Abbey Banner - Spring 2019

Abbey Banner Spring 2019

How lovely is your dwelling place, O LORD, God of hosts.

Happy are they who live in your house, forever singing your praise.

Psalm 84:2, 5

Alan Reed, O.S.B.

This Issue Abbey Banner Magazine of Saint John’s Abbey Spring 2019

Editor: Robin Pierzina, O.S.B. Design: Alan Reed, O.S.B. Editorial assistants: Aaron Raverty, O.S.B.; Dolores Schuh, C.H.M. Abbey archivist: David Klingeman, O.S.B. University archivists: Peggy Roske, Elizabeth Knuth Circulation: Ruth Athmann, Jan Jahnke, Ashley Koshiol, Beth Lensing, Cathy Wieme Printed by Palmer Printing Copyright © 2019 by Order of Saint Benedict Saint John’s Abbey Collegeville, Minnesota 56321-2015 abbeybanner@csbsju.edu saintjohnsabbey.org/banner/ ISSN: 2330-6181 (print) ISSN: 2332-2489 (online)

Change of address: Ruth Athmann P. O. Box 7222 Collegeville, Minnesota 56321-7222 rathmann@csbsju.edu Phone: 800.635.7303

Abbot John Klassen, O.S.B.

“How awesome is this place!

This is none other than the house of God!”

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Genesis 28:17

Volume 19, number 1

Published three times annually (spring, fall, winter) by the monks of Saint John’s Abbey.

Easter Transformation

he German Renaissance artist Matthias Grünewald painted the Isenheim Altarpiece (c. 1515, Alsace, France). At the center of this large, multi-paneled artwork is the crucified Jesus, utterly spent, with a body ravaged by the ordeal of the Passion. The crossbeam bends under the weight of Jesus the Lamb who carries the sins of the world. The body of Jesus is marred by torn flesh and festering wounds. No beauty remains in this stark, cruel depiction of the crucified. His face bears an expression of agony. He is the Man of Sorrows.

This issue recalls the construction and significance of Saint John’s first church —known today as the Great Hall. The pioneer monks of Saint John’s Abbey were strongly focused on pastoral ministry: serving the German immigrant population of the Minnesota territory and assisting at missions among the Ojibwe people. In 1879, after decades of constructing parish and mission churches throughout Minnesota, the monastic community determined that Collegeville, too, would have its own church. Brother Aaron Raverty outlines the construction of the first abbey church and its subsequent development.

The house of God is not only a place of worship. To Saint Benedict, it is a metaphor for the monastery. In articulating his Rule, he promotes harmony and peace among the members of the community through a carefully ordered regimen, so “that no one may be troubled or vexed in the house of God” (RB 31.19). Sister Michaela Hedican and Abbot John Klassen emphasize the value of listening and hospitality in dealing with the chaos that challenges our lives and peace of mind. Father Eric Hollas reflects on how the monks—or any of us—address disagreements.

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“Listen” is the first word of the Rule of Benedict. Listening to the voice of God, to one’s abbot, and to one’s confreres gives form and direction to the life of monks. But listening to frogs and toads? Mr. John Geissler explains what the chorus of critters of the Saint John’s Abbey Arboretum tells us about stewardship of the land, lakes, and wetlands. Listen up!

Saint Benedict understood the power of the tongue and its potential for evil (see Proverbs 10:19, 15:4, 18:21; and James 3:2-10). He prefers silence to speech, and bans coarse jests or words that move to laughter (RB 6). Human experience confirms, however, that humor can also be a means of relieving tension, expressing affection, and drawing people together. At Saint John’s Abbey, the daily routine within the cloister is enlivened by the antics of the “characters” of the community and by the sharing of monastic lore. In this issue, we begin a new feature—Cloister Light, the lighter side of Saint John’s.

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Abbot John opens this issue with a reflection on the Easter transformation, through the cross and resurrection, promised to all believers. We also explore manuscript treasures, meet a Doctor of the Church and a monk from Wisconsin, navigate the streets of Rome, and more.

Cover: Saint John’s Abbey Church, c. 1919 Photo: Abbey archives

With Abbot John and the monastic community, the staff of Abbey Banner extends prayers to all our readers for an abundance of God’s blessings throughout the Easter season. Peace!

