“I woke before dawn, the whole world asleep, and felt myself held in a clarity I could not name.”[1]

My eyes opened suddenly in the dark bedroom, snapping me out of deep sleep. As the call of nature drew my old body to the bathroom, a clear inner voice commanded: “Contact Jerry. Call Jerry.”

I was familiar with Jerry. His family always sat in the second pew on the right, and I had not seen them for several Sundays. The clock read 3 a.m. I wrote on a yellow sticky note, “Call Jerry,” and went back to bed.

In the morning, before breakfast and coffee, I called Jerry’s home. He was in the ICU at St. Joseph’s Hospital. “Please come.”  With a peanut butter sandwich in my left hand and sipping coffee, I rush through rain slick street, red light signals most of the way, I   made my way through security to the ICU waiting room. The faces of Jerry’s family lit up when they saw me. Jerry had a sudden respiratory attack. His condition was grave.

Jerry’s wife Nancy grabbed my hand, guiding me into the ICU room with their son and daughter. I stood before Jerry, looking down at his sleeping face. Placing my right hand on his head, I prayed in silence. Opening a vile of the Oil of the Sick, I anointed his forehead with the sign of the cross, saying “Through this holy anointing may the Lord in his love and mercy help you with the grace of the Holy Spirit.” Dipping more oil on my index finger I anointed the back of each hand, saying “May the Lord who frees you from sin save you and raise you up.” Jerry’s hands were ice cold with parchment-then skin. Death was coming soon.

I invited the family to join me on the sides of the hospital bed, praying the Lord’s Prayer, slowly, with tears. Finally, I made the sign of the cross over Jerry, praying this final end-of-life prayer, the commendatio animae: “Go forth, Christian soul, from this world in the name of God the almighty Father who created you, in the name of Jesus Christ, the son of the living God who suffered for you, in the name of the Holy Spirit who was poured out upon you. May you live in peace this day, may your home be with God in Zion, with Mary the Virgin Mother of God, with Joseph, and all the angels and saints.”

Whatever holy Presence that awakened me at 3 a.m. that morning: Thank you! Thank you for the great privilege of being with Jerry and his family. For over fifty years of my priesthood, this early morning voice has held my respectful attention.

I shared this experience with my Spiritual Director, Father Eamon O’Gorman, who informed me that the 3 a.m. early morning hour is a thin place, a time of transitions, common to desert mystics, monastics, and spiritual writers.

That night, I lay in bed praying the monastic service of Compline from the Breviary. It begins with confession, an examination of my conscience. I go through the past day, beginning with Jerry and his family, remembering the encounters I have had with each person I met. I see the face of a delivery person with whom I was impatient at Whole Foods. I listened impatiently to one of Jan’s long stories, regretting I was not fully present. I give all of that over to the Lord.

I read out loud the psalms which sing of God’s protection and a caution to be vigilant. Monastics and faithful souls have prayed Compline in earlier centuries when the darkness was fearful. Now I can get up and turn on the bedroom light if I hear a strange sound outside. In the darkness, I lift up my own fears: the fear of Erik dying suddenly. The fear that I would die and leave his care to Janice on her own. The fear of disapproval from people who are dear to me.

There is a hymn that speaks our fears of the night and the hope that the light of Christ brings:

“Now in the fading light of day, Maker of All,

To you we pray that in your ever watchful love you guard and guide us from above.

Help and defend us through the night. Danger and terror put to flight.

Never let evil has its way Preserve us for another day.”

As I pray this service I feel as if God is tucking me in for the night. These prayers also prepare me for the end of this life. The final prayer is: “Grant us a peaceful night and perfect end.”

I have this memory of a common prayer service in early morning darkness.

Mount Calvary Monastery, an Episcopal Benedictine community, was based within an old Spanish hacienda, high in the mountains above Montecito, California. It burned to the ground in a horrific fire about ten years ago. Throughout each day there were scheduled prayer services in the chapel. Around 3 a.m. a bell rang. Shuffling feet walked past my cell.

I joined the monks as we processed down the dark hallway to the chapel, shoes squeaking on the polished wooden floor. Within the dimly lit chapel, and with dark shadows in the corners, two candles burned beside the lectern. Each white-robed monk had a personal chair. One ancient brother pulled the hood up over his bald head in the cold morning. We began in silence, as a Santa Ana wind blew down from the mountains, rattling the heavy Spanish tiles on the roof. Behind the Holy Table a huge glass window revealed the night sky and twinkling city lights of Ventura miles away.

