OK Bellamarie - I too was astonished - this is quoted from the Book...
"There is no hard-and-fast formula for salvation, but the Rule does provide a stable, time-tested way for opening one’s being to the daily call of God that beckons one to a growing, vibrant fellowship with Christ.
The Rule is a document of spiritual wisdom that, taken all together, can help to open the human heart to the mystery of God Himself.
Besides calling for “good order,” the Rule itself tells us that there will always be disorders in monastic (and Oblate) communities and that even (in an ideal community) when there is “good order,” God’s order draws us beyond our limited human conception of order, valid though it may be as a way to live the Gospel. It seems that monks in Saint Benedict’s monasteries regularly disrupted the ideal order.
It was known that monks would “presume to defend their own views obstinately” at community meetings. Some monks even presumed to contend with their abbot. Saint Benedict had to legislate for restraint of speech because there were occasions when monks used “vulgarity and gossip.” Throughout the Rule there are descriptions of disordered situations that Saint Benedict encountered...regulations...passages about the Divine Office may be especially pertinent regarding this matter.
After prescribing the arrangement for Sunday Vigils in great detail, Saint Benedict mentions that it “should be followed at all times, summer and winter, unless—God forbid—the monks happen to arise too late. In that case, the readings or responsories will have to be shortened.”
He likewise instructs the monks that at the beginning of Vigils, Psalm 95 should be “said quite deliberately and slowly” since any monk who arrived after the concluding “Glory be” was to be punished. Thus, while Saint Benedict loathes the disorders of late rising and late attendance and has prescribed penalties for such lateness, he also expresses charity in his readiness both to shorten readings (to avoid monks’ suffering from an excessively prolonged Office) and to do what he can to keep stragglers from being officially late. Above all, charity must prevail! Perhaps God’s order may even require a certain amount of human disorder. The breaking in of His love often demands the superseding of human norms, the embracing of inconvenience, and sometimes even the enormous sacrifice of well laid-out plans so that He can overcome our prideful attachment to apparently water-tight schemes for satisfaction and salvation. He must teach us, too, that we are not self-sufficient."
The author adds his viewpoint at the end of the chapter as a Benedictine living and studying the Rule and the life of St. Benedict -
"However, order alone is not sufficient to bring us closer to God, for His grand order, as revealed by Jesus Christ, is vastly beyond our sense of order.
If, as in Our Lord’s parable about the sower of the seed, we provide only a footpath or rocky ground or thorns and thistles, then we had better work at our attitudes and environment to render ourselves better disposed to obey God. Beyond that, however, we need to be cautious of clinging to our well-established order. We need to be ready to surrender to God’s order. When others take more of our time than we expect, we must extend ourselves in charity, at least for a little while. When others have misplaced items that we need, our reminders to them should be marked by patience and personal concern. When we become frustrated over our own errors, we need to bring to the Lord our fallibility, vulnerability, and littleness and seek the grace to rely on Him more instead of trusting in our own mental and physical skills. Even regarding our sins, while we do need to repent and do better every day, we also need to accept our poor selves in all their miseries and disorders and then welcome Christ to bring us the healing and forgiveness that He so desires to lavish upon us.
Yes, our sense of good order can reflect God’s all-wise plan for us... His rule of love must be allowed to prevail over even our best laid-out plans."
Raila, Donald. Lessons from Saint Benedict: Finding Joy in Daily Life
Just hit me those sleepy monks - the Rule is that daily 1/3rd prayer, 1/3rd study and 1/3rd labor - if the labor in the fields, orchards or sitting with a cow calving - after a few days of heavy labor could be exhausting so the body says hold on - we need sleep to repair some of that exhaustion - I'm remembering after my daughter was born exactly 9 months and 6 weeks after my oldest Peter - back then you had to make formula and in bottles put it in a pot with water to steam for 15 minutes which sitting on the sofa was enough time for me to fall sound asleep waking up to smelling rubber burning - water boiled away and the pot exploded - formula was dripping from the double height ceiling (converted Barn) with a nipple hanging at the end of each formula stalactite.
All I had was two small bottles of sterile water and for the first 6 months of her life Katha incessantly cried (I thought it was a natural reaction to her difficult birth) but no bottles to even start over. Husband drove into town and started pounding on the door of Drugstore at 5: in the morning - woke druggist who lived upstairs - he was so accommodating and before 6: had a fresh batch of formula on the stove- All to say that sometimes the body takes over regardless good intentions to wake as required.
