Praying with St Benedict
St Mark's Abbey, Camperdown
Notes from two days of workshops facilitated by Mother Anne at St Mark's Abbey, Camperdown, Victoria, Australia in November 2025
The Rule of Saint Benedict lays out a pattern of life that integrates mind, body and spirit so that we may engage our whole being to ‘pray without ceasing’. It continues to inspire people today and provides much wisdom to guide us as we seek to live God-centred lives in our distracted and media-soaked society.
In these two workshops we explored the ways early Christians prayed, how they laid the foundations for Benedict’s monastic life and what all this might mean for us today. These were practical rather than scholarly workshops with reflections from Mother Anne along with opportunity for discussion, individual reflection and participation in prayer exercises inspired by the practices of early Christians and the Rule of St Benedict.
Notes from Workshop Sessions
- Workshop 1: ‘Pray without ceasing’ [1 Thess 5:17] – early Christian approaches to fulfilling St Paul’s teaching: Session One, Session Two
- Workshop 2: Prayer in the Rule of St Benedict – how the Rule can guide us toward living lives infused with the presence of God: Session One, Session Two
Handouts
- Body Awareness into Prayer
- Prayer Exercises: 'I AM' and 'Lord Have Mercy'
- Lectio Divina and Contemplative Prayer
- A quotation on monastic prayer from Benedictine Abbot André Louf
Introducing Mother Anne
Mother Anne OSB has a PhD in computer science from Cambridge University, UK, and worked for 25 years in the hi-tech world of 'Silicon Fen' (as the area around Cambridge has come to be known). She was involved in early experiments with social media but became disillusioned with the idea that more technology was always a good thing. This led to training in massage therapy and exploration of the relationship between body and prayer. Eventually she followed God's call to live a life of prayer, entering the Benedictine monastic community of Malling Abbey in the UK in 2009. She was elected Abbess in 2020.