Brother Robin Pierzina, O.S.B. Let us listen once more to Jesus. Let us allow his words to unsettle us, to challenge us, and to demand a real change in the way we live. Otherwise, holiness will remain no more than an empty word.

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Pope Francis, Gaudete et Exsultate (§66)

Master Grünewald also depicts the resurrection of Jesus in this altarpiece—the risen Christ is utterly transformed, not recognizable from the cross. Christ rises above the rubble of the tomb that lies in the foreground, as if by a vortex of power. His face is golden light surrounded by yellow, orange, and reddish colors that recall the Transfiguration or the Genesis rainbow. The universe of stars around him portray serenity and peace, a final victory over suffering and death. The explicit promise of this painting is that anyone who believes in Jesus and follows him on the way of the cross will know this transformation.

These two paintings are my favorite artistic depiction of the cross and resurrection of Jesus. The cross evokes the enormous suffering of both Christ and our world. In the resurrection scene, Jesus becomes once again the cosmic Christ, the Word before and at the end of all time. To be sure, this Word is irreversibly changed— forever the Word made flesh and the crucified one, but no longer localized in space and time. Grünewald’s resurrected Christ bears the nail marks in his hands and feet. As the great hymn in the Letter to the Colossians tells us, Christ “is the image of the invisible God” (1:15). The salvation won by the risen Christ is for all humankind, for all creation, to the ends of the universe.

If we have been grasped by the truth of the resurrection, we will be oriented toward mission. The resurrection impels the disciples to go forth, to proclaim the Good News. Life cannot simply go on, business as usual. As the disciples understand the resurrection, they become a community oriented toward proclamation.

As we live into the power and truth of the resurrection, our love for each other will grow, our desire for holiness will draw us into life-giving decisions. Appropriating the resurrection expands our hearts, our imagination, our hope for the future.

Alleluia! Alleluia! He is risen!

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Navigating the Chaos

Title of Article

Michaela Hedican, O.S.B.

his followers to listen “with the ear of your heart” (RB Prol.1).

Often the first act of understanding anything is careful, focused listening. But our listening cannot be an exercise of the mind only. It must engage the whole person, the whole heart— the integrating center of thought, feeling, imagination, and will. In the monastic world, listening and mindfulness occur in doing lectio divina (holy reading), participating in community prayer, and in countless interactions with others.

Abbot John Klassen, O.S.B.

n the world of business and technology, we often hear the word “disruption”—typically characterized by rapid and large market declines in business.

Technological or business innovation creates new markets.

Eventually the new markets disrupt existing markets, displacing established firms, products, and alliances.

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Think of Eastman Kodak and its decades-long, multibillion-dollar business of processing film, making beautiful pictures for traditional cameras. Then the market produces digital cameras, soon followed by smart phones that have cameras. Within a matter of years, the market for Kodak and Fuji film, as well as the development of photos, disappears. A business that had been rock solid for years is suddenly in trouble: the chaos here is the rapidity of change and the sudden loss of jobs and economic security.

A prime example of the gridlock we experience today is the inability of our government leaders to work together. Clashes between two sharply divided political

This article is an excerpt from a presentation by Abbot John Klassen, “Navigating the Chaos: Benedictine Values as a Way of Life,” that he and Sister Michaela Hedican gave in September 2018.

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Abraham Entertaining the Angels (above), etching by Rembrandt, 1656. The Trinity or The Hospitality of Abraham (opposite page), icon by Andrei Rublev, c. 1411.

parties result in disputes about the budget, disputes about immigration policies, and the shutdown of many departments of the government. When Domino’s Pizza offers to fix potholes in roads so your pizza arrives in good shape, this is an indicator of a failure to address something as basic as the infrastructure of our country! We experience the result of this inaction as chaos. Chaos can

also result from sudden, violent, and random conflict. Chaos results from environmental catastrophes. And there is the chaos that we experience in our Church today. Taken together, they produce enormous uncertainty, worry, anger, frustration, or feelings of helplessness.

The first word of the Rule of Saint Benedict is Obsculta!

