Which Order Prays the Most?

[OraLabora]

I’d have to say it’s the Carthusians. They don’t have the work routine that other orders do, as their entire focus is really on prayer. Lay Carthusians assist with taking care of more mundane details - serving and preparing food, etc.

“Into Great Silence” is a rather amazing movie on Carthusian life. A great book by Nancy Maguire on Carthusian life is called, “An Infinity of Little Hours: Five Young Men and Their Trial of Faith in the Western World’s Most Austere Monastic Order”.

The Carthusians are the “prayer warriors” of the Church. They have charter houses in Europe, and I believe one on the East Coast in the U.S.

After the Carthusians, I would rank the Benedictines and the Cicstercians.

I’ve seen the movie, and also read (and very much enjoyed) the book you cite. Carthusians do work in their cells, chopping wood for the winter for their wood stove, for instance, but they have lay brothers do most of the work of running the monastery (kitchen, etc.)

This used to be the case with Benedictines and Cistercians as well. As the liturgy became more ornate, and took more time, the monks became choir monks and hired lay brothers (often illiterate) to do the manual work.

This was not in the Rule of St. Benedict. St. Benedict wanted all monks to be equal (even specifying that monks who were priests were fully equal to monks who weren’t, except for service at the altar). Most monasteries abolished the practice after Vatican II, and the lay brothers became fully professed monks. There was also some simplification of the Divine Office. Schema A is essentially the same as St. Benedict’s schema but a lot of prayers that accreted before and after the Hours have been abolished. Schema B is a lighter 1-week psalter (no repetitions) and C and D are two-week psalters. This has allowed a better balance of “Ora” and “Labora”.

 

[Blind_Didymus]

Thank you for the information.