September Archives
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September 30, 2011
Gregory is about twenty nine years old and just came over into the cloister this morning as an Observer. An "Observer" is someone who lives in the enclosure with the monks for six weeks while discerning a monastic vocation. He has a pleasant and confident smile. I think he also likes his new monk's hood which, I noticed, he had up over his head as he strode into church for morning prayer. Monks don't ordinarily wear their hoods up during the liturgy, and when he looked around and noticed this, he quickly drew back his hood. He will have many moments like this. An "Observer" has to be very observant. At meal time, each of us stands at his place until the abbot begins the prayer. After the closing prayer at the end of the meal, a monk is not supposed to slide his stool under the table, (When forty monks do that, it makes a lot of noise!), he is to gently lift the stool and place it under the table, which is why there is a slot cut in the seat. At New Melleray Abbey, we retain a practice by which monks, passing through the cloister garth, walk close to the wall on one side or the other, and not down the center of the corridor – something which, in the past, was the unique perogative of the Father Abbot. It is permitted to have a conversation in the corridor outside the Novitiate "boot room", where we change clothes, but one is not to talk at all in the boot room itself. Some of this may seem a bit much to those outside the monastery, but such customs and observances have the effect of making a man very aware that he is not alone – there is a community brothers around him whose behaviors and customs reflect a vastly rich tradition going back sixteen hundred years to the origins of monasticism in the deserts of Egypt. You do not live in a monastery alone but with a community, and a cloister has a way of making you very aware, at every moment of the day, that you belong to a community. There are days when that can feel like a burden. There are other days when such complete immersion in a stable community of religiously inspired brothers can feel like a really warm coat with a fur lining – a singular blessing!
Father Raphael
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September 27, 2011
The "Stone House" where I just spent a week in complete solitude looks over several miles of "bluffs" that descend to the Mississippi River. It is an expansive view – a little breathtaking especially in the morning as the sun is coming up. A little glass porch that over looks the river is where I set up my little prayer chapel and spend about an hour each morning praying Matins, the first prayer service for the day in the Catholic "Christian Book of Prayer". Praying the words of the psalms very slowly and very lazily, having no place to be, no responsibilities to perform, the awareness gradually dawns that this is sufficient. It is enough just to praise God and give God thanks. There is something a little scandalous in this suggestion, the scandal Martha adverted to when she said of her sister Mary: "Lord, tell her to help me with the household chores." Jesus, seeing Mary at his feet, listening to him, said to Martha. "Let her be." He said the same of John, his favorite among the disciples. After a full week in complete solitude, I feel a little like John might have felt, having lain with his head on Jesus' breast for a time at the Last Supper. When John sat upright again, he looked at the world and the people around him feeling a little . . . odd. One side of his face was warmer than the other. The sense of returning to the regular routine after having spent eight days completely alone, praying and walking in nature, is a little like this. There is a warmth on one side of my face, having drawn very near to Jesus these past seven days. The sensation will subside. That always happens after a retreat in spite of all efforts to maintain the "glow" and warmth. It cools. Life returns to a more demanding pace. But today, I retain the vision born in solitude; the vision of all creation as one, unified, and radiating from Jesus' heart. And maybe, also, I have an insight into our human condition: it is easy to be happy – you simply give praise and thanks to God. It may not be easy to make one's life this simple, but, having resolved to make one's life simple, it is astonishing how easy it is to be happy.
Father Raphael
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September 19, 2011
After mass, Brother Paul Andrew will drive me to the Stone House, situated on the grounds of the Trappistine sisters monastery, thirty minutes from New Melleray, where I will spend a week in complete solitude. During that time, our soldiers in Afganistan will conduct raids on Taliban strongholds, some will die; some will prevail by heroic acts of courage. Pundits will feverishly debate the ramifications of Sarah Palin deciding to run for president. Men and women will marry, divorce, give birth to children. Others will have their heart shattered by the children they brought into the world, forgive them, be reconciled, and grow in wisdom. All this, while I read, and pray the divine office, or stroll along the creek bed behind the sisters' farm, lingering for a while to enjoy the effects of dappled sunlight on the water while I meditate on the words of a sermon by St. Bernard on the holy name of Jesus. My brothers and sisters in the world will know nothing of me or this week I am spending alone, and if they knew it would be of little interest to them. It is not of much interest to me – except that I am enamoured of this thought that this week I am entering into is like a little death. A monk's solitude is a mysterious participation in Jesus' death. My willing and happy embracing of this little death unites me with Jesus' death, and, breaking me open, confers on my brothers and sisters the fruits of a real resurrection accomplished again by my dying to the world. Dying with Jesus, I become for the world the means for a silent infusion of new life; a witness whose benefit for the world counts and is not counted.