(Latin for listen). Benedict urges

How do we give a creative response to the cry of the poor? How do we respond to the challenge of environmental destructiveness on a global scale? Careful listening can enable us to examine these issues in an integrated multi-strategy approach rather than searching for single-strategy solutions. Listening with the ear of our heart might also encourage us to make ethical decisions and to act on them.

Scripture tells us that listening alone is not enough. We need to respond, to take some action, and in doing so, we navigate chaos. One response is hospitality. We may think hospitality means simply being nice to people, but in fact, hospitality is a metaphor for our daily encounter with God, with Christ.

Hospitality means thinking and

talking about the heart of life.

Hospitality helps us understand what it means to seek God, or what it means to be found by God. Hospitality is a multivalented practice, a way of being countercultural in a world of fear and mistrust, a commitment

to nonviolence and forgiveness, a commitment to be open to the prophetic encounter with the stranger.

Consider the call of Abraham and Sarah (Genesis 12). Commentators have noted that Abram’s call is told in a way that reverses the fallout from the story of Babel (Genesis 11).

Whereas the people of the plains gather to “make a great name” for themselves (11:4), it is God who will make Abram’s name

great. Whereas the builders of the tower want to prevent the scattering of peoples, Abram is told to abandon the security of his people and “go to a land that I will show you” (12:1). There is a fivefold repetition of the word “bless” in this passage that matches the fivefold use of the word “curse” in the first eleven chapters of Genesis. By calling Abram, God is undoing the damage of the history of human sinfulness.

Abraham does not merely welcome the three mysterious strangers; he runs from his tent to meet them (Genesis 18), much like the father in the story of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:20). We may assume too readily that Abraham and Sarah were happy to meet the strangers. However, this old couple was probably no more inclined to welcome Wikipedia strangers than we are!

We often want to protect our busy schedules from disruptions.

For people in Middle Eastern cultures, hospitality is one of the highest moral imperatives. For Abraham and Sarah, sharing a place of shade, water to drink, and nourishment could be a matter of life and death for the stranger. Moreover, it would be a mistake to ignore Sarah’s response to the promise of a child. Her laugh is out of bitterness, of despair at the sheer outrageousness of the promise.

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Title of Article She is ready to die, frustrated and disappointed.

From a biblical perspective, the stranger to be entertained represents the mystery of God. This God is ultimately uncontrollable and unpredictable. This God challenges our tendency to fashion life in accordance with human wisdom. By being hospitable to these strangers, Abraham and Sarah are open to the mystery of God. Humanly speaking, it will always seem foolish to trust the uncontrollable transcendent world rather than the power we understand. The stranger at our door seeks, therefore, to disrupt, not just our schedules, but our potentially fatal compromise with worldly values and priorities. To be hospitable is a fundamental stance toward the world and toward each other. It is a stance that is open to the transcendent in the ordinary, to the stranger, to the sacramental character of the world.

Finally, consider the reversal of roles. Abraham and Sarah are initially hosts, but they end up receiving hospitality from the strangers in the form of the promise of a child. This is a cue to something fundamental about hospitality: the fluidity of guest and host. Host becomes guest, and guest becomes host.

Do you see how hospitality helps us navigate the chaos?

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ule of Benedict

Hospitality in Iraq In the spring of 2003, a Christian peacemaking team traveled to Baghdad to monitor the war. When it became too dangerous for them in Baghdad, they were forced to flee toward the Jordanian border. One of their vehicles had a tire failure and rolled into a ditch at high speed, seriously injuring three of the four passengers. Weldon Nisly, an American Mennonite pastor, was the most seriously injured, with cuts to his head, broken bones, and internal injuries.

Even as bombs were falling to the left and the right of the road, some Iraqis had stopped and taken three injured Americans into their car. When they arrived in Rutba, they were taken to a doctor at a clinic who spoke to them in perfect English. “Three days ago your country bombed our hospital,” he said. “But we will take care of you, because Muslim or Christian, Iraqi or American, we take care of everyone.” He sewed up both Cliff and Weldon’s heads, saving their lives. . . .

[When Weldon was to be transported to a hospital,] I noticed a man holding his hand above Weldon’s face, shading him from the sun. He was a strange looking man, dressed in a long white robe unlike the Western dress that most Iraqi men wore. . . .

