Community prayer
Prayer is at the heart of our lay Benedictine spirituality.
We turn up. This is how you can define the heart of our prayer. We turn up for God because by coming together we can express our love and thanks as well as our needs and worries. We turn up for each other to be a support on our life’s journeys.
Introduction to LCSB Prayer
St Benedict centres the whole daily timetable of his monks around the seven offices of the day - fixed times of prayer designed to sanctify different times of the day. In the Lay Community of St Benedict, we pray online several times a day, seven days a week. Members and guests join in as and when they are able. If you're interested in joining our daily prayers, or finding out more, please look at the timetable and contact us.
In our prayer we are centred on the Word of God through the psalms and the scripture. The psalms are the prayers of Christ Himself, who prayed them to the very end of His life. When we pray the psalms, we are in communion with Christians across the world. As Fr Timothy Radcliffe put it, the psalms are outside of time and place. “We may not be feeling abandoned but, for example, our brothers and sisters in Iraq are, and we are praying with them.”
There is also an ecumenical significance in our prayer as we are “a church unified simply in the Word of God” (Dr Rowan Williams). Every Sunday night we celebrate the diversity of the community through an ecumenical service.
We also meet on other occasions - for bible study, reading St Benedict's Rule to see how it may act as a guide in our lives; some of us meet for contemplative prayer or centering prayer; we pray the rosary and some of us meet for creative prayer. And sometimes we gather to pray for a particular intention, whether at Advent, Lent, or for peace in our world.
We are also encouraged to spend time in private prayer “approaching God in a spirit of real humility and a devotion that is open to Him alone, and free from distracting thoughts.” (Rule of St Benedict Chapter 20).
