RB 20 On Reverence in Prayer follows naturally from RB 19 On the Discipline of Singing the Psalms. Our practice of learning the Rule by heart means that these few sentences have been prayed and pondered throughout our monastic lives. They have become quite literally a core teaching (from the Latin word for "heart"), something to which we return again and again. They remind us first of the tremendous majesty of God, the God whom we came into the monastery to seek and serve. God is indeed our loving Father, but there should always be awe and reverence in His presence. When we come into the oratory we show by our whole demeanour that we are in the presence of the Most Holy. The oratory is the most important room in the house, the place where we perform our most important work, receive the Sacraments, take our profoundest need, our deepest joys and sorrows. The heart of each us must also be an oratory where Christ prays unceasingly to the Father.

Benedict reminds us that the dispositions for prayer come from within: profound humility . . . pure devotion . . . purity of heart . . . tears of compunction. Read those lines in Latin and the alliteration alone will make them memorable. They are the attitudes of one who has learned that she is nothing and is no longer bothered by consciousness of her own nothingness: her gaze is fixed on Another. There is a part of the eye where there is no distortion, where we see perfectly. It is called the fovea. Prayer is like cultivating the fovea of the heart, focusing on God alone.

If that seems a bit high falutin' for us as Benedictines, remember that parody of the psalm, "My eyes are always on myself. My feet are always in the snare". We learn principally by our mistakes. As St Bernard liked to point out, humility is usually learned only after we have plunged into the depths of pride. Prayer is a gift that is poured into our hearts at a time of God's choosing and in God's way, often when we have privately decided that this prayer business is not all it is cracked up to be and we'd be better off doing something useful. When we are "disgusted" with prayer, that's when we must stick at it.

There is, as we all know, another temptation, though it tends to come at the earlier stages of getting to know God, the temptation of revelling in moments of joy and consolation, delighting in the gift rather than the One who gives. Benedict will have none of it. Our prayer is "always to be short and pure unless perhaps prolonged by the inspiration of God's grace" and in community "very short". We have little difficulty in making our prayer short, but do we have what it takes to make it pure? That is the challenge of today's chapter. Yet again Benedict has reminded us that however long we may have lived in the monastery, we are beginners all our lives. Prayer is new every day.