[Later] the strange man in the white robe opened the door, bent over, and kissed Weldon on the forehead. Weldon later told me that up until the time we took him outside the clinic, he had not seen the man in white. . . .

As we were leaving Rutba, we asked the doctor what we owed him for his help. “Nothing,” he replied. “You owe us nothing.

Please just tell the world what happened in Rutba.” What had happened in Rutba? Some strangers had stopped to help their injured enemy, even as bombs were still falling. It was a Good Samaritan story. At the same time, the Iraqi driver charged with deporting us had turned his car around and brought us back to Rutba. It was a miracle. A doctor who spoke perfect English had done everything in his power to care for our friends. And finally, a stranger—an angel, perhaps?—had kissed Weldon on the forehead and assured him that everything would be all right.

What had happened in Rutba?

Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, To Baghdad and Beyond: How I Got Born Again in Babylon (Eugene, Oregon: Cascade Books, 2005), 82–84.

Sister Michaela Hedican, O.S.B., is the former prioress of Saint Benedict’s Monastery, Saint Joseph, Minnesota.

Abbot John Klassen, O.S.B., is the spiritual head of Saint John’s Abbey, Collegeville, Minnesota.

When Monks Disagree Eric Hollas, O.S.B.

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or those who assume that monastic life is one long round of tedium, I have news for you. It’s not! In fact, it is anything but monotonous, nor did Saint Benedict intend it to be so.

The very notion of a rule suggests a measure of strictness or inflexibility. Not surprisingly Saint Benedict followed through on that, with detailed rules for the recitation of the psalms, for clothing and food, and for the daily schedule. But in the next stroke of the quill, he qualified all that legislation and allowed the abbot freedom to adapt when it seems good or necessary.

If the abbot judges it better to adjust the psalmody, then so be it. If work or climate necessitate more food or warmer clothing, then make it so. And on it goes.

This flexibility raises a question.

If the abbot can have new ideas, what’s to prevent the monks from doing the same? What is to prevent those differences of opinion from boiling over into serious contention? Benedict was aware of the potential for discord. In his pre–Monte Cassino days, for instance, his monks tried to poison him! In

Love is paramount, and peace is the goal.

Aidan Putnam

his Rule he noted the possibility that the prior might push his own agenda at the expense of peace within the community.

And his warning about one brother striking another suggests he may have witnessed such an act.

The challenge for Benedict was to foster creative discussion while making sure that it did not devolve into acrimony. Accordingly, he advises the abbot to resist autocracy by consulting the brothers on any important matter. Elsewhere, Benedict calls for sympathetic brothers to reason with those who misbehave and to promote amity between confreres who do not see eye to eye. This reveals Benedict’s true intent in crafting a rule “for beginners” (RB 73.8).

The rules are not ends in them-

selves nor are they meant to fashion a lifeless environment.

Rather, love is paramount, and peace is the goal.

The result is that any healthy community is constantly evolving. Life together is an art, and in the exercise of this art both individual monks and the entire community try to walk in the steps of Jesus. Within the structure of community observance the monks discover the presence of Christ, and with that inspiration different points of view will naturally arise. The goal, then, is to insure that any differences will be creative, and that creative tension, in turn, will intensify the experience of the Lord.

Father Eric Hollas, O.S.B., is deputy to the president for advancement at Saint John’s University.

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Benedictine Volunteer Corps Kyle George Munshower Driving the Abbot Primate

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hate cars! They epitomize a noxious individualism.

Their production and use exacerbate an already dire problem with our climate and air quality. The associated costs of vehicle insurance, maintenance, and gas wring dry our wallets.

Rather than dealing with traffic, I prefer to ride my bicycle.

When I joined the Benedictine Volunteer Corps, set to serve at Collegio Sant’Anselmo in Rome (the international Benedictine house of studies), I assumed that I wouldn’t need a car. I thought I could simply take bike rides or use trains or buses to go wherever I needed to go. My antiautomobile animus was soon challenged, however. After the unexpected departure of a German volunteer at Sant’Anselmo, the prior informed me that—in addition to washing dishes, maintaining the garden, cleaning the church, and sorting the mail —my new principal duty was to be the driver of Abbot Primate Gregory Polan. I immediately imagined having accidents, because I don’t like driving cars and never really thought I excelled at it.

