Why the Rest Sit While One Sings, and Their Vigils in the Cells

This canonical round of twelve Psalms we have spoken of they make easier by bodily rest. When they celebrate these services in their usual way, they all sit on very low seats, except the one who stands in the middle to recite the Psalms, and they follow the singer’s voice with the closest attention of heart. For they are so worn out by fasting and by working all day and night that, unless they were helped by some such relief, they could not possibly get through this number standing. They let no time pass idle without some work. Not only do they strive with all earnestness to do with their hands the things that can be done in daylight; they also search out, with careful minds, the kinds of work that not even the darkness of night can stop. For they hold that the more earnestly they give themselves to work and labor, the deeper the insight into spiritual contemplation they will gain, with purity of heart. [a]

So they consider that a moderate allotment of canonical prayers was arranged by God, so that those who are very ardent in faith might have room left in which their never-tiring flow of virtue could spend itself, and yet no disgust would arise in their weary and weak bodies from too great a quantity.

And so, when the offices of the canonical prayers have been duly finished, each one returns to his own cell. He lives in it alone, or is allowed to share it with only one other, whom partnership in work, or training as a disciple and learner, has joined to him, or perhaps whom likeness of character has made his companion. There they offer the same service of prayer again, with greater earnestness, as their own private sacrifice, as it were. Nor do any of them give themselves up any further to rest and sleep, until the brightness of day comes on and the labors of the day follow the labors and meditations of the night.