Favorite Order

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The Carthusian Order

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The Order of the Most Holy Trinity and of the Captives
 
If I’d had a calling to religious life, I think I’d have made a good Benedictine Lay Brother, the guys that did more work while the choir monks did more praying. As my life turned out, I was an electrician working on construction sites, but I always saw great similarities between the structure which St. Benedict set forth in his Holy Rule, and the way we ran our jobs. Our daily schedule which we always kept, such as gathering together for breaks and lunch from wherever we happened to be on the job, always reminded me of the monks gathering without fail at set times throughout the day for liturgical prayer. Our chain of command: general foreman, foreman, journeymen and apprentices, always reminded me of the Benedictine structure of abbot, prior, monks and novices. St. Benedict’s sage advice for interacting with each other and for caring about our shared surroundings easily applied to any jobsite on which I found myself. I think St. Benedict made me a better electrician!
 
I attended a high school staffed by Carmelites and then attended Franciscan Univ. I am now on staff at a parish staffed by Jesuits.
 
I chose Benedictines because we are becoming Oblates through St. Meinrad Archabbey.
 
Redemptorists, because of their active-contemplative spirituality and Saint Alphonsus Maria de Liguori. Copiosa Apud Eum Redemptio!
 
christofirst said:
If I’d had a calling to religious life, I think I’d have made a good Benedictine Lay Brother, the guys that did more work while the choir monks did more praying.
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Most abbeys now have abolished the rank of “lay brother”, and all monks whether ordained or not are fully professed monks. All do a share of the labour in our abbey, including the ordained, and all are in choir, including the non-ordained. This is a product of Vatican II which required the orders to return to the charisms of their founders. St. Benedict never made the “lay brother” distinction. Instead it was the product of increasingly complex liturgy due to musical development, more saints, etc, and of creeping clericalism.

That said many of the non-ordained brothers are more manually-inclined than the ordained. But our first abbot, in 1952 when our monastery was raised from a conventual priory to an abbey, was an electrician before going into religious life 😉
 
OraLabora said:
Most abbeys now have abolished the rank of “lay brother”, and all monks whether ordained or not are fully professed monks. All do a share of the labour in our abbey, including the ordained, and all are in choir, including the non-ordained. This is a product of Vatican II which required the orders to return to the charisms of their founders. St. Benedict never made the “lay brother” distinction. Instead it was the product of increasingly complex liturgy due to musical development, more saints, etc, and of creeping clericalism.

That said many of the non-ordained brothers are more manually-inclined than the ordained. But our first abbot, in 1952 when our monastery was raised from a conventual priory to an abbey, was an electrician before going into religious life 😉
Click to expand...
One of the best things to happen to orders in centuries. 👍
 
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