The silence was broken by the lone voice of a monk who chanted one of the psalms for the day. The other monks soon joined in. The monks chanted from memory. They prayed all fifty psalms every week.

The pace was slow in this extended prayer service, including many psalms, scripture readings, collects (short prayers) and litany. I pray from the Breviary alone at home, sometimes falling asleep. Praying with these monks at 3 a.m., there was a synergistic energy within this well-prayed in place.

One of the monks told me:

“This early hour is uniquely open to divine communication because the world is silent and the heart undefended. It is a time when the veil between the physical and spiritual worlds is thinnest.”

Across religious traditions, mystics have described these early hours as liminal spaces, where intuition and divine presence break through. It is a kind of holy wake-up call, inviting us to draw close to the Lord and be open to spiritual messages.

The early desert fathers and mothers were the inspiration for the monastic hours of prayer, the Liturgy of the Hours, that we have today.

Saint Anthony the Great (251 AD–356 AD) is known as the Father of All Monks. We learn about his life of prayer from Anthanasius’ Life of Anthony. Athanasius placed Anthony in the Eastern Desert of Egypt, first living in tombs, then in an abandoned Roman fort, and finally, in his old age, in a cave on Mount Colzim near the Red Sea.

Anthony prayed on a rocky cliff outside his cell-cave in the early morning. The cold desert night was silent, except for the wind moving across rocks, deep darkness, and a vast, open sky above, thick with stars.

This is the primordial landscape where Anthony’s soul was stripped bare before God. Anthony kept watch through the night, standing or sitting in prayer, lifting his hands, and struggling against demonic thoughts and temptations. He wrapped his cloak tightly around his body and prayed aloud the psalms that he knew by heart, speaking slowly and rhythmically.

As the interior demons attacked him, he called out: “Lord, help,” “Have mercy,” and “You are my light.”

This was the hour when the desert is most silent and the boundary between the inner and outer wilderness is thin. Anthony waited for the first hint of morning light, knowing that God had been with him through the night.

The desert mystics nurtured these hours of prayer, and Benedict of Nursia, a sixth-century Italian monk, developed them into the canonical hours we have today in the Liturgy of the Hours. You and I can pray these hours today from iPhone apps like iBreviary and Universalis.


As I approach my 81^st birthday, I have come to welcome the call of nature in the early hours as potential encounters with the holy Presence.

James Hillman, in his book The Force of Character: And the Lasting Life, asks: What is nature’s wisdom and intent with our aging bodies having to endure interrupted sleep and the call of nature? We lie on our beds trying to go back to sleep. We can be visited by demons, as Saint Anthony experienced. Only in this case it can be unwanted fear, threatening shadows, and other dark spirits that normally do not bother us in the daylight. In the dark, we must deal with them.

Monks understand that true spiritual work with God happens through prayer, especially during Vigil prayers performed at night, when such deep connection can only occur in darkness.

Father Ron Rolheiser writes:

“Monks have secrets worth knowing, and nature eventually teaches them to us, whether we want the lesson or not. Nature eventually turns us all into monks. Our aging bodies eventually become a monastic cell within which our souls deepen, mellow, and mature, like wines being seasoned in cracked old barrels.”[2]

In another 3 a.m. event, the voice and presence of God was close, and I spoke out loud: “You know me! You really know me.” A real, holy Presence is with me.

I am lying on my back, staring at the ceiling in the early morning darkness. “Lord Jesus, night demons visit me with memories of past sins and people I have wounded. They can pull me down into a dismal place where I am stuck and you seem far away. I know now that you are always with me. Thank you for your grace and love that carries me through those nights. Thank you for your prompting voice that guides me on the holy path as your priest and servant. Amen.


Resources:

Merton, Thomas. Learning to Love: Exploring Solitude and Freedom. New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 1997.

Saint Athanasius. St. Antony of the Desert. Charlotte, NC: Tan Books, 2010.

Steindl-Rast, David. The Music of Silence. Berkeley, CA: Ulysses Press, 2022.

Hillman, James. The Force of Nature: And the Lasting Life. New York: Ballantine Books, 2000.

Rolheiser OMI, Ronald. On Praying the Hours. February 9, 1997.

[1] Merton, Thomas. Learning to Love, Journals, Vol. 6, 254.

[2] Rolheiser OMI, Ronald. “A Visit from the Goddess of Light.” July 14, 2014.