I admire monks. I admire their dedication, their willingness to sacrifice in order to grow in holiness. I admire that many monks make a commitment to reach out to the poor and to fulfill Christ’s command to take care of the needy. But, I especially admire their capability to get up in the night hours and the morning hours and complete their prayer unto the Lord.
I have never been a morning person. I used to feel so guilty as an Evangelical that a morning quiet time would simply mean a hazed few minutes staring at a text that made no sense, or trying to mumble prayers for people on my list whom I did not even recognize at that time in the morning. I now feel guilty as an Orthodox that my morning prayers are equally non-existent because I can sit and stare at the same paragraph of prayers for minutes without having it make sense. No, I am truly a zombie in the morning. My dazed eyes are an uncomprehending sea of unwakefulness until, finally, humanity starts creeping up on me. Eventually, my wife can shout, “It’s alive!”
I am an evening person. I can stay up to all hours of the night (not that I do) without a problem. The Pascha Liturgy does not even challenge my ability to comprehend it, because I am at my best in the evenings. It is at that time that prayers make sense to me. It is at that time that ideas for blog posts buzz through my head. Yes, it is only too bad that all our Liturgies could not be evening liturgies because I am at my best then.
Unfortunately, I am writing this in the morning right before I go to the Pre-Sanctified Liturgy. So, I trust this will make sense. Oh, Holy Week is such a challenge. NO MORNING COFFEE! Someone out there had better pray that I wake up all the mornings of this week. Or else, who knows what I might say these Holy Week mornings.
I must share one of my favorite stories:
My senior year at my Protestant affiliated Liberal Arts College I took a small seminar elective on Spirituality in America. At one point we went to spend a weekend at a Catholic Monastery. Surprisingly most of us actually did get up in an attempt to go to the first prayer of the morning. After the prayers they celebrated Mass and being Protestants we were allowed to stand off to the side. The Priest (I think it was the Abbott but not certain) was about halfway through when one of the girls in our group slumped back into the wall and collapsed slightly. The Priest proceeded to speed-talk through the rest of the Mass and then nearly vaulted the altar to check on her and help her up. She was fine; she was tired and had had locked her knees and briefly blacked out. She sat on the floor for the last minute or two while they completed Mass, with nearly all the monks keeping an eye on her the whole time. After they were done one of the Monks walked over to her, reached into a pocket of his robes and pulled out smelling salts in case those would help.
It wasn’t until we really woke up later that we realized how amazing that was and that apparently something like this happens frequently enough that they keep smelling salts on hand.