Mt. Saviour Benedictine Monastery is on Monastery Road, in Pine City, New York, halfway up a mountain somewhere between Corning and Elmira. It's a working monastery. The monks farm, care for a flock of sheep, selling the wool they shear, and also "raise" bees to make honey, which they sell. Their ages begin in the forties and go into the eighties. Growing older doesn't mean that they stop their manual labor.
Brother Bruno, with whom I corresponded to "book" St. Peter's Farmhouse, a small stone house, dating from the 1860's, for a week, is seventy-five. He's the beekeeper, helps with the sheep, runs the tractor, bales hay, is a mechanic, and registers people (he registered me online) whenever he has a spare minute. He came up to us briefly in the Church, a tall, thin man. "We're Paul and Mary Weisenburger," my husband introduced us.
"I know," was his terse response. Not unkind. A simple economy of words for a man whose words mostly flow out during the singing of Office throughout the day, beginning with Vigils at 4:45 AM, Lauds at daybreak, then Sext at noon, None at 3 PM, Vespers in the evening, and Compline at nightfall. Time for sleep, then life and prayer begin at 4:45 AM with Vigils again. I saw a weather-beaten face, a flash of bright blue eyes. Roughened hands gently showing Paul the pages for Vespers. One finger bandaged. And I had written him that at seventy-two and seventy-nine we were too old for hard labor! I felt ashamed. Later, seeing him in the gift shop, I told him that. He shrugged his shoulders and said that he'd been here doing this hard work since he was nineteen. "I'm used to it," he said. Humbly.
But, I thought later, God calls each of us to our own distinctive hard labor. Paul and I do hard labor too, out in the world. I should not compare our life - or our spirituality - to the lives of these monks in their long black and grey and white habits who endure extreme heat and humidity and extreme cold and snow. We deal with the extremes of people's sorrows and griefs - and our own - the tepidity of those who don't worship, the freezing cold of those who reject God. The hard endurance of sharing familial and parish tragedies and ongoing physical and mental illnesses and deaths and financial woes.
Then, later I thought to myself: these monks are a large, committed, diverse family as well, from different races and ethnic backgrounds. Paul and I have our own family, our church family, our friends, our Deacon family. These monks have each other and care for each other in sickness and health, in living and dying. Each time we prayed with them, impelled to Church by the ringing of a bell, I watched as they came one by one into the Church for prayer, one old monk using a walker, and a tall gentle monk with a sweet smile who helped him get settled, adjusted his clothing, placed his walker carefully to the side.
The monks also have the responsibility and care of visitors who stream in and out of various residences throughout the year, each bringing their own burdens. They have the financial worries of an uncertain income. As they sat around the altar and gazed at the laity, priests, deacons, people of various faiths and no faith who sat opposite them, gazing back, did they wonder about our fears, sorrows, and joys, our times of doubt and anger, as we wondered about theirs?
These monks and we who live "out in the world" are not so different. We may live surrounded by and committed to different circles of people, different flocks. But we are all fragile, fallible human beings, reaching out, calling, sighing for God. They are wise enough to hem their days and nights with prayer so that they and their lives don't unravel. Their work around their monastery, close to the earth, close to the animals and birds, close to the weather, close to the rhythm of the change of seasons, is also prayer. No wonder they seem so peaceful. They are aware enough through prayer to see God in all people and all things.
God, our Shepherd, is present in these monks' lives and in ours. We, of such different lives, are called to pray for each other, support each other. I thought of that each time we prayed with them. It's fascinating to be with the monks at prayer. One called us to attentiveness each time with a sharp knuckle rap on his wooden lectern. Everyone stood. Monks, Religious men and women. Priests. Deacons. Lay men and women. Sometimes children. Once we sat for the singing of the Psalms, Brother Bruno led with a few strums of his guitar, or, at Compline, Brother Pierre led us by playing his harp ( and he, like King David, is also a shepherd!) Traditionally monks sing simple chants antiphonally - each "side" singing a different verse. Paul and I and others joined them - and then there was silence after each psalm, a deep silence that settled into our souls, gentle as a misty Spring rain of grace.
