This morning at Mass I was struck by a phrase in the reading from Acts 1, "they were continually in the temple, praising God . . ." It reminded me of Bede, who had a great devotion to the Ascension and sang the Magnificat antiphon of the feast just before he died. His greatest work was De templo Salomonis, nominally an exposition of the texts concerning the building of Solomon's temple but in reality a sustained meditation on the life of the Church in which both literal and allegorical interpretations of scripture combine.

De templo is not an easy read. There's a wealth of detail about architecture and, as you would expect, a great deal of number symbolism. Most modern readers find this far-stretched or tiresome, but Bede was anything but a simpleton. His purpose was to "crack the code" so to say, and reveal the mystery hidden within. For him, as a monk, monastic life was a paradigm of the life of the Church as a whole. That is where "being continually in the temple, praising God" comes in. It sums up one aspect of monastic life: our being continually in the presence of God, mindful of him and responding with prayer and praise.

Many people wonder what St Paul meant when he exhorted believers to pray constantly. Some try to multiply vocal prayers throughout the day and hope that by so doing they will indeed be praying constantly. Woodbine Willy is a wonderful example of how such a practice can make a huge impact on others. Most people simply find the idea exhausting. "My work is my prayer," they say; and very often it is the only prayer they make. Some join monasteries and hope that life will be one long liturgy until at last they enter upon the heavenly liturgy. Show them the scullery or hand them a duster, and they look a little puzzled. This is not prayer, surely?

Prayer and work are intimately connected. Work is not prayer in and of itself, although it can be subsumed into prayer. Equally, prayer can be very hard work, as those who have tried to pray year after year, day in day out, will attest. For a Christian, there can be no substitute for those times when we do nothing except concentrate on God. To these private times of prayer we must add corporate acts of prayer. A parish Mass or a monastic Office are alike in this: they are the common worship of the community, and as members of the Body of Christ, we need to take part in them.

What the writer of Acts understood and we sometimes forget is that the body of the living Christ is the new temple in which we live and move and have our being. Everything we do should therefore have something of the nature of prayer about it, not in the sense of repeating a multiplicity of vocal prayers or attending endless liturgies, but in the sense that mind and heart are focused upon God. There will be times when the focus is sharper, times when it is less distinct. That is as it should be. We cannot live always on the heights. It was when the Lord was physically removed from them that the disciples began to see him more clearly with the eyes of faith. Their response was to be "continually in the temple, praising God". However dark or troubled our own perception of God, that can be our response too by virtue of our baptism. God never asks what he does not first give.