We are Called to be Stewards of the Tradition of Catholic Prayer

From Dan Conway’s The Good Steward, February 2008

The Church in the United States owes a debt of gratitude to the Benedictine monks of Saint Meinrad for many gifts. For more than 150 years, the southern Indiana monastery has been a center of unceasing daily prayer, a school for the education of priests and lay ecclesial ministers, a beacon of hospitality and spiritual refuge for the thousands who visit there each year, a vibrant place of worship and Church music… and much more. Now, the monks have added to their long list of diverse apostolic works a form of stewardship that is truly distinctive. They have cultivated and generously shared with us the tradition of Catholic prayer.

Religious women and men who follow the Rule of St. Benedict dedicate their lives to prayer and work (ora et labora). They are contemplatives who participate actively in the Church’s ministry. This means they are called to understand, and practice in their daily lives, the rich tradition of prayer that the Catholic Church preserves and carries forward as an integral part of her divine mission. The tradition of Catholic prayer is ancient—dating back to the earliest experiences of the Jewish people throughout the Old Testament, to the prayer that Jesus gave his disciples and the worship of the early Christians, to the Eucharistic devotion of middle ages, the piety of the counter reformation and the diverse spiritualities of the modern era. To be good stewards of this precious heritage requires careful study and prayerful reflection. To share this tradition with others requires personal witness and the lived experience of prayerful people who are also great teachers.

The monks of Saint Meinrad accepted the responsibility to be stewards of the tradition of Catholic prayer when, as missionaries from the Swiss Abbey of Maria Einsiedeln, they established their first foundation in the hills of southern Indiana in 1854 …

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