2AM Prayer

A couple of people asked why the monks mentioned in a previous post prayed in the middle of the night. It goes back to an old interpretation of the verse in psalm 119 that goes something like, "Seven times a day do I praise you." Benedict determined the first of these, for his community, would be at 2AM or thereabouts, called matins (morning). The second was at 6AM, called prime (first hour of prayer); the next was 9AM, called terce (third hour...), and so on. Phyllis Tickle has a wonderful brief history of fixed hour prayer here. Among other things you'll find out why it was because of fixed hour prayer that the first apostolic miracle happened where and when it did. Steve asked how they knew it was 2AM. I'm not sure we can take this as a literal 2AM (the point being to wake up in the dead of night). I'm not sure when the clock was invented, but I recall that the reason it was invented, ironically, was to facilitate the process of calling monks to pray. Can you believe that? The CLOCK as spiritual tool? We've wandered so far.

Incidentally, I've heard Tickle refer to 2AM prayer as an "excess of religion." I love that phrase.