Matins

[Lamb]

I was visiting a monastery and for the first time got up for 3:30 AM matins. It was incredibly beautiful, but I almost fell asleep!  The barely lit chapel didn't help. I'm really glad I went though, and I suppose it would be easier to stay awake if I was more used to the sleep pattern. (Except, apparently, the prioress overslept and missed it the morning before I went!! )

What are your experiences with Matins like? Has anyone actually fallen asleep during it? 

[AveMariaPurissima]

My former community didn't pray Matins in the night, but we did have perpetual Adoration.  I definitely fell asleep in the chapel some nights! 

[Luigi]

I've never been, but Thomas Merton apparently struggled with it. As with everything else, he wrote about it.

[Sister Leticia]

I remember that Ruth Burrows, the English Carmelite author, wrote about her struggle with night office in her autobiography. I do recall that she said nuns having their period were exempted for 2 or 3 nights per month, which struck me as a very humane and practical rule. Asceticism isn't about damaging health or inducing exhaustion, so an acknowledgement that there are certain times when the desire to give or do more needs to be tempered by common sense is extremely sensible!

[beatitude]

I was making a retreat with a Poor Clare Colettine community (not in the monastery, in the guesthouse) and I wanted to go to all the Offices. I really struggled with Matins. Once I wake up in the night, I gradually get more awake to the point where I can't fall asleep again. The result was that on my penultimate day I was so tired I overslept dramatically - my alarm clock failed to go off and around eleven o'clock the portress came to look for me! I was still in my pyjamas with bedhead. That was quite embarrassing. I daresay I would be fine once I got used to the routine, but it was tough.

[Lamb]

9 hours ago, beatitude said:

I was making a retreat with a Poor Clare Colettine community (not in the monastery, in the guesthouse) and I wanted to go to all the Offices. I really struggled with Matins. Once I wake up in the night, I gradually get more awake to the point where I can't fall asleep again. The result was that on my penultimate day I was so tired I overslept dramatically - my alarm clock failed to go off and around eleven o'clock the portress came to look for me! I was still in my pyjamas with bedhead. That was quite embarrassing. I daresay I would be fine once I got used to the routine, but it was tough.

Oh, dear!! I'll say that would be embarrassing!

Luckily, the community I'm discerning with slowly integrates postulants into going to matins as they become accustomed to the schedule. 

[HopefulHeart]

I have not prayed Matins. I just want to add that when I happen to wake up in the middle of the night and feel a bit spooked, I find it comforting to think that there are religious praying at that very moment.  

Edited February 2, 2017 by HopefulHeart

[bardegaulois]

I've never actually fallen asleep at Matins during my monastic retreats, but I have missed it a couple of times while my internal clock was resetting from secular time to monastic time. Nonetheless, even after the reset, it made me appreciate more my habit of anticipating Matins and Lauds after Vespers of the preceding day at roughly 2 o'clock.

[MiserereMeiDeus]

In Carmel they don't wake up in the middle of the night. The first community I was in Matins started at 9:15 pm and the other one I was in started at 9:30 pm. I never fell asleep but was very tired, like the other Sisters, at the end of the day. So there was much sacrifice still in just being awake. Saint Teresa in her constitutions wanted Matins at 9:00 to make reparation to console Our Lord because of the sins committed at that hour.

Edited February 3, 2017 by MiserereMeiDeus
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[Guest]

Neither Orders I entered had  Matins through the night.  St Therese used to fall asleep during a prayer time.  I thought it might have been during the thanksgiving time after Mass or a period of thanksgiving for Holy Communion.  Different sites on St Therese indicate differing times she slept.  She certainly had an enlightened attitude toward human weaknesses. 

[MiserereMeiDeus]

1 hour ago, BarbaraTherese said:

Neither Orders I entered had  Matins through the night.  St Therese used to fall asleep during a prayer time.  I thought it might have been during the thanksgiving time after Mass or a period of thanksgiving for Holy Communion.  Different sites on St Therese indicate differing times she slept.  She certainly had an enlightened attitude toward human weaknesses. 

She was great. I heard also that it was during the Thanksgiving. She never believed one had to have lofty thoughts, but instead had these cute images of herself at Jesus' disposal and that He delighted at everything about her human nature. Beautiful example for us.

[Guest]

5 hours ago, MiserereMeiDeus said:

She was great. I heard also that it was during the Thanksgiving. She never believed one had to have lofty thoughts, but instead had these cute images of herself at Jesus' disposal and that He delighted at everything about her human nature. Beautiful example for us.

 Everying, but everything, for Therese was relationship. Both her relationship with God and with others for the Love of God. Although she did not really perfect it, nor even fully arrive at it, until later in her very short life of 24years of age, 8 of those years in Carmel.  Personally, I think she just might have got all the pieces to fit in writing her life story under obedience during her final illness.  What she wrote was indeed the way she lived however.  What I am saying is that insight and clarity into 'her way day by day' came with the writing of her autobiography.

St Therese followed, of course, the horarium of her Carmelite Monastery but she had no attraction at all to any other devotions than that set and prayed by The Church in The Hours (I don't think they rose through the night for Matins - but unsure).  Her statement was "prayer is a simple lifting of the mind and heart to God" and this she did as she went about her day - might be paraphrasing their somewhat, but it's the gist of it.  She also said that The Rosary was one of her greatest penances in Carmel.  Another example of her prayer life was during prayer at times a fellow nun would rattle rosary beads which annoyed Therese intensely, so she offered her intense annoyance to God as her prayer.  Therese for all her young years, was spiritually insightfully creative and a genius of simplicity.

