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Vow, Pray and Pay Study

Jonah 2:9 But I with the voice of thanksgiving will sacrifice to you; What I have vowed I will pay.

Recently American Benedictine Religious Women have petitioned and received from the Vatican permission to shift the language of profession from vows to promise. They have done elaborate and thorough studies to support this initiative. The concerns are to return to the language as stated in Benedict’s Rule and to live the monastic way of life as a whole commitment to a designated community rather than pledge separate vows to God.

In 2002 I asked Colleen Mathews to research the words Vows, oaths, covenants, promises in the Old and New Testaments.

Each of these words are important: A promise is one pledge and seems to have been the preference of St. Benedict.

An oath shows consequences of not keeping our word.

A covenant is to a people and that’s God’s promise and our response is to sacrifice to God. A vow is an explicit God dimension, where promise could be just between humans.

As part of my lectio on the Book of Jonah I lingered with these following passages:

Ps. 50.14 Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving and pay your vows to the Most High.

Ps. 61.8 So I will always sing praises to your name, as I pay my vows day after day.

Ps. 65.2 Praise is due to you, O God,
in Zion; and to you shall vows be performed.

Ps. 56. 12,13 My vows to you I must perform,
O God I will render than offerings to you
For you have delivered my soul from death
and my feet from falling so that I may walk before God in the light of life.

Or in the King James Version: 56.13 For thou hast delivered my soul from death Will not thou deliver my feet from falling, That I my walk before God in the light of the living?

The whole of this study, 13 pp. still needs typing, but the conclusions are these three:

One: Vow, pay and pray in Greek is a play on words that means teeth into words, that become a vow and the vow is paid for by prayer.

Two: To simply insert the word promise, even though that is the word St. Benedict used takes away the seriousness of paying one’s vows to the Lord. A promise seems weak and has no agreement to ceaseless prayer.

Three: The word promise in American English is trite compared to the word vow.
We vow few and serious contractual agreements. Promises are many and can be simple like being on time or sending an email.

It seems that it would be better to use the vow language: "I vow to God in the presence of my superior and community..."