From the Abbot

Our Heavenly Home

“Are you hastening toward your heavenly home?” In chapter 73 of his Rule St. Benedict poses this question to the monk who desires to put on the yoke of obedience, let down the anchor of stability, and seek the path of fidelity and conversion to monastic life (the three vows of a Benedictine monk).

“… your heavenly home?” That is the life of the monk, his ultimate goal: seeking Christ, and through him the Father, hastening toward our heavenly home. All else – our work, our relationships, our recreation, our daily rhythm – are ancillary.

This is played out beautifully in our Abbey Church, where above the altar the double-sided crucifix shows the passion of Christ (facing the nave), the death of Christ (facing the choir section), and the glorified, resurrected Christ in the fresco (at the other end of the choir). In between these two realities: that of Christ’s passion and death and his resurrection we, as a monastic community, gather for prayer each day, offering psalms and canticles in the Divine Office, and offering the bread and wine of human life for the sacrifice of Christ in the celebration of the Mass. As monks we place our lives in this transitory reality between the world in which we live and the world to which we are hastening – our heavenly home, the New Jerusalem. We have a foot in both worlds to encourage humanity from one world into the next through our prayer and sacrifices; the offering of ourselves in the monastic, celibate life.

Through this offering, there is a moderation, a balance, a firmness that is the calm rise and fall of our common life. The ebb and flow of monastic life has been very evident for our community in recent years. We have witnessed the final monastic perseverance in the deaths of four of our confreres, we have rejoiced in the celebrations of two priestly ordinations, and we have welcomed new life in monastic professions.

One might say this is not “ebb and flow,” but these are “raise-the-flag” type moments. Yes, of course. However, if we answer that question posed to us by St. Benedict – “Are you hastening toward your heavenly home?” – these are moments that contribute to and help lead us along the way to our ultimate goal – they are the means rather than the ends. In death, our brothers who have gone before us have reached their final goal. For us their perseverance offers encouragement in our lives, to seek Christ through moderation and steadfastness, striving to keep on an even keel. Maybe a “steadiness” of life is a better way of putting it. Rejoice when we are called to rejoice; grieve when we are called to grieve; and recognize that these moments always lead us back to Christ: our goal and our center.

Again, this is shown in the fresco of the Abbey Church. Two depictions of the life of St. Benedict, and two depictions of the life of our community, each in the four corners of the fresco painted in muted browns – the black habit standing out as the lone color-shift, a stark contrast against the world, yet ever a part of it. The vibrancy of color coming forth from the central figure of the Resurrected Christ in the Holy Trinity, a reminder that the glory is yet to come, and that he is at the focal point of it. If those ancillary events of our lives as monks – those muted browns: our work, our relationships, our recreation, our daily rhythm – don’t lead us back to the vibrancy of He who is the center, Christ, then we must work to form our interior, form our conscience, and bring “steadiness” to our lives so as to consider all those gains, “so much rubbish,” as losses “because of the supreme good of knowing Christ Jesus [our] Lord,” (cf. Phil. 3:7-11). St. Benedict’s question to the monk who desires to follow the Rule is really a question for all of us, not just the monks.

“Are you hastening toward your heavenly home?”

“Then… we must run and do now what will profit us forever” (Rule of St. Benedict Prologue: 44).

The first profession of Abbot James Albers – Dec. 8, 1996. Pictured: (L to R) Br. Lawrence Bradford†, Abbot Barnabas Senecal, Fr. Hugh Keefer†, Fr. Meinrad Miller, Br. James.