This is a Meditation on a chapter of our Way of Life.

Live with Monastic Rhythms to your Days, Weeks, Months, and Years.

Every day is a life of its own. I appear into the newness of the day, born into something new and unknown. Across my waking moments, the day unfolds until the inevitability of my return to slumber. I rise into consciousness just to leave it again.

This rhythmic pattern has been noticed for millennia. Each day is new and welcomes us to begin again. We are not toiling in vain, but learning to walk, move, and breathe with Christ. As we pray the night prayer of Compline from the Divine Office, we recite the words of Simeon.

These are the opening words from the Gospel canticle for Compline. It comes from the Gospel of Luke when Simeon, filled with the Holy Spirit, praised God as he saw the infant Jesus in the temple.

Lord, now let Your servant go in peace.  
You have kept Your promise.

To see ourselves as servants of the Lord. To find peace in our rest. To find peace in our death. To find peace in our coming resurrection into eternal life with Christ. To trust in promises we embrace with faith, not sight. I struggle to hold and embody each of these.

Each time I pray the Divine Office of Compline, I turn my whole self towards Jesus with my last moments of consciousness. It is an embodiment of my trust and faith in Christ at the moment of my death. It is a sample, a taste, and exercise of faith. Faith that must exist beyond what I can see or have ever seen.

Faith is hard. It is hard to hold it both tightly and loosely at the same time. It is hard to trust in what we cannot see. The glimmer and glimpses we get may encourage our spirits, but that fades. When night comes again, and our bodies prepare to rest, we can embody our hope by praying compline. We trust in the faithfulness of our God to sustain us in the promise we have in Christ Jesus. The promise that death has lost, the love of God has won, and that grace has paved a way in hope.

Photo Credit
Paul Prins on 28 October 2024 in Berlin, Germany.