After Compline, we all processed down into the crypt and stood before a 12th century stone statue of the Madonna and Child, the Queen of Peace, clusters of tall white lighted beeswax candles gleaming at her feet. The monks always sing the "Hail, Holy Queen" in Latin - "Salve Regina - " their voices finally rising into a beautiful crescendo of praise to the one who is oh so merciful, so holy, so sweet that she prays for all her children in this vale of tears. Then one monk blessed us with holy water. Silently, slowly, we ascended the stairs and wandered out into the pearl pink and soft grey of sunset over the fields on the mountainside, hearts full and heavy with the sweet honey of peace. Black-faced sheep baaed in the distance. Small chipmunks raced wildly across the lawn and scurried up trees ( they drive Sr. Hildegarde to distraction by burrowing under her gardens). Fragrant flowers swayed in the eternal breezes that seemed to bless this place.
I also thought of how God our Shepherd calls us to different lives and watches over us as we often watched over the sheep. We got an interesting understanding of sheep here. We're used to thinking of sheep traveling in flocks. Sister Hildegarde, the lovely host and chef who prepared our meals at St. Gertrude's residence, told us that the fence enclosing the sheep had a hole in it - maybe made by deer - and so those sheep escaped all the time, by ones, by twos, by threes....
We watched them bound, and I do mean bound, down the winding road all the time, where they literally stopped traffic (such as it is on that road.) Quite happily! And they wandered the hillsides during the drought searching farther and farther afield for green grass. The danger was the coyotes who prowl - and howl - by night. So far this Summer they'd killed many sheep. They too were wandering farther and farther from their normal hunting grounds in the drought.
I thought, watching them, God our Shepherd saves us, not as flocks, but one by one. We're always wandering off by ourselves, searching for "greener pastures," putting ourselves in danger from the coyotes - those subtle temptations that hunt us down as prey, eager to overcome us. God searches for us till He finds us. He talks with us, invites us, cajoles us, calling us to listen only to His voice. To be ready for His embrace, to be carried in His arms. And He leads us on our journey alone, the journey of solitude each of us must make, getting to know Him. And then He takes us back to whatever flock is best for us. It's a different flock for each of us.
Alone we come from God. Alone we return to Him. We need to be alone with Him at times on the journey so we will know His voice to come to Him past the journey of death.
This time with the monks was a time of peaceful solitude for Paul and me. Everyone there may have prayed together in Church as a special flock which we belonged to for that special time. But we each also spent time alone, wandering off in our private spiritual reading and prayers, waiting to hear our beloved Shepherd's individual voice in each of our hearts. This prayer of solitude is the slow, steady flame in each of our hearts that rouses to a fire of love when once again we re-enter our various worlds of work with our special flocks. This is called being a "contemplative in action," someone who prays alone but who also sees his or her work as prayer, gazing at everyone and everything as a place where God is Present - and alive and at work with us and in us and in each other.
F. James Martin, S.J., often explains the teachings on prayer and activity of St. Ignatius, founder of the Jesuits. In "The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything," Fr. Martin says
"Most of us lead busy lives with little time for prayer and meditation. But by being aware of the world around us - in the midst of our activity - we can allow a contemplative stance to inform our actions. Instead of seeing the spiritual life as one that can exist only if it is enclosed by the walls of a monastery, St. Ignatius asks you to see the world as your monastery."
Often enough, I've found, we understand that our entire lives are a prayer when we take time to be still and at prayer and at peace. Take time to listen to the Good Shepherd in our souls calling us to come closer, to quit that carefree bounding for awhile so we can simply listen. At Mt. Saviour Monastery, on retreat, we embraced the stillness of peace, quiet, and prayer. This time apart prepared us to return with a bright flame of God-Awareness in our hearts, to re-embrace our monastery, the world.