Monastery Visit and Retreat July 6-13, 2022

 This was an unusual visit in several ways.

For one thing, there was less of the usual daily routine and more special events. For another, I had to take a break and go home for a memorial service, and I was away from the monastery for about 28 hours on Saturday and Sunday.

As you may recall, the normal routine involves lunch and dinner taken in the refectory without talking, while one of the monks reads from a book — except on Sunday evenings when dinner is either in the cloister yard or in the chapter room, with conversation among those present.

This year, however, a man was admitted to the novitiate on Friday, with a festive lunch following in the cloister yard. The on Saturday a novice took temporary vows, followed by another cloister yard lunch. To top it all off, on Monday, another monk took his permanent vows‚ attended by maybe 180 family and friends, followed by a reception in the courtyard and a big lunch. Since Monday was the Feast of St. Benedict, we also had a festive outdoor dinner that evening. The result was that I got two lunches (Thursday and Tuesday) and three dinners (Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday) in the refectory with silence and table reading. Breakfasts were also a bit unusual. The monastery is in the midst of bringing in new kitchen staff, and the usual eggs were not available. Cereals, breads and toppings, and juices were available. Breakfast is always assembled by each individual from the available materials.

All the festive meals increased my time for visiting with the monks but cut into the time available for reading and pondering the books I had brought for my retreat — Entering the Twofold Mystery: On Christian Conversion, by Erik Varden, and Life is Messy, by Matthew Kelly. The Kelly book is based on a time of great difficulty in his life and basically encourages us not to let ourselves be defeated by the bad stuff. It's based on his journals from the time, and feels a bit repetitive.

Varden was abbot of a Trappist monastery in England,* and the book comes from talks he gave to the monks. It may seem unconnected with life "in the world," but there are lessons to be applied. One is about obedience. Monks don't just have to do what the abbot tells them. They also should obey one another. It's a good point for all of us: when someone needs us to do something, we should be willing to help. My other major takeaway has to do with "murmuring," which St. Benedict considered one of the worst vices in a monk. It can undermine a community because instead of speaking to the abbot or the person being complained about, the murmurer sows bad feelings among others, thereby creating disunity. When we resent what someone else gets, when we focus on what we wish we had instead of realizing the good we do have, if we start grumbling about it, it can disrupt the groups we're part of. So we should be aware of our feelings of envy or discontent.

All in all it was a very worthwhile and enjoyable visit/retreat.

*He later bacame a bishop in his native Norway.

Monastery — Summer 2019

My summer visit to the monastery this year took place in two installments: June 23-25, and July 10-13. Since the days at the end of each stay are not complete periods of 24 hours, I was actually "on campus" for just over two days in June and three days in July. I wanted to be there on June 24 to celbrate the feast day of the birth of St. John the Baptist, who is my patron saint. In July, the important days were the 11th, which is the feast of St. Benedict, and the 13th, which is the feast of Emperor St. Henry II, who is the patron saint of Benedictine oblates, among whom I count myself. St. Henry's day is of such a low rank in the church calendar that no notice is taken of it in the official prayers, but it's still the day.

Big days like St. Benedict are observed not only in the prayers at Mass and during the other services but also with a festive dinner. In summer, weather permitting, it is held in the cloister quadrangle. The final prayer service of the day, compline, follows, and after that the monks go to the kitchen to store the leftovers and wash everything. I enjoy joining in.

If you've read some of my earlier posts, you know that the day generally begins and ends with prayer services (psalms, mostly) and during the day there is Mass and two other services, as well as breakfast, lunch, and dinner. In between, there is a total of about nine hours when I can read and meditate on a spiritual book or two, read a "secular" book, glance through newspapers in the chapter room, take a nap, stroll around the campus, and take pictures. I can do more reading after compine until I go to bed.

During this visit, I only used two books: Wrestling with God, by Richard Rolheiser, which I had begun on my visit in December 2018, and Building a Bridge, by James Martin, S.J.

Benjamin Hettrick was made a novice on July 10 (before I got there) and given the name Celestine. Yes, he's named for Celestine the Benedictine monk who was elected pope and resigned after 5 months in office in 1294. It seems that Dante may have disapproved of the resignation and consigned him to the outer circle of Hell, but the Church disagreed and canonized him. Brother Celestine explained to me that he sees Pope St. Celestine as a good example of humility: he realized that he was unable to perform the duties of the papacy and so resigned for the good of the Church.

At one of the festive outdoor meals, I was sitting with the prior and the novice master. I told them about Fr. Christopher's insistence, some 40+ years ago, that nudity is not inherently "dirty." I then added that during hot weather, when I am alone at home, I enjoy "the Christopher privilege." The prior said, "Eww," and the novice master said, "Too much information."

I tried to post a couple of pictures, but couldn't get them to show. Maybe I'll try again sometime.