Initially, my fears seemed well founded. The simplest routes within Rome confounded me.

The way the Roman scooterists crammed themselves in between every other vehicle petrified me.

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When I heard the honking horn of a neighboring motorist, I’d feel like a nuisance. Once, I almost ran over a police officer.

But, curiously, I started to get used to Roman traffic.

To understand what my job as driver for the abbot primate entails, consider Jim Jarmusch’s 1991 film, Night on Earth. In one sequence, Roberto Benigni plays a Roman taxi driver who spends the small hours of the night escorting a Catholic priest (whom he repeatedly, erroneously, dubs a bishop) through the streets of the Eternal City.

He drives the wrong way on one-way streets and nearly mows down workers maneuvering a produce cart as he zips by evergushing fountains, narrow cobbled alleys, and the Roman Colosseum. These chaotic scenes of nocturnal navigation resonate with me! I’ve made my throat

dry hollering: Maddai– “Really?

Come on!” I, too, drive at speeds that would be illegal on Minnesota side streets; actually, I rarely see signs for speed limits here. I blare the horn, not out of anger, but just to notify others of my presence. I cut off other drivers, if they don’t cut me off first. If I need to stop in the middle of a street or reverse direction on a one-way street, I throw on my hazards and take action.

I’ve given up looking for names of streets; they’re not well displayed. City planners have littered stop signs haphazardly and placed traffic lights at intersections, seemingly with no order in mind. Sometimes there are more potholes than road! A hint of faded paint suggests some lanes. If I had a euro for every occasion I’ve advanced directly forward while in a left-turn lane,

BVC archives

Kyle Munshower and Abbot Gregory Polan offer a prayer before embarking on their next Roman road adventure.

or made technically illegal, but it’s-okay-to-do lane changes or wheel abouts, I wouldn’t need my monthly stipend!

Although I can identify with the aforementioned Benigni character, I have actually had a different experience on the roads in the Italian capital. The car I drive, first of all, doesn’t smell like bitter coffee and stale cigarettes! I don’t wear sunglasses when the sun isn’t out, and I don’t tell the abbot stories like the ones that Italian tells in the film. Frankly, I feel like more than a taxi driver. I like talking to Abbot Gregory; I think we’ve become good friends. We’ve learned to appreciate each other’s advice and company. Another benefit of my driving duties is that I’ve visited places I wouldn’t otherwise have seen, and I am seeing them from different perspectives. For example, I attended a documentary at a small cinema inside the walls of Vatican City. I also drove the abbot and another confrere to Assisi, where we visited the tomb of Saint Francis. We’ve traversed the ancient Appian Way, braved the brutal congestion of Piazza Venezia, and traveled together dozens of times to the airport or to the central train station.

My time in Rome with the Benedictine Volunteer Corps has challenged me in ways that I never could have predicted. In addition to the steep learning curve of operating a motor vehicle in a foreign country, I’ve also endured

Kyle and his preferred mode of transportation

some dark days, trapped in my room by the cold humidity of the Roman winter. I’ve felt profound loneliness and isolation.

These feelings come in waves made even more powerful and difficult to tread considering I’m surrounded by aperitivo and gelato; in one of the most beautiful, lively cities in the world; and in a welcoming community. I look about me and wonder: Shouldn’t I be happy? On other days, I do get to ride my bike; I do make new friends, inside and outside of the monastery. I find comfort and joy in the daily rhythm of Sant’Anselmo. I find meaning in my work, in being the driver.

Driving in Rome has undoubtedly given me some individualistic tendencies; after all, my personal safety and that of my passenger and the vehicle take

BVC archives

priority. Yet, if every other caffeinated, smoke-inhaling Italian does this too, isn’t there some sense of communal synchronization in it all! I have found a sort of odd, disjointed community among my fellow motorists, as well as with the monks and students at Sant’Anselmo. Benedictines speak at length about community, and I was told I’d discover it here in Rome. I think I have, in more ways than one.

Mr. Kyle George Munshower is a 2018 graduate of Saint John’s University.

I have found a sort of odd, disjointed community among my fellow motorists, as well as with the monks and students at Sant’Anselmo.

