Bro. Conrad started talking to himself at mid-day meal today. It took all of us by surprise. We were listening to the reader read from the refectory book: "Come Be My Light"; the collection of private letters of Mother Theresa, when suddenly, we heard another voice, mingling in a relaxed manner with the readers voice. It was coming from the head table. The "head table" is where Abbot Brendan sits and where the "ancients"; the oldest monks in the community, sit to his right and to his left. The monks eat in silence, and — to hear a monk talking while the reader is reading . . . well, you just never hear that. I saw half a dozen monks look up and then I turned to glance at the head table. Conrad had finished his skimpy meal, (he never eats very much), and was sitting, hands folded in front of him, head bowed with his eyes closed, contentedly — talking to himself. I couldn't make out what he was saying and it didn't last very long. The abbot, sitting only a few feet away, watched him intently for a moment, and then, with a glance around the room, smiled as if to reassure the brothers. The reader never missed a beat, and Conrad's voice trailed off after a few moments. Conrad is in his eighties. But you don't think of him as in his eighties. Generally, if you ask a visitor to guess a monk's age, they will undershoot by about ten years. Monks are typically, pretty healthy and remain vital and active way into their eighties and nineties. Fr. Daniel is one hundred and three years old and works every morning in the accounting office. Monks don't age like other people. There is something about the monastic rhythm that seems to put time asleep. There is the movement of days --but time seems to stop. A monk's days are happy, uneventful, and robust with a fullness that is hard to account for. Each day follows another and resembles it so closely, you forget what order they were in. Because time can seem suspended in a monastery, you forget you're supposed to be growing old. This afternoon, Conrad started talking to himself and we all sat up straight: "Oh yeah . . . the guy is in his eighties. We almost forgot." What makes a person grow old? Why do monks take so long to get old? To a lot of people, the life of a monk looks like — well . . . being dead already. They are baffled. "I imagine a young person asking: "Why would anyone choose to 'die' to the world before they were actually dead?" You expect a young person to say something like this. I imagine a couple of teenagers milling around together two thousand years ago. It's Sunday, and they're just hanging out enjoying being young and having a day off. Peter and John come running by huffing and panting. They look like they're on their way to some place fun. "Hey — where you guys off too?" "The tomb!" One teenager's face falls and he says: " Ick.", the other, disdainfully: "Yeah — hope that all works out for ya." What are Peter and John running to the tomb for? For the same reason Conrad and Daniel are running to the tomb — Daniel for almost seventy years now. Because there's a rumor going around that when they reach the tomb, they're going to find it empty. What Conrad knows; what Daniel knows is that — if they can see it; if they run to the tomb and see for themselves that He is not there, they will believe and believing they will never die. A man running an errand like this can forget to grow old.

Father Raphael