Father Raphael
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September 16, 2011
Fr. Bernard is nearly ninety years old. He has seen a lot of men enter and leave the monastery. Brother Lawrence was only an Observer; someone who lives in the cloister for six weeks to get a first taste of monastic life. After about two weeks, he had left quite suddenly, as sometimes happens to Observers who maybe haven't cultivated a lot of self-awareness up to this point and, finding themselves in their own company all of a sudden in the silence and solitude of a monastery – well, they get a little scared and they bolt. It happens. I didn't think the news that an Observer left a few days ago would make much of an impression on Fr. Bernard. I was just making conversation. But hearing me, his face took on a sad and wistful expression and, after a moment he said: “Have you written to him?” Have I written to him? I was momentarily disoriented. Why would I write to Lawrence whom I hardly got a chance to know, and who scarcely showed us the courtesy of a “good-bye” before he left? Then, after a moment, I thought: “Well . . . because, maybe he's distressed now. Maybe he is concerned that, leaving so suddenly, the monks think ill of him, and since Lawrence is a devout Catholic, the thought that a community of monks had a bad impression of him would be the source of some pain. Maybe, having left so suddenly, he had no clear idea of what he would do next and was feeling anxious and afraid while Fr. Bernard and I are peacefully visiting in the sun room of our beautiful monastery on this blessed evening. Answering Fr. Bernard I said: “Actually, I have no idea where to write to him.” And I don't. But I am writing Lawrence a letter in my heart – I am formulating in my heart a few kind and reassuring words especially for him, my “almost-brother” in monastic life, who remains for me a brother in Christ. When I'm finished I'll give it to Jesus who will keep it in His heart, trusting that, at a moment when he needs it, brother Lawrence will find my letter in the heart of Jesus.
Father Raphael
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September 13, 2011
Just before I went to bed on Saturday night, Fr. Stephen spoke of fears in Washington that there might be an anniversary attack of some kind on Sunday, the tenth anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center. Sunday is an especially quiet day in a monastery. We don't work. We gather to hear a spiritual conference by Dom Brendan at 7:00 in the morning. There is a long quiet interval that precedes high mass. Then the biggest span of free time all week: from the end of the None prayer service at 2:00 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. when Vespers begins. The tenth anniversary of September 11, 2001 was peaceful and very quiet at New Melleray Abbey. The silence we experienced on Sunday – I wish I could share it with the world. I have a feeling many people have never heard it before. There is plenty of silence in the world. There is the silence you hear when bracing yourself in anticipation of something awful about to happen. There is the silence you hear on your birthday – which someone forgot. There is the silence you hear when a glitch at the radio station creates a span of "dead air." On Sunday, we heard a unique kind of silence; the sound of Mercy beyond imagining encircling and gathering to itself the momentous sin of September 11, 2001, and the whole sad history of human sin. We heard that sound – the sound of a world of sin returning to God all in one sweeping movement initiated by God and completed in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. The silence communicated to us the gentle pressure of an embrace faintly registered in a movement among the leaves and a tiny whispering sound you can't hear in traffic or when the t.v. is on. You only need to hear it once. You only need to hear this silence for a moment, and you are confident again.