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Sounds of a Healthy Landscape place to listen to this chorus is along the Old Entrance Road.

John Geissler

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look forward to listening to the landscape as it awakens from the quiet of winter.

Amidst nature’s spring to summer melody, I am particularly pleased to hear the calls of the toads and frogs that make their homes in the Saint John’s Abbey Arboretum. Their presence and abundance are among the best bioindicators that the terrestrial and aquatic habitats of the arboretum are healthy. These critters are reliable indicators because they live their entire life within our boundaries, possess permeable skin, and depend on many habitats of the abbey arboretum for their survival— including a combined presence in water and on land. All these factors make them highly sensitive to local habitat degradation and pollution. Detecting their presence is as easy as listening.

Each species has a unique call that is not difficult to hear, if one knows when and where to listen.

The first frogs to call are our forest dwelling species—wood frogs, chorus frogs, and spring peepers. These species survive the winter just under the leaf litter, often exposed for months to below-freezing temperatures.

While parts of their body freeze,

Western chorus frog

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John Geissler

Adult Western chorus frog (Pseudacris triseriata)

John Geissler

they are equipped to produce a special antifreeze to protect their organs. On an early spring hike, I found one partially frozen frog and had the opportunity to watch it slowly warm and “come back to life.” After thawing, these frogs travel to the important ecological depressions within the forest called vernal pools that temporarily fill with water. These fishless wetlands are the preferred place for small frogs to call, breed, and lay eggs.

Their eggs must hatch and metamorphose from entirely aquatic and primarily herbivorous larvae (tadpoles) into air-breathing, carnivorous adults in about seven weeks—before the water dries up in the summer. The rolling topography of the abbey arboretum has an array of vernal ponds that come alive with the calls of wood frogs (short duck-like quacks), chorus frogs (fingers running down a comb), and spring peepers (shrill peeps) as soon as meltwater accumulates in early spring. My favorite

The mid-season breeders take up the chorus in May, indicating the health of the other unique areas of the abbey arboretum. The call of northern leopard frogs sounds like an old door opening. These frogs utilize the bottoms of more permanent bodies of water for hibernation and then transition to grassland environments in summer. Last year I enjoyed seeing an abundance of northern leopard frogs in the grasses north of the Abbey Solar Farm while watering the newly planted wild orchard.

American toads anchor the tenor section of the chorus. Their single pitch trill is distinct because each call lasts almost thirty seconds and is often loud—all toad calling begins and ends within about one week.

Toads are very good at burrowing into the soil to escape the cold or the heat, and are thus highly adapted to live in most of our habitats. In contrast to the call of the toads, the trills of the Cope’s gray treefrog and the gray treefrog are short. These two species of treefrogs are indistinguishable by sight, but experts can identify their slightly different calls. Areas of the oak savanna seem to harbor a good number of these treefrogs.

The late season breeders begin their calling in June and are primarily aquatic species, including mink frogs, green frogs, and

Saint John’s Oak Forest Planting

Saturday, 4 May 9:00 A.M.—Noon and/or 12:30—3:30 P.M. Plant, mat, cage, and water 2000 white and red oaks on five acres.

We hope to gather two hundred volunteers to complete this work in one day! Join us. No experience necessary.

Weekly Thursday Workdays

1:15—3:30 P.M. Meet at the pendulum entryway of the New Science Building. No experience necessary.

John Geissler

American toad (Bufo americanus) eggs are unique as they are laid in long strands as opposed to many other amphibian eggs that occur as globular masses.

bullfrogs. Their presence confirms the good water quality of the larger ponds and lakes of the abbey arboretum. Because there is no danger of the water bodies drying up, the tadpoles of these species take two or more years to develop into adults. The call of the mink frog sounds like rapid knocking on wood. The green frog, my personal favorite, sounds like a banjo string being plucked! The bullfrog’s call is a deep “rrrr um.” It should be noted that bullfrogs are not native to this part of the state.

Because they are aggressive eaters, they often have a negative impact on the frog species.

Nevertheless, the presence of this amphibian is an indication of good water quality.

