"Sing a new song to the LORD, who has done marvelous deeds." This is the first verse of psalm 98, which we sing on certain days as the "invitatory" or "wake up!" psalm to begin our morning prayer. It seems a good place to begin to think about the life we lead at St Anselm's, to get to the heart, the foundation of all our activities.

If all prayer is a living dialogue with God, the biblical psalms express that dialogue in a way both poetic and historical. They are the prayer of the people of God, the people called into covenant with God. In poetic ways they express a variety of responses to the marvels of salvation: what God has done, is doing, will do. The psalms range from an intense response of an individual to an expression of the whole community. Their content shows a whole spectrum of feelings, from joy and thanksgiving to humble petition to outraged lament.

How are the psalms "historical?" They come to us from the Hebrew tradition of the worship of those related to God by the covenant of Sinai. They are, however, more than reminders of the past actions of God. They relate the community to God in the present by renewing the reality of the covenant. The ancient story is retold and renews the relationship with God in the present: "Today if you hear God's voice, harden not your hearts."

As Christians we recall the saving mystery of Jesus. We celebrate it in song, praising God for the love revealed in Jesus. It is the same reality that Pope Pius XII spoke of when he described the mysteries of the Christian liturgical year: The liturgical year is not a cold and inert representation of those things which took place in former years . . . Rather it is Christ himself, who persists in the church, and who continues the way of his immense mercy, . . . when he went about doing good, in order to place human souls in contact with his mysteries and make them live through him. (From the encyclical Mediator Dei)

A religious or monastic vocation differs from a lay vocation but each is an expression of the common Christian calling to live in the light of God, to live out one's baptism as God calls one to do. There is a kind of totality as to the means of Christian living that typify the monastic call. For a Benedictine the self-gift that all are called to make is specified by committing oneself to the monastic way of life, in stability, in obedience, in celibacy.

The monastic way of celebrating the liturgy of the hours regularly, in community, every day, several times a day, may seem to some to be very regimented. There is a difficult discipline, but faithful singing to the Lord anew each day becomes a dialogue with God, sometimes with feeling, sometimes not, but always an experience of relationship with the living God. The same can be said of the daily Mass.

This monastic way of relating to God through communal prayer creates a kind of environment, a "place" where we live. There is an ancient description of monastic life as "angelic," but present-day monks do not see themselves as living in a kind of "bubble," like the transparent dome in a hospital which separates a patient from all unhealthy environmental factors. Late and soon the world is inevitably with us. It is in this environment that both monks and laity live out the Christian life.

There is also the aspect of work, work always a part of our social situation here and now. In our tradition most of the monks do some kind of educational work. That can be seen as a response to Vatican II's call to all Christians to confront social evil and promote the common good. In modern times the pace and intensity of work can become all-absorbing. To keep a balance of prayer and work we commit ourselves to periods of individual prayer and prayerful reading of the Bible each day. Regular fidelity to these times of prayer is a way of coming back to the heart of our life, to going deeper in our Christian awareness, our self-giving in love led by the Spirit of the Lord.

Every Christian is called to love God above all and to love one's neighbor as oneself. Many lay people have found the way of St. Benedict as described here to be an excellent and rewarding way to live out these great commandments. A commitment to prayer, to stability, to growth in Christian understanding must of course be expressed according to one's circumstances. This commitment, whether one is a monk or lay person, gives shape and direction to life, to life today with all its complexity and intensity. At heart we are all called to live like Jesus, who "went about doing good." As much as monks lay members of the Church can find "the heart of the matter," the heart of our life in the heart of God revealed in Jesus Christ. They find peace, not in flight from life but by embracing life, in all its complexity, with the help of God's Spirit, leading them from death to life, causing all to sing in wonder: "Sing a new song to the Lord, who has done marvelous deeds."