Prayer that issues in service: Benedict, Brother Lawrence and the Reformers on vocation

Program / Course 20: Spiritual Theology / Lesson 6.2

What you will learn

• Explain how Benedict’s Rule joins prayer, work and care for guests and the sick.
• Summarize Brother Lawrence’s teaching on practicing the presence of God in ordinary work.
• Describe the Reformation doctrine of vocation and how it differs from the medieval ranking of states of life.
• Evaluate the biblical teaching that love of God and love of neighbor cannot be separated.

The big idea

The Christian tradition insists that prayer that does not lead to love of neighbor is suspect. Benedict built a rule in which prayer, work, hospitality and care of the sick belong to one life. Brother Lawrence, a seventeenth-century lay brother in a Carmelite kitchen, taught that God can be met in the middle of ordinary work as truly as in the chapel. The Reformers taught that every honest occupation is a calling from God. The three examples differ in setting and theology, and agree that the proof of prayer is in love.

Key terms

Vocation (calling)

In Christian use, the particular way that God calls a person to serve him and others, in work, family and community, as well as in the church.

Practice of the presence of God

Brother Lawrence’s phrase for the habit of turning the mind to God throughout the day, including during work.

Lay brother

A member of a religious order who is not ordained and who does manual labor, such as cooking or gardening.

Works of mercy

In Catholic teaching, acts of charity based on Matthew 25, including feeding the hungry and visiting the sick, traditionally listed as seven corporal and seven spiritual.

Priesthood of all believers

The Protestant teaching that all Christians share in Christ’s priestly calling, so that ordinary work can be offered to God.

Liturgy after the liturgy

An Orthodox phrase for the idea that worship continues in the life and service of believers after the church service ends.

Background

Scripture is blunt about the link between prayer and love. John writes that anyone who says I love God and hates his brother is a liar, for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen (1 John 4:20). James says faith without works is dead (James 2:17). The Old Testament prophets, as Lesson 5.1 showed, rebuke worship that goes along with injustice. In Matthew 25, the judgment turns on who fed the hungry and visited the prisoner.

At the same time, the tradition holds that service without prayer withers. The previous lesson showed how the story of Mary and Martha holds the two together. This lesson looks at three witnesses who held them together in different ways. They come from the sixth century, the seventeenth and the sixteenth, and from monastic, lay-brother and Reformation settings.

A caution about the word vocation. In common speech it means a job or a religious call. In theology it has a long history, and the Reformation changed its meaning. This lesson explains the shift. Course 25 treats the practical shaping of a daily rule.

Step-by-step explanation

Step 1: Benedict: the Work of God and the work of the hands

Benedict’s Rule gives the monastery a daily round in which prayer is the Work of God and labor is the work of the hands. Chapter 48 says that idleness is the enemy of the soul and that the brothers should be occupied at fixed hours with manual labor and at others with sacred reading. He says that when they live by the labor of their hands, as the fathers and apostles did, then they are truly monks.

The Rule also gives much attention to service. Guests are to be received as Christ (chapter 53). The sick are to be cared for before and above every other duty, so that they are truly served as Christ (chapter 36). The abbot is to be a servant of all. In this setting, serving at table, in the infirmary or at the gate is part of the life of prayer.

Step 2: Brother Lawrence: God among the pots and pans

Nicolas Herman, who took the name Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection, was born around 1614 in Lorraine, served as a soldier and a footman, and became a lay brother among the Discalced Carmelites in Paris, where he worked for decades in the kitchen and in repairing sandals. He died in 1691. His teaching survives in conversations and letters collected after his death by Joseph de Beaufort, a priest, and published as The Practice of the Presence of God.

Lawrence taught that he did not need special times of prayer to meet God. He said that the time of business did not differ for him from the time of prayer, and that in the noise of the kitchen he possessed God as tranquilly as when on his knees. His method was to turn to God often, offer each task to him and ask pardon when he forgot. He insisted that this was a matter of love and of simplicity, not a technique, and he did not reject the church’s common prayers.

Step 3: The Reformers: every calling is holy

Before the Reformation, the usual view ranked religious life above others as a state of perfection, and called only priests and monks to a vocation in the strict sense. Luther rejected the ranking. He taught that a Christian is free, bound to no one as a matter of salvation, and at the same time a servant of all, and that a farmer, a mother or a magistrate serves God by serving neighbors through their work. Calvin taught that God assigns each person a station and calling, and that ordinary labor done in obedience pleases him.

