the mind and heart of Jesus in the Divine Office. One is beginning to see that it is true that the poor are honored by God. That God’s mercy is incomprehensible. As this insight increases there’s a change in the person. There’s a beginning to come in touch with the Lord to some degree. This has all kinds of degrees and all kinds of possibilities.
The third church is the church of heaven. Which really is the ability to be present to God in such a way that the things you are praying are actually going on existentially in the world and in the church. It is pretty much what we read in the life of St. Gertrude for one, St. Mechtild for another. It’s when Moses cries out to the Lord about the people and their starvation, the Lord sends quail.
I can’t think of any passage in the Old Testament or the New. Maybe a good example would be the Benedictus. When Zachariah was given his speech back, he proclaims a blessing and a canticle to the Lord and it’s existential, it’s filled with the awareness of God’s gracious goodness. That actually happened.
This is the goal and power of our Divine Office. People ask us to pray for sicknesses, for their health, for their business and all kinds of other things and the Lord does answer them. So it’s obvious that at times we do reach this level. The question is how deeply do we reach it all the time so that our place, our little space in Cleveland, is really a dynamo for infecting the world? If Scott Hahn is right in interpreting the Book of Revelation the real place where the decisions of the world take place is in the Liturgy. Jesus is Lord of lords and King of kings and in the power of the people of God as they pray in the Liturgy, the Lord responds and guides more and more people into the kingdom.
It’s important for us to reflect on what we are doing here and what church do we belong to. The Book of Degrees insists that you cannot abandon the visible, that is vocal prayer level is primary and must always remain. But it is like a springboard from which the other two dimensions continue to deepen and grow.