My sister-in-law Debbie is a petite, small boned woman, so maybe it's not surprising that, giving birth to a child for the first time, there were complications. I guess you could call Debbie psychologically "petite", as well, and the scene in the delivery room (she was fully conscious throughout) was pretty scary. There was the physical experience of her body convulsed by contractions—the little boy inside her raging against an obstacle he could not see and which might cheat him of a chance at life. There was the growing concern, anxiety, and finally, fear on the faces of doctor and nurses assisting her. The expression of her obviously panic-stricken husband was the hardest to watch. After an ordeal of several hours, which doctors weren't sure Debbie would survive, my nephew Nathaniel was brought into the world, healthy and strong. While Nathaniel's birth certainly took first place as the "gift of God's grace" that day, another gift of grace came which continues to inspire awe in me twenty years after the event. Debbie told me that on the delivery table during those terrible moments she was wondering if she might die—she was thinking about the monks. This remark was made casually, almost as an "aside", and the significance of her words didn't sink in for some time. She was thinking about the monks? That's what she said. Now it would have been no surprise to hear Debbie say she was thinking about her mom or her dad, or her sister Sarah whom she is very close to. Her husband was standing right next to her, and it would come as no surprise that she might fix her mind on him at such a frightening moment. But monks? She said she was thinking about the monks. Debbie is not a devout person. She's not a Catholic. She isn't actually very well acquainted with the monks whom she only meets and chats with twice a year when the family visits me. Now, if I had known she was having a crisis delivery, I would have put a prayer request on the board and told her husband I had done it so that he could tell her. But I knew nothing about the terrible episode until days after it was over. There was another thing that puzzled me. Debbie didn't say, "I was thinking of you Raphael." She didn't say, "I was thinking of Brother Malachi" or "Remembering that saintly Brother Severin". She mentioned no monk by name. She made no reference to an attachment to any particular monk. At a moment she might have died, Debbie was consoled by the thought of "the monks". This conversation with Debbie changed my understanding of the enclosure of the monastery. Monks are enclosed. We separate ourselves from the world, make ourselves invisible behind high walls, practice silence, aspire to be "forgotten", and by these means make of ourselves professional "nobodies". But the cloister we inhabit is the heart of Jesus, and this cloister has arms, living arms. Without the monks even consciously choosing it or knowing what is happening, these living arms can reach out to a terrified young woman in a delivery room in a city hospital far away, grasp her, embrace her, and hold her tiny frame, wracked with pain and fear, right up against the infinitely compassionate heart of God.

Father Raphael