"So — what was it made you want to be a monk?" Occasionally I run into a young person in the guest house and, out of the blue, they'll pop that question. I'm caught off guard and they stand there looking at me, waiting for an answer. Fr. Severin had been a monk for sixty years when, in his eighties, he got the job of greeting school groups in front of the monastery. One day a school bus pulled up, the door swung open, a vivacious young girl about twelve came bounding off the bus, headed straight for him, looked up at him with big baby-doe eyes and said: "Brother, what made you wanna be a monk?" Severin stood there, poor guy, completely discombobulated, unable to think or or form an intelligible word: "ubb – ugb – lbbmllmm . . " A huge black nun who had stepped off the bus behind the little girl, watched Severin a moment, realized he was in trouble, and gave him a big slap on the back: "It was luuuuuuvvv brutha." I've been in that spot. A teen ager will suddenly say to you "So — wha'd -ya wanna be a monk for?", as if he were saying "Man — how'd you end up married to that lady with one leg longer than the other?" I want to say to him: "Hey — she's my girl." But, I don't know what to say. How do you answer a question like that on the spur of the moment? This morning I'm shaving and I notice there are bags under my eyes and I'm thinking they make me look old. Suddenly, he's there: the skinny guy in his twenties with the long wavy hair looking a little dorky with those big wire-rimmed glasses. It's me. The 54 year old has disappeared. My younger self is there in the mirror, frightfully alive, and before he goes away I need to ask him something. "What ever made you decide to be a monk?" We look at each other a moment. "Where did someone like you ever get an idea like that? You could not have possibly understood the implications of what you were doing — I mean, the long term consequences of a choice like that. How could you have comprehended the beauty and mystery of what you were choosing? I have lived twice as long as you. I know from experience what you chose. What you imagined, I have lived. For twenty five years I have inhabited the dream you conjured up as a youth, and I can tell you, kid — the experience has been immeasurably richer, more mysterious, more quietly resplendent than anything your idealism could have anticipated. So . . . how did a kid from the suburbs ever get it into his head to make of his life something this sublime? I wouldn't have given you credit for it." I get no answer. Is he resisting my efforts to tease this secret out of him? "What ever made you decide to be a monk?" It is the "The Great Silence", the time of morning when monks don't speak and my young companion is observing it perfectly. He looks back at me, smiles a little impishly, shrugs — and says nothing at all.

Father Raphael