On a certain day God springs on the world a surprise so wondrously strange it scarcely registers as a ripple in our awareness. So quiet, so hidden, is this miracle given to a world full of noise that you almost have to be in a monastery to notice it. The surprise is Mary's Immaculate Conception, and today is the day the church celebrates it. Unfortunately, the boiler kicked in late this morning and the church was freezing when we got up at 3:00 a.m. for Vigils. Sitting in choir, I pulled my hood up as close around my ears as I could and buried my goose-bumped arms under fold upon fold of the sleeves of my cowl. By the end of the second nocturn, we had finished singing the psalms, and I was starting to warm up. Kevin stepped up to the lecturn in the middle of the dark church and read how Mary's sinless condition means that, somehow, when she conceived Jesus — he was there already as a gift of singular grace. The grace Jesus came into the world to bring, got to Mary before Jesus did. Funny how you hear something and it triggers a memory. I'm sitting there — and suddenly, it's three days ago. I'm at Sunday morning prayer. I am lead cantor and we're singing the hymn. Kevin is holding the last note of the verse too long, so, I'm having to wait to begin the new verse, and that irritates me. Well — I wont wait. We start the third verse, and I hit the first note hard to make clear who the lead cantor is this week. I've startled the monks; the choir wobbles a moment and then recovers. A heat rushes up through my neck into my face — and then I'm o.k. I got my point across. The community finishes morning prayer and processes to the Chapter Room to hear the abbot's Sunday morning spiritual conference. Afterward, I have to prepare the music for Mass, and take the bell tower stairs to the music room in the basement. Kevin is there. I could speak of the incident in choir — I decide there's no need. But when I enter the room, our eyes meet; I see his brow contract a little and he begins to speak: "Listen – there's something I wanted to ask you. I have the impression the last few days, when we return to repeat the antiphon after end of the psalm — you come in quicker than you have in the past. Are you doing that deliberately?" Replying that I didn't notice what he's speaking of, I change the subject. "What I do notice, brother, is that at the end of the verses of the hymn you are sustaining the last note; longer than me — longer than anyone else in the choir. It's throwing me off at the beginning of the next verse." (I'm not making this up. It's been going on for weeks and I know he is aware of it. I have him!) There is a moment of silence and then I hear: "Right — I see what you mean." His voice is so measured and serene, I have to glance at him. "That's good for me to know — I can watch that — that's something I'll be conscious of from now on." He is finished. The quiet in the room is palpable. Surprise. "“O.k", I thought to myself, " — what just happened?" Here's basically what just happened. I've just been reminded that Brother Kevin is an older and more mature monk than I, probably holier, and that he, not I, is in complete command of this moment. I am lost momentarily in a mixture of quiet amazement, gratitude, and acute self-consciousness. I've been surprised by the mystery of "the grace already there". An image of the Immaculate Conception is being shown me three days before the feast — the mystery that Christ is everywhere and He is everything, and He is loving us unconditionally, long before we notice it. A moment later, Kevin hands me the music for the communion song at mass as if he already knew what I had come for. I manage to meet his eyes and mutter: "Thanks" from a depth in my heart he cannot imagine.

Father Raphael