To come to grips with the theology of St Therese from her autobiography, I think one needs to glean out (from what she does share about her life and thoughts) the underlying theology of it all.  After all, she is a declared Saint and Doctor of The Church.  And of course, there are endless reflections available on the internet on St Therese and her theology of spirituality and perfection.   Hers was a very ordinary life of a Carmelite nun (she did nothing outstanding to her sisters in the monastery which was rather concerning to them as St Therese was dying) - but it was an ordinary life lived in an extra-ordinary manner.  That is available to all without any exceptions whatsoever.

Edited February 5, 2017 by BarbaraTherese

[John Paul]

These are the schedules that St.Therese followed:

They prayed Matins at 9pm. This is taken from this website:http://www.archives-carmel-lisieux.fr/english/carmel/

Somewhere on that website it says the sisters were told a good time to pray their rosary was at 8:00pm during the hour of silence.

Timetable of a day in Carmel  in the time of St Therese from Céline’s notes
Summer - from Easter to September 14 Daybreak: 4:45 am Silent prayer: 5-6 am Hours: 6-7 am Mass: 7-8 am Sunday and feast days: mass at 8 am, 1 free hour between mass and the liturgical hours Work: 8 to 10 am Lunch: 10-10:45 am preceded by examination at 09 h45 Recreation: 11-12 am Silence: 12-1 pm Work: 1-2 pm Vespers: 2-2:30 pm		Winter - from September 14 to Easter Daybreak: 5h 45 am Prayer: 6-7 am Hours: 7-8 am Mass: 8-9 am Work: 9-11 am Lunch: 11 am preceded by ex amination Recreation: 12-1 pm (no hour of silence here, only at night) Work: 1-2 pm Vespers: all as previous Collation: in place of supper at 6 pm No hour of silence at noon, but always an hour of silence between 8-9 pm: free time.
Reading: 2:30 -3 pm Work: 3-5 pm Prayer: 5-6 pm Supper: 6-6:45 pm Recreation: 6:45-7:40 pm Compline: 7:40-8 pm Silence: 8-9 pm Matins and lauds: 9-10 pm or a little less Followed by ex amination at 10:15 pm   Bedtime around 11 pm or a little earlier except on feast days where there are parts of the offices that are chanted.		The hand of Thérèse holding a sandglass photo n°20.		During Church fasts Work: from 9 to 11:30 am Lunch: at 11:30 am Recreation: until 1:30 pm Work: from 1:30-2:00 pm Ditto for the rest Fast days of the Order Lunch was then at 11 am. During Lent All the same except: Vespers at 11:00 am before lunch Reading from 2-3 pm: whole hour Sisters of the white veil (converses) got up 1 hour earlier than the community but had to be in bed at 9 pm

[MiserereMeiDeus]

6 hours ago, BarbaraTherese said:

 Everying, but everything, for Therese was relationship. Both her relationship with God and with others for the Love of God. Although she did not really perfect it, nor even fully arrive at it, until later in her very short life of 24years of age, 8 of those years in Carmel.  Personally, I think she just might have got all the pieces to fit in writing her life story under obedience during her final illness.  What she wrote was indeed the way she lived however.  What I am saying is that insight and clarity into 'her way day by day' came with the writing of her autobiography.

St Therese followed, of course, the horarium of her Carmelite Monastery but she had no attraction at all to any other devotions than that set and prayed by The Church in The Hours (I don't think they rose through the night for Matins - but unsure).  Her statement was "prayer is a simple lifting of the mind and heart to God" and this she did as she went about her day - might be paraphrasing their somewhat, but it's the gist of it.  She also said that The Rosary was one of her greatest penances in Carmel.  Another example of her prayer life was during prayer at times a fellow nun would rattle rosary beads which annoyed Therese intensely, so she offered her intense annoyance to God as her prayer.  Therese for all her young years, was spiritually insightfully creative and a genius of simplicity.

To come to grips with the theology of St Therese from her autobiography, I think one needs to glean out (from what she does share about her life and thoughts) the underlying theology of it all.  After all, she is a declared Saint and Doctor of The Church.  And of course, there are endless reflections available on the internet on St Therese and her theology of spirituality and perfection.   Hers was a very ordinary life of a Carmelite nun (she did nothing outstanding to her sisters in the monastery which was rather concerning to them as St Therese was dying) - but it was an ordinary life lived in an extra-ordinary manner.  That is available to all without any exceptions whatsoever.

Thankfully she had that obedience; to write her life. Otherwise we just would have had the newsletter of her life and that only circulates in other Carmels! We wouldn't have even known of her. I could imagine all it would say was she entered Carmel at the young age of 15, lived the life faithfully, fell ill, and died at the age of 24. We would read these things a lot in the refectory when the anniversary day came for a Sisters death. Sometimes so little was known about the Sister that that is pretty much all they would say. Her parents name, when she entered, and then when she died. I think those were my favorites because they could have reached a high degree of perfection and no one will know until in Heaven. That's like when they find the unmarked graves of monks from so many years ago and some of the bodies are incorrupt and we don't know who they were.

[deusluxmea]

I was interested in this bit: "Sisters of the white veil (converses) got up 1 hour earlier than the community but had to be in bed at 9 pm."Does this mean novices?