Spiritual Life
Ora et Labora — The Benedictine Balance
Work as prayer · Benedictine tradition
The Benedictine ordering of a whole day between the Work of God, prayerful reading and manual labour, so that no hour is empty, no work is severed from prayer, and the day has a shape given to it rather than one it falls into.
Instructions
Fix the hours of prayer first and build the work around them, not the reverse; this single inversion is what the Rule actually legislates. Keep the appointed times when the bell — or the alarm — sounds, laying down what you are doing, because the Rule says that nothing is to be preferred to the Work of God. Give a defined portion of the day to prayerful reading: St Benedict assigns fixed hours of the day to lectio divina, and treats it as work rather than as leisure. Take up manual labour deliberately, however modest — cooking, cleaning, the garden, repairs — since the Rule teaches that idleness is the enemy of the soul and that the brethren should be occupied at set times in labour and at set times in reading. Begin and end each block with a short prayer. Observe moderation in food, sleep and speech, and keep to the schedule even when you do not feel like it: stability and obedience are what make the balance hold. Benedictine oblates live an adapted form of the Rule in the world, under the guidance of a monastery; anyone may begin by writing out a horarium for a single ordinary day and keeping it for a month. Note that the motto ora et labora is a later summary and does not appear as such in the Rule, though the balance it names is exactly what the Rule arranges.
Background
St Benedict of Nursia (d. c. 547) wrote his Rule for monastic communities; its chapters on the Divine Office (8-20), on the daily manual labour and reading (48), and on the reverence due to the Work of God (43) contain the arrangement summarized in the later phrase ora et labora.
Practice kind
Work
Tradition
Benedictine
Frequency
A daily rule of life
Content subtype
work