Environmental studies associate professor Troy Knight has been

recording the sounds of the Saint John’s Abbey Arboretum for the last three years. Dr. Knight’s research is particularly focused on long-term phenology monitoring. This sound data will likely yield interesting and informative results in the near term and will become more and more valuable as we make comparisons over longer periods of time. Research like this guides our adaptive stewardship of this precious land and water, so future generations can enjoy these natural melodies.

Abbey Conservation Corps Thanks to everyone who contributed much time and energy to our Abbey Conservation Corps (ACC) work last year! We are excited to kick off another year of “Leave a Legacy” work as a gift to the next generation.

For more information, see our website: <https://csbsju.edu/ outdooru/events/volunteer>; call 320.363.3126; or just show up!

Mr. John Geissler is the Saint John’s Abbey land manager and director of Saint John’s Outdoor University.

ACC volunteer spotlight:

John Geissler

Jim Wachlarowicz (left) and Martin Stachnik, ’74 Saint John’s University alumni and freshman-year roommates, reconnected for the first time since graduation while planting trees on Chapel Island this summer.

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Christianity and the Zodiac Martin F. Connell

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uring a sabbatical a few years ago, I lived in Buenos Aires before its archbishop, Jorge Bergoglio, S.J., was elected pope. A daily newspaper I read in Argentina posted the times for daily Mass right next to the signs of the zodiac, a surprising mix of Christian faith and pagan astrology!

The zodiac—which weds two Greek words, one for “animals,” like our zoo; the other for “cycle”—is older than Christianity. Early Church leaders wavered over whether astrology was compatible with the Gospel they preached. Do movements of the sun, moon, planets, and stars influence who we are and what we do? Some bishops in the early Church gave the zodiac a thumbs up; others gave it a thumbs down. Saint Augustine (354–430), who had been raised a pagan, nonetheless condemned Christian use of the zodiac, chastising “astrologers and their false claims of predicting the future and their crazy and unholy rituals” (Confessions 7.6). He argued that twins, born at the same moment—when heavenly bodies were in the same place— had different personalities and behaviors. In the third and early fourth centuries, most bishops agreed with Augustine—judging that to attribute human behavior to created things diverted from the worship of the Creator. They condemned pagan practices, calling the animals of the

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Quadrangle ceiling by Clement Frischauf, O.S.B.

zodiac’s signs “idols” and those who consulted it, “idolaters.”

Later, other bishops realized that their condemnations of the “animal signs” lost more Christians than it won to the faith. They worked with the zodiac, wedding the more ancient pagan symbols with the newcomer religion, Christianity. In fact, in the same time and place where Ambrose (fourth-century bishop of Milan) baptized Augustine was another, lesser-known and celebrated bishop of northern Italy, Saint Zeno of Verona, who gave the zodiac the thumbs up. Preaching to those he had just baptized at the Easter Vigil, Bishop Zeno instructed them to know the astrological sign of their “new birth” in Christ. Virgo, he taught, was a symbol of the Vir-

Alan Reed, O.S.B.

gin Mary. Aquarius? The waters of baptism. The scales of Libra?

The balance of Old and New Testaments. The fish of Pisces?

The two people—Jews and Gentiles—brought into the faith in the waters of baptism. The ram of Aries? The Lamb of God. So far, so good.

Bishop Zeno tried to find Christian significance for all the signs, but he was left with a few outliers. He had to spin some as the source of evil against true faith: “The devil sends the ugliness, sharp horns, and diseased teeth of Capricorn to infect the limbs of his captives, the poor wretches, into total ruin!” (Eek!) “The devil himself, as the ferocious Sagittarius armed with redhot arrows, will terrorize the hearts of the whole human race.”

What does the Augustine vs.

Zeno, pagan vs. Christian debate have to do with Saint John’s Abbey? It seems that Brother Clement Frischauf (1869–1944), the Austrian artist-monk who painted the beautiful image of Christ and colorful angels in the Great Hall, took a side in the debate 1,500 years after Augustine and Zeno. (By the way, Brother Clement was a Libra, “balanced.”) He painted a mural of the zodiac in the quadrangle— on the ceiling of the first floor, near the entry to the Breuer monastery. During his lifetime, this space would have been one of the entries to the monastery, outside the abbot’s office.

