The raison d’etre of a son or daughter of Saint Benedict IS the liturgy…the opus Dei as Saint Benedict referred to it. The monastic community and the monastic day is centered around the opus Dei…the gathering for the Liturgy of the Hours and for the Mass.
Everything in the monastery is ordered to that purpose, including the work of the monks that is done that constitutes the labora in the motto Ora et labora.
All else being equal, the Benedictine ideal would be a monastery that is self-contained and governed by the Abbot – or the Abbess if it is a community of nuns.
Reformed sons and daughters of Saint Benedict, notably the Trappists, continue to prefer Saint Benedict’s admonition to work with their hands to sustain the community. Benedictines and Cistercians other than the Trappists are more given to sustaining their communities through intellectual endeavours, such as schools, colleges and universities and in accepting to staff parishes at the request of the local diocesan bishop.
The Rule of Saint Benedict, which is eminently readable and readily available online, delineates how the monastic life is to be lived and in so doing, explicates the pillars of Benedictine spirituality.
The practice of lectio divina is an excellent example of Benedictine contemplation within the paradigm of the Benedictine school of spirituality. Benedictine monasticism puts also a heavy emphasis on community and living in community.
Carmelites, at their origin, were eremetical. They lived the life of hermits on Mount Carmel in the Holy Land, under the Bishop of Jerusalem, during the time when Christians had re-occupied the Holy Land. As that historical epoch ended, they became refugees to Europe and embraced a reform and renewal of their community which was modeled on the mendicants and the friars movement.
The Benedictine vows of Obedience, Stability and Conversatio morum are not what is professed by the Carmelite but Poverty, Chastity and Obedience. The Carmelite charism retains its eremetical quality, although that is nevertheless lived out in community.
Although Benedict lived for a time as a hermit, that is not a reality at the heart of Benedictineism.
The Carmelite approach to mental prayer and to contemplation is a more affective approach to contemplative life than the intellectual approach of the Dominicans or the Benedictine approach described above.
The liturgy of the hours will not have the same height of occupation or execution for a Carmelite as for a Benedictine.
Personal practices of ascetism in terms of physical penance, fasting and abstinence, mortification, and mental prayer as part of the path of the spiritual life will be more regimented for Carmelites that for Benedictines.
