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The monastic family is directed, by its abbot, who is elected by the community. In general, the abbot’s authority is final. He is required to consult the community before deciding the most important questions and his small council before undertaking matters of lesser importance. The canon law of the Church makes the consent of the community or council necessary before the abbot can do certain specified things, such as accepting candidates and spending large sums.
The abbot presides over the family and directs it, but he cannot attend to all details and so he is assisted by officials who are appointed by him and hold office at his will. The prior, his second-in-command, takes care of the details of the day-to-day life. At need the prior is aided by the subprior, who also acts in the prior’s absence. The training of the recruits is the duty of the Director of Formation. The newly professed monks continue under his care until they have completed their period of religious formation. The cellarer or procurator is in charge of all temporal affairs, in particular of providing food and clothing and other material necessities. The sacristan takes care of the abbey church and all that pertains to the worship of God. In addition to these monastic officials in the strict sense, there will be others, whose functions will be determined by the abbey’s special apostolate.
The Rule specifies that the monks are to devote themselves daily to three activities: solemn public worship, called the “Work of God,” serious reading, and work. The times for each are to be so arranged that monotony and boredom will be avoided and a happy balance will be established in the interest of physical and mental health.
At the heart of being a monk is prayerful study and contemplation.
The Benedictine’s activity of predilection is the Work of God. The community meets in its abbey church several times a day in order to worship God, not merely as individuals, but as a Christian family, presided over by its father. Saint Benedict specified the times and the content of the prayer and his regulations were adhered to until our day. Now however, the Church is permitting individual monasteries to celebrate this office in their vernacular language and to experiment with different forms of this prayer in order to adapt it to changed conditions. At present the monks of Belmont Abbey assemble four times a day: for Morning Prayer, Midday Prayer, for the Community Mass, and for Evening Prayer. Each office consists of the reciting or singing of an appropriate hymn, a number of psalms, the reading of Scripture, and other appropriate works. The emphasis is on simplification and abbreviation instead of the formerly much longer and more complicated structure of the office. The concelebrated Community Mass is the high point of the liturgical observance of each day, not only for the monastic community but also for the students of the college and for many friends who live in the area.
The rest of the monk’s day is divided between serious reading and work, but time is also allowed for necessary recreation and relaxation. In Saint Benedict’s day, the reading consisted almost exclusively of a prayerful study of Scripture and the early ecclesiastical writers, and the work was almost entirely manual labor. But in time a change was introduced. The reading was broadened to include all books of a serious nature, and the work became chiefly the education of youth and the preaching of the Gospel to pagan peoples. Now these two elements of the monk’s day are combined under the term “apostolate,” which denotes whatever pertains to the individual monastery’s occupations.
Dom Knowles says: “Among the direct descendants of Saint Benedict, reading and work have in a manner coalesced. They still remain real elements in every true Benedictine life, and their primary influence must always be upon the soul of the individual monk, but their secondary influence has passed far beyond the cloister into the civilization and education of the West.” Very many Benedictine monasteries, especially in the United States and Britain, devote themselves to the education of youth, on the high school, college, or seminary level. Others have selected the home, foreign missions or pure scholarship as their field of activity.
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