Father Raphael
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September 10, 2011
I was probably in my mid forties before I really took a long hard look at that old photo of mom as an infant. Captured at just a few months old, back in 1936, her eyes barely open to the light of this world, I was momentarily disconcerted by how tiny and vulnerable the little creature looked – my mother. Every year, on September 8, when the church celebrates the birth of the Blessed Virgin Mary, I think again of that photo, and of the complex feelings it awakens in me. On the Feast of Mary's birth, we celebrate, maybe with a touch of awe, a moment in time in which the movement of salvation history stood at a hiatus for a few years while the Mother of God, in a condition so tiny and helpless, could not speak or clothe or feed herself. Remembering that picture of mom as an infant, and imagining our Blessed Mother, in that condition, I am momentarily at a loss, quite mesmerized by the truth that Almighty God really stepped into our world and into real time in the womb of this tiny helpless creature. Jesus, the Christ, is mysteriously already present in the fragile body of this infant girl whose life could have been ended by a virus, a falling timber, or a glowing ember by chance starting a fire in the straw. Mary and Jesus were born and died – so small. A monk is small. The followers of Christ seem small in the world. And yet, each and every one is a treasured child in God's eyes. And I believe just as God's providence directed every accident in Mary's life, God's providence mysteriously enfolds and guides the burning timbers falling around us today.
Father Raphael
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September 7, 2011
Father Kenneth is in his mid eighties – not someone you would expect to see climbing a concrete staircase two steps at a time. Granted, his progress was slow and deliberate: hand on the knee of his leading leg, a big push, the other leg brought up, hand on the other knee, and another big push. He looked a little like a mountain climber. Or like Jesus Christ. Jesus worked at our redemption. It was a struggle because we gave him a good fight and no "thank-you's" either. Looking at Kenneth, I'm momentarily lost in contemplation of that mystery in the heart of God manifest in Jesus: our Father's mammoth desire for souls. As a monk, I know something about manual labor, something I give myself to several hours each day. All morning, I've been at work on the Mezzanine of the carpenter shop when I see Kenneth coming up the concrete stairs and I leave off my work and stand there staring. He's doing two steps at a time. I've never seen Kenneth climb these steps before. What's going on? What am I watching? Arriving at the top of the stairs, he leans through the door: "Fr. Raphael – it's raining pretty hard outside. Brother Paul and I are going back to the monastery in the car. We wondered if you wanted a ride."
Father Raphael
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September 4, 2011
A gentle buffeting of rain heard on the roof throughout the day today; the sky pressing down, confining the monks within the monastery walls all day long. And so, a cessation of work and busyness, an enchanting quiet and stillness in the rooms and corridors. Most of the monks are out of sight, reading, praying, tinkering in one of the shops. Only a subdued light entering in the windows. My heart is curiously brimming with joy whose source is somewhere below consciousness. "It's good to be here." a voice in me says. I realize it is Truth I am celebrating: "God rains down His mercy on the heads of those who are just and those who are unjust". Jesus' voice, filling my consciousness, enlivens and makes beautiful all the somber impressions of a rainy day. His mercy is especially for the unjust. That's the point! Sitting beside a window for the better part of an hour with a book, I bow my head as though the buffeting of the rain were a benediction and I was a grateful supplicant before the very throne of God.
Father Raphael
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September 1, 2011
Brother Elias quite upset today. "What about the needs of the poor!" He was gesticulating a little wildly as we made our way back to the monastery on the dirt road from the carpenter shop. "Couldn't we have given that money away?" Elias is a postulant who entered New Melleray about six months ago. He is indignant because the monks voted to replace the dinky and fragile "lift" in the guest house with a decent elevator which many of our over night guests rely on. It will cost thousands of dollars. "Typical First World monasticism!", he says with a dismissive gesture. Whoah. I don't like stabs being taken at "First World Monasticism". Yeah – we're not as poor and simple as the monasteries in sub-Saharan Africa, but we are monks, all of us men who could have enjoyed middle class or upper middle class lifestyles. We are contemplatives "inside enemy territory", I mean, in the context of the wealthiest most virulently consumerist society on the planet. It's harder in some ways to be a monk in America than in Africa. We have to discipline ourselves and make conscious renunciations every day in the midst of so much affluence and diversionary entertainment. Besides, the money spent on the elevator is not for us, but for our guests who come to us battered and disheartened by a world that is coming apart at the seams. They too are poor. Yeah – anyway . . . so there.
Father Raphael
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