What does it mean to pray without ceasing? Is it really that important to pray as the early Church did? In this installment of The Ancient Practices series, Robert Benson presents a structure for our lives where we can live in continued awareness of God’s presence and reality. A pattern for worship and prayer that is offered to God at specific times throughout the day, the daily office is meant to be prayed by all the faithful so the Church may be continuous and God’s work in this world may be sustained. Yet it is highly personal too―an anchor between the daily and the divine, the mundane and the marvelous. Says author Robert Benson, “At some point, high-minded discussion about our life of prayer has to work its way into the dailyness of our lives. At some point, we have to move from talking about prayer to saying our prayers so that the marvelous that is possible has a chance to appear.” In Constant Prayer is your gateway to deeper communion with God. Expect something new to unfold before you and within you while heeding this ancient call. The Ancient Practices There is a hunger in every human heart for connection, primitive and raw, to God. To satisfy it, many are beginning to explore traditional spiritual disciplines used for centuries . . . everything from fixed-hour prayer to fasting to sincere observance of the Sabbath. Compelling and readable, the Ancient Practices series is for every spiritual sojourner, for every Christian seeker who wants more. Robert Benson is an acclaimed author and retreat leader who writes and speaks on the art and the practicality of living a more contemplative and prayerful life in the modern world. He has published more than a dozen books about the search for and the discovery of the sacred in the midst of our everyday lives. His works include Between the Dreaming and the Coming True, Living Prayer and Digging In: Tending to Life in Your Own Backyard. His writing ranges from books on prayer and spirituality to travel and gardening to baseball and the Rule of St. Benedict. Benson's writing has been critically acclaimed in publications from the New York Times to USA Today toSpirituality & Health to the American Benedictine Review. He is an alumnus of The Academy for Spiritual Formation, a member of The Friends of Silence & of the Poor, and was recently named a Living Spiritual Teacher by Spirituality&Practice.com. In Constant Prayer By Robert Benson Thomas Nelson Copyright © 2008 Robert Benson All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-0-8499-4603-5 Contents Foreword, ix, 1. One True Thing, 1, 2. Ancient Prayer for the Ancient of Days, 15, 3. The Daily of the Divine Office, 27, 4. Praying Upside Down, 43, 5. The Divine of the Daily Office, 59, 6. The Real Currency of Our Age, 75, 7. Lost Between the Daily and the Divine, 91, 8. Praying Alone Together, 105, 9. An Invisible Reality, 121, 10. The Great River of Prayer, 139, Author's Note, 151, Appendix A: Sample Office: Morning Prayer, 153, Appendix B: Additional Resources, 158, Study Guide, 162, Glossary, 170, About the Author, 173, CHAPTER 1 ONE TRUE THING Tell them what you have seen and heard. —Jesus of Nazareth We believe that the divine presence is everywhere.... But beyond the least doubt we should believe this to be especially true when we celebrate the divine office. —The Rule of Saint Benedict I think it would be well, and proper, and obedient, and pure, to grasp your one necessity and not let it go, to dangle from it limp wherever it takes you. Then even death, where you are going no matter how you live, cannot you part. —Annie Dillard I have a friend named Bettie who lives in Alabama. I pray for Bettie by name a lot of days, not because I think that she needs my prayers, but because I want to be sure God remembers that I am a friend of Bettie's. A priest told me once that he did not think God had favorites. But, he told me, with a twinkle in his eye, he is pretty sure God has special friends. If that is true, then Bettie may well be one of them. If I could pray like Bettie, I would not likely be writing this book about these things. This is a book about the most ancient practice of Christian prayer, a way of prayer known as the daily office. It is known by other names as well—the liturgy of the hours, fixed-hour prayer, the divine office, the canonical hours, the divine hours, daily prayer. Its roots are firmly planted in the early Church, and it has become, in recent years, the focus of a great deal of interest among people who grew up in Christian traditions in which such a way of prayer was not a part of their ongoing prayer life. That was certainly true for me. I stumbled into the daily office when I was almost forty years old. And I have never quite recovered. I spent two years as part of a community of sixty-five people known as the Academy for Spiritual Formation. Our Academy met for a week each quarter. We spent our days learning about the history and tr