a Grateful Response

KANSAS MONKS a Grateful Response liturgy & the life of the church

Gone fishin’ for a prayer

Seeing the fishers at their craft, while walking along the lower banks of the Tiber river the other day in Rome, I recalled when I was a novice in Atchison and accompanied my novice master, then-Father Owen Purcell, to the South Farm for some good fishing. Abbot Owen had long found his reflective silence while fishing farm ponds and the holes of Stranger Creek in Atchison County and our own Independence Creek where Lewis and Clark stopped on July 4, 1804. Other than the perch I had caught as a child while visiting my grandparents at Fisherman’s Point on the Lake of the Ozarks, I was a novice to fishing as well. After Abbot Owen taught me a few skills and we quieted down for our task, I made a long cast towards the other shore, and the lure landed at the base of several trees, in their shade. Abbot Owen’s intuition was as certain that there would be a strike as I was unprepared for the challenge of a five-pound bass. Perhaps it was the luck of one doubly a novice, just perhaps. Walking the banks of the Tiber I recognized the same calm in these fishers as they cast their lines just above the eddy formed Father James G. Leachman co-authored ‘Ap- by the ancient pier and preciating the Collect’, Fr. Daniel’s first book maneuvered their bait into the hole dug out by the water’s currents since antiquity when the bridge’s architecture and its Latin inscription were new. Fishing the Tiber’s strong current requires a subtle skill to distinguish between the current’s pull and the carp’s nibble, until the strike requires agile strength to coax the fish across the current to a buddy ready to haul in their dinner. One fisher even had a wood fire prepared for the meal to follow.

I was returning from a visit on Tiber Island to the renowned Papal Latinist, Father Reginald Foster, OCD, who was recovering in the hospital built on the ruins of the temple to Asclepius, the god of healing. Father Reginald had taught me Latin these past 10 years and we were working on a fishing project of a different sort. We were fishing for just the right words to express in English the meaning of prayers written in Latin by popes and scholars of every culture throughout the past millennium and a half, yet offered every Sunday in the Mass we celebrate. I was rendering Latin prayers into English, which were then revised by Dom James Leachman also of Sant’Anselmo, before I presented them to Father Reginald in his hospital bed.

Finding the right words to express the sentiments of an ancient prayer is like fishing in the current of the Tiber or on the South Farm. A mastery of human thought shaped by the Latin language is necessary to perceive the structure of the whole prayer and the function of each word within. When one English word did not fit well within the overall composition, the three of us by quiet reflection would cast into the deeper recesses to fish for the root meaning of the Latin word and there find the precise English word for our day.

The prayer tradition, like the river current, is in flux as it flows round the many cultures and people who have inhabited the tradition and kept its force vital. So we are accompanied on this fishing trip by the many monks and scholars who composed these prayers in the Latin style of their day. The scribes are our fishing companions as are the bookbinders who produced the liturgical books. We can trace the history of these books, as they were circulated throughout Europe, and see how the prayers within them were shared here and there, first as marginal updates later to be integrated into the book’s subsequent edition as part of the local tradition. Through the prayers we can trace the development of the liturgical year and come to appreciate the concerns of each age, whether the pastoral care of people in their need, and of pilgrims, or the practices and reforms of monasteries, bishops and popes.

What unites us on this fishing trip is our reflection upon the mystery of life in Christ. We may see others’ hopes within ourselves and make their prayer our own, just as our efforts to appreciate the liturgy will benefit generations of the faithful yet to come. Our meditations on these prayers benefit people today, because it takes the skill of a fisher to appreciate the prayer’s words and to recite them so that in the hearing they become the prayer of the assembly capable of bearing our hopes before God.

We Benedictines are properly considered contemplatives; yet our community, like the sisters of the Mount in Atchison, has a strong tradition of putting our contemplative lives at the service of both our contemporaries and of those yet to regard our contributions. My contribution, Listen to the Word, is the result of constant reflection on the opening prayers of the Sunday Mass throughout the year, and includes five homilies that illustrate how to preach from the prayer of the Church. I hope that my contemplative fishing will enrich the prayer of our common meal.