Puritan writers developed the idea of calling at length, and later historians have argued about its social effects. The theological point is clear: work done for the neighbor’s good and offered to God is a service to him (Colossians 3:23).

Step 4: How the traditions agree and differ

All three agree that prayer must lead to service and that service must be rooted in prayer. They differ in emphasis. Catholic teaching adds the works of mercy and the evangelical counsels as paths to follow Christ closely. Orthodox writers speak of the liturgy after the liturgy, and quote John Chrysostom’s teaching that those who honor Christ’s body at the altar must not neglect him in the poor. Protestant teaching stresses that all work is a calling and that no human state is holier by being religious.

These differences matter for how a person views daily life, but the main thrust is shared.

Step 5: Dangers on both sides

A prayer that avoids work and neighbors becomes self-indulgent. A service that never prays becomes exhausting and loses its center. There is also a danger in the idea of vocation: it can make a person think any job is a calling, even when it harms others, or that people in hard conditions should accept their lot. Christian writers answer that a calling must be tested by love and justice, and that some conditions should be changed. Brother Lawrence’s approach also has limits: practicing presence is not a substitute for rest, worship with others or attention to people close by.

1. What would it mean for my work today to be offered to God?
2. Where in my life does prayer remain separate from the people I serve?
3. Why might Benedict put the care of the sick above other duties?
4. How do I respond to Brother Lawrence’s claim that God is as present in a kitchen as in a chapel?
5. What is the difference between a job and a calling?
6. How do I know when a calling needs to change?

Examples

Different perspectives

Catholic

Catholic teaching holds that prayer and charity belong together, and lists works of mercy to guide the service of neighbor. The Second Vatican Council taught that laypeople share in Christ’s mission through their work in the world, and affirmed the universal call to holiness. Religious communities keep alive the Benedictine and Carmelite traditions.

Orthodox

Orthodox writers teach that liturgy extends into life, so that worship should issue in service. Many cite Chrysostom’s sermons on almsgiving, and modern Orthodox thinkers such as Alexander Schmemann speak of the world as the sphere in which Christians offer thanks. Orthodox monasteries also often practice hospitality and care for the poor.

Protestant

Protestant teaching on vocation holds that every honest occupation, in the home, field, shop or state, is a service to God and neighbor. Luther and Calvin differed on details, but both opposed a hierarchy of holier states. Later Protestants have also emphasized missions and social service as fruits of faith.

Scholarly view

Historians note that the Reformation’s teaching on calling affected European ideas about work, and that sociologists such as Max Weber argued for a link with the growth of modern capitalism, a thesis which remains debated. Scholars also point out that medieval monasteries were often centers of work, hospitality and charity, so that the contrast with the Reformers is sometimes overdrawn.

Why it matters

Many people feel that their daily work is secondary to their spiritual life. The tradition says the opposite: that prayer is meant to be tested in work and love, and that work can be offered to God. Understanding these three witnesses helps a student avoid both an escapist piety and an activism with no root.

Common misunderstandings

Knowledge check

Think it through

1. Where have you met God in work, and where have you not?
2. What is one task you could offer to God this week as part of your prayer?
3. How would you tell a friend that a job harmful to others is not a calling?

Independent assignment

Offering a day

In your notebook, write 350 to 500 words. Read a few conversations from Brother Lawrence and chapter 53 of the Rule of Benedict. Then describe your usual weekday in a list of tasks, and for three of them write how you could offer that task to God, and how it serves a neighbor. Name one task that you think should change. Do not share this with anyone.

Further study

• Brother Lawrence, The Practice of the Presence of God Read the conversations and the first few letters.
• Benedict of Nursia, The Rule of St. Benedict Read chapters 36, 48, 53 and 66.
• John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion Read the chapters on self-denial and on the calling in Book 3.
• Alexander Schmemann, For the Life of the World Read for an Orthodox account of how worship shapes life in the world.
• Matthew 25:40 As you did it to one of the least of these.
• 1 John 4:20 Love of brother and love of God.
• Colossians 3:23 Whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord.
• James 2:17 Faith without works is dead.