Lying awake on my bed, recently, at about two in the morning, I was unable to go back to sleep and lay there marveling at the pre-dawn stillness of a Trappist monastery. The magic of the stillness never wears off, because it has the effect of awakening your spirit to an inner stillness that is, well . . . infinite. Suddenly, I had an awareness of movement. I didn't hear anything exactly, but something alive and very close to me was stirring. I heard a faint little "bump", the sound of a door being closed very, very carefully, and then the tiniest "click" of the bolt securing the door shut. Bro. Guerric, whose cell is next to mine, was up, and had just stepped out of his cell. I had made a little discovery — nothing very important but interesting. Guerric, I realized, must be a member of the secret "Pre-Vigil" club. All the monks know there is this "Pre-vigil" cohort, a few monks who get up way before everyone else and are up and about before the community Vigil begins at 3:30 a.m. You know they are there because when you pass through the scullery at 3:15 a.m., there is a fresh pot of coffee brewing. This pot of coffee, this delicate trace of a benevolent human presence is sort of the opposite of a terrorist attack. Everyone benefits, and no one claims responsibility. You will never hear a monk tell you he belongs to this "Pre-Vigil" club. Such behavior might be judged "singular", that is, as departing from the "common life" of the community — not behavior that is generally recommended because of its danger to make a monk proud. Such departures are permitted only with the abbot's permission and, being worked out between the monk and the abbot, are never spoken of outside that context. Most of us are simply not physically capable of lopping off an hour of sleep. I envy those who can do it because the stillness of the night in a monastery is a sacrament. To be alone, awake, and praying in the darkness of a monastery at two in the morning is a summation, a kind of "icon" of the mystery of a monastic vocation. It is a prefiguring of the life of blessedness enjoyed by the saints in heaven. But we monks are aware that this is not a blessedness all people taste. And so, this morning, at the community Vigil, thirty monks stood in two ranks in the darkened church and listened to the Prior, Fr. Neil, conclude Vigils with the prayer: "Lord, as we keep watch with you this night, we commend all people and their lives to you. We remember in particular all those who are working, those who in their suffering cannot sleep, those who use the night to do evil, those who are afraid of the day about to dawn, may they all come out into the light of your day!" We monks are blessed. We are safe. We have the solace of faith — the solace of the church, her liturgy and sacraments. We have each other. We enjoy an ordered life that is traditional in it's vision of life, stable, regular, serene, deeply human and humanizing, and which, over time, quietly sanctifies us. We deserve nothing, and yet are made rich by a God who, like some love-sick fool, heaps rewards upon us in the solitude of this early morning hour. But not all are so blessed. And so, in the darkness of the morning before Christmas day, my brothers and I pray with an ache in our heart and a certain sense of urgency. "Come Lord Jesus!"

Father Raphael