Christian C.

Cabrera
L-140525

Sem4 Paper
Religiosity and Spirituality

Attending the Vespers has instilled upon me several virtues that have been
made manifest by the different practices performed in the prayer. I found myself
asking many questions at the beginning of the ordeal is this practiced every day
by the Benedictine priests? Is this required of the priests under their order? What is
this for?
As I subscribe to the idea that asking questions lead to a deeper
understanding of the reality, I entertained these questions although they might be
somehow offensive to the sacred reality. Learning from the brief lecture you have
given us after the ritual, I have come up with a good understanding of the practice.
As I understood the whole Vespers practice, it is a sunset evening prayer
practiced by the Benedictine Monks every day. It is a form of a collective
recollection of faith by the monks to guide them as they traverse their daily battles.
The whole practice by itself is a physical manifestation of the virtue of Temperance,
a virtue of restraint, self-control, abstention, and tempering in order to achieve a
closer connection with the Lord. It is by the daily prayers of the Benedictine Monks
and Priests that they manifest the reality that it is with the guidance of the Lord that
they will truly experience life, and that it is through real prayer that we can truly
assess our day.
The whole practice itself is religiosity, and what is underneath the practice is
spirituality of self-control, restraint, and abstention that leads us to the virtue of

Temperance. It is by these physical manifestation of the virtue that the whole

system of religion and most specifically, the Benedictine order, fulfils its mission of
living life as the Lord has; a life of service and love.