Sunlight shimmers on the surface of a small lake. Atop a nearby ridge, a massive church casts its gaze across the rolling terrain of southern Indiana. Such is the setting of St. Meinrad Archabbey.

           This evening, I join a group of fellow retreatants to pray with the monks inside the massive church. Though the sun will not set for another hour, the monks will head for bed following Compline, the closing prayer of the day in the Liturgy of the Hours. Their early retirement will provide them the rest needed to rise again at 2 AM for another session of prayer called Matins.

           My companions and I take our seat in a section of the church separate from the monk’s choir stalls. We watch as a line of silent monks file into the sanctuary. Their hooded shadows fall against stone walls and granite columns. Near the altar, candles flicker like firelit torches. I can’t help but think of prehistoric hunters gathering around a fire inside a cave.  

           The older monks move with bent postures, their gait punctuated with jolts of arthritic pain. Other monks—many of them young—stroll the aisle with subdued reverence. Despite their youth, their expressions appear worn and tired and I wonder what sort of labor occupied their day.

            Once situated inside their individual stalls, the monks begin to chant a series of psalms. The tone is solemn, the pace is slow, and pitch is a bit off-key. The dissonance irritates me but, halfway through the second psalm, it begins to feel ordinary and quaint, like the frayed edge of a winter blanket or the familiar slump of a broken-down mattress.

           And why not? This nightly routine is but the monks’ version of family prayer: murmured petitions offered at day’s end when shoulders slouch, voices rasp and sacred scripture scrubs the soul like tepid dish water.

           I glance at the vaulted ceiling. My spirit lifts. I thank God for these monks and their day-in and day-out praise of God and intercession for the world. Beneath arches edged in gold, their chant drones like the sound of distant traffic, a rumbling reminder of the necessity of work-a-day realities: shift work, fast food, poultry barns, railroad crossings, punch clocks and loading docks.  

           Ora et labora. Prayer and work.

           The combination that keeps the world turning…and body and soul together.

            Good night, good brothers. Pray for me. And I’ll pray for you!