The Die Is Cast!

I received a good grade on my first paper, but there's no rest for the wicked. Now I'm focusing on the second, which is to be a liturgical theology of a feast day or sacrament. I've chosen Palm Sunday, and now that i've started the research, so there's no going back now. I'm looking forward to it, actually--to studying the history of this rite and unpacking some of the theological meanings of its texts, symbols, and gestures.

I was talking over dinner with a fellow theological student who went through the discernment process to decide whether or not to take vows to become a Benedictine monk. He decided not to for the present, but he was telling me and another student about the experience of staying in a monastery. We got on the topic of prayer, and he talked about how hard it was, initially, to wake up in the middle of the night (it was 2 or 3 AM) EVERY day to pray. No breaks . . . ever. We moaned in sympathy, but he pointed out that they do go to bed at 8PM. Seeing an opportunity, I couldn't help myself. "Eight PM?" I said. "No wonder those monks are so holy. I figure 90 percent of all my sins have been committed between 8PM and midnight!"

There's something to that, don't you think? I say we all take on a modified monasticism and start going to bed at 8:00 but scrap the middle-of-the-night prayer! Lord help me.