Page:Twelve Years in a Monastery (1897).djvu/175

 baptisms, catechetical instructions, &c.; and in the evening another long sermon with Vespers and Benediction. Speaking from experience I may say that for one man it is as severe a day’s work as can be found in any profession.

Here, however, the monastic clergy have the advantage of numbers. Indeed to the ordinary priest it is not so serious a hardship, seeing that, as will appear subsequently, he has six days to rest in from his one day’s labour, but to monks even the Sunday is not very formidable. Of the six friars in our community there were never less than three at home on Sunday, so that the work was fairly distributed; one sang the last Mass, another preached at it, and a third preached in the evening, and the remainder of the work was proportionally divided.

The Sunday activity of the priest is patent, however, and curiosity is more frequently manifested with regard to the manner in which he spends the rest of the week. It may be said in one word that the daily life of a clergyman is much the same in every religious sect; family relations apart, the Catholic priest occupies himself in a manner very similar to his Anglican brother (or whatever degree of kindred they may ultimately decide upon). The friar, of course, is understood to follow out a very different and much more serious ‘order of the day,’ but here again theory and practice have few points of contact. The rule of the friar, who, in a missionary country like England,