Father Daniel McCarthy

Listen to the Word, Father Daniel’s book on the opening prayers of the mass, is available for purchase in the St. Benedict’s Abbey Gift Shop. For more information contact the Office of Development at 913-360-7897, or send an e-mail to shop @kansasmonks.org.

abbey notes

Brother Jeremy Heppler was ordained to the transitional Diaconate in the Abbey Church, May 30 (after press time) by Archbishop Joseph Naumann. For coverage of the ordination, see the next issue of Kansas Monks.

Father Meinrad Miller gave a Youth Retreat May 1-2 in Lincoln, Neb., at the diocesan youth camp, Camp Kateri Tekakwitha. He gave talks on Prayer and Work and Benedictine way of life.

Father Blaine Schultz, Abbey organist and choirmaster, will participate in the Monastic Liturgy Forum Conference at St. John’s, Collegeville, Minn., July 13-17. The conference is titled: “Universal Church, Local Church: Liturgical Law and Monastic Practice.” Father R. Kevin Seasoltz, O.S.B., and Prioress Nancy Bauer, O.S.B., will give the keynote addresses. The Benedictine Musicians of the Americas will also meet at this time and place. He will also attend the National Pastoral Musicians Convention from July 6-10 in Chicago, Ill.

Father Matthew Habiger was a presenter for a Clergy Conference at SS. Peter and Paul Church in Wilmington, Calif., April 28-29. He and Brian Murphy gave talks at St. Edward the Confessor Parish, Dana Point, Calif., April 30. “The Truth About Being Pro-Life” was the topic of this evening. Father Matthew gave a Natural Family Planning weekend at St. Boniface Church in Anaheim, Calif., May 2-3. While in California he also taped two talks at St. Joseph Communications in Covina, Calif., for use on EWTN Radio and other outlets.

Brother Peter Karasz has finished a four-caster mobile book cart to assist the monks who change choir books in the choir stalls. The cart is made to hold 120 of our seasonal and sanctoral cycle books. Those books not in use at the time are stored in the hallway north of the main church sanctuary. SUMMER 2009 Brother Lawrence Bradford drew up a 200-question fill-in-theblank, final exam for the Benedictine College immunology class. He has been teaching this course in alternate years since 1992. He holds a PhD from the University of Kansas.

Abbot Barnabas Senecal gave the opening prayer at TreasureFest, an event staged at KC Live near the Sprint Center in Kansas City, Mo., May 3. The event was arranged by the Archdiocesan Catholic Education Foundation to showcase music and drama talent of students in 46 schools of the Archdiocese. It was attended by 1,802 people.

Father Aaron Peters was a principal concelebrant of a Mass of Thanksgiving at St. Agnes Church, Roeland Park, Sunday, May 3, honoring the years of dedicated service by the Paola Ursuline Sisters in the Archdiocese. Father Aaron has been resident chaplain for the Paola group the past 15 years. The Paola Sisters are merging with the Ursuline Sisters of Mount St. Joseph, in Maple Mount, Ken. Nine Sisters will remain in ministry in the Paola area; two are still discerning their ministry.

Abbot Ralph Koehler, Prior James Albers, Father Marion Charboneau, Brother Leven Harton, Novice Brother Simon Baker and

B.C. student Joe Melnyk were one of the 25 teams that competed in the 28th annual Bob Goalby golf event, a Maur Hill-Mount Academy fundraiser, at Sunflower Hills, May 1.

Monks were treated to fresh radishes and onions on May 8, the first fruits of the 2009 Abbey garden. Brother Anthony Vorwerk thanks spring rains and the hard work of the young monks and for hardy tomato plants. Pictured below are Brother Joseph Ryan (right) and Brother Jeremy Heppler (left) working in the tomato patch.

The 2009 Abbey retreat will be May 31 through June 4. Our retreat master is Abbot Lawrence Stasyszen of St. Gregory’s Abbey, Shawnee, Okla.

Abbey Notes are selected from the Home Pages newsletter written by Abbot Barnabas Senecal. For more from Home Pages, see the St. Benedict’s Abbey Web site at kansasmonks.org.

“I was in prison and you came to me.”

–Matthew 25:36

1020 N. 2nd Street, Atchison, KS 66002 Kansas Monks USPS 290-760

Abbey Offices 913.367.7853 www.kansasmonks.org SUMMER 2009 | VOLUME 4 | NUMBER 2

Non-profit Org. U.S. Postage P A I D KC, MO Permit No. 6318