I imagine a family spending a quiet evening together in a large house. Four or five of them are relaxing together in the living room in front of the television, and at a certain point, a cell phone rings. It belongs to the father of the family who is in the garage tinkering with his car. His daughter, answering the phone, goes to get him. On her way to the garage, she passes through the dining room and is surprised to find her brother there. She halts a moment to let her eyes adjust to the darkness. She wants to make sure her eyes do not deceive her. They do not. Her brother is there alone in the dining room. All the lights are off and he is pacing meditatively before a set of windows affording a view of a moon-lit night outside. Aware of his sister's arrival, he says nothing. Lost in reverie, he moves silently beneath the darkened chandelier. The girl is uneasy. This scene strikes her as quite strange. How different is life in a monastic family! Tonight, I am hurrying through the darkened Chapter Room on my way to the liturgy office to drop off some music before our Compline prayer service begins. Bro. Albin is there. His figure is barely visible in the dim light cast into the room from the bell tower. He is pacing meditatively along the back wall as I pass through. Neither of us greets the other. In a moment, I have disappeared down the stairs and he is alone again. I am not uneasy. Albin is praying. Actually, I feel a certain wordless exultation as I recall witnessing this same scene hundreds of times over again in the course of my life in the monastery. Bro. Albin is in the Chapter Room because he is about to ring the bell to begin Compline. As bell-ringer, he has been faithfully calling the community to prayer several times a day for twenty five years. It is extremely rare that he is late ringing the bell because he makes a point of arriving in the Chapter Room a few minutes early. Every night, just before Compline begins, he can be found either pacing back and forth in the darkness or seated on a bench near the bell tower reading a book. Albin's family is of Slavic origin and he likes to read the writings of the ancient Eastern monastic fathers in the original Syriac. Since he reads here for brief spells of time several times each day, he is permitted to leave his books on the bench whose pages can be seen faintly glowing in the darkness of early morning or a luminous ivory color when the setting sun streaks them with gold in the evening. The familiarity of his appearance in the dark tonight does not diminish an air of solemnity I sense every time we have this encounter. St. Benedict says, every time we hear the bell call us to prayer we hear the voice of God. Only a saint would dare conceive God as being so humble as to have His voice activated by a rope. A devout heart is overcome by this thought. Maybe it is Albin's devout heart I see bent over in the shadows tonight as a song wells up in my own heart: "Better one day in God's house than a thousand elsewhere! Oh—to live in the house of the Lord all the days of my life!"

Father Raphael