Brother Clement presented a Modernist wedding of Christian faith and pagan astrology. His mural features the annual cycle: the lunar year, that begins in the spring with the ram (Aries), followed by the bull (Taurus), the twins (Gemini), the crab (Cancer), the lion (Leo), the virgin (Virgo), the scale (Libra), the scorpion (Scorpio), the bow and arrow (Sagittarius), the goat (Capricorn), the water-bearer (Aquarius), and, finally, the fish (Pisces). At the center of the zodiac cycle, above the ceiling light fixture, are the letters XP on top of one another—the first two Greek letters of the name “Christ” in the Bible, ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ.

Early Church leaders wavered over whether astrology was compatible with the Gospel they preached.

(Many altars have these two letters placed on top of one another.) Astride the XP are the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet, Alpha (A) and Omega (Ω)—what Christ calls himself in the last verses of the Bible, Revelation 22:13: “I am the Alpha and the Omega.” Alpha and Omega are analogous to our English phrase A-to-Z, “the first and the last, the beginning and the end.”

The debate over astrology’s compatibility with Christianity has, like the stars, been up in the air for more than a thousand years. But Saint John’s zodiac mural suggests that Brother Clement, who also gave us Christ Pantocrator in the Great Hall, was willing to accommodate Christian faith and astrology.

Dr. Martin F. Connell is professor of theology at Saint John’s University.

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Saint John’s First Church The construction project was not without its woes. The workweek was six ten-hour days.

During operations, claims about defrauding workers’ wages surfaced, inciting some bad blood toward the contractor. There were stories of on-the-job injuries as well as tales of workers drinking beer, imbibing whiskey, and even getting drunk! Some sustained injuries after tumbling from defective scaffolding, notably Brother Leo Martin, O.S.B., who died from his fall.

Masons were always in short supply, and, once hired, there

Aaron Raverty, O.S.B.

I

n Worship and Work, Saint John’s centenary history, author Father Colman Barry, O.S.B., alerts us to the adventure surrounding Saint John’s first domus Dei. “The story of the building of the abbey church is one of originality, farsightedness, determination, and boundless energy” (141).

In 1878 Abbot Alexius Edelbrock, O.S.B., decided to pause in his flurry of regional pastoral building projects to reset his sights on the construction of his own abbey church.

Both he and the monastic community recognized the need, given the minimal twelve-footsquare chapel in the Old Frame House (originally situated south of the quadrangle) for recitation of the Divine Office and for other liturgical celebrations, in addition to accommodating a local parish congregation. But what of the architectural plan?

While attending a celebration in Green Bay, Wisconsin, Abbot Alexius was impressed by their new cathedral plans, recommending them to Saint John’s Abbey architect Father Gregory Steil, O.S.B., only to discover they were an adaptation of the abbey’s Assumption Church in Saint Paul! After some architectural tweaking, the abbot’s original contract arrangements were completed 14 March 1879 and subsequently approved by the monastic chapter.

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Construction of the first abbey church, c. 1881

Construction of this first Collegeville church spanned the years 1879–1882. The Romanesque structure is configured in the shape of a Latin cross. As part of the north end of the quadrangle, “the first stone of the foundation was placed in position on the 19th [April 1879]. It is a huge granite boulder of irregular shape; it is laid in the northeast corner.

From that corner the north line of the church was lined and leveled” (Scriptorium [May 1960], 9). The general bottomup plan was to lay a rubblestone foundation overlaid by a granite water table and topped with brick and mortar.

Building the church was a community effort. The fathers,

Abbey archives

brothers, clerics, and even Abbot Alexius himself (time permitting) worked alongside hired local laborers. Saint John’s environs provided much of the stone, lumber, and brick-clay resources for construction. On 29 June 1879, it was determined that 400,000 bricks were needed to complete the structure. The brothers made the bricks onsite, hauling by horse and wagon.

Nevertheless, “the extant records make it extremely difficult to determine how many bricks were made here and when they were used” (Scriptorium [May 1960], 25). Stone quarried in nearby Saint Cloud was initially hauled in by teams of horses, later by train. Additional lumber arrived from Anoka, Minnesota.

The twin towers on 26 April 1881

was some trouble keeping them on task. On one occasion, masons got the abbey drayman to procure a keg of beer. “They had a drinking bout in the upper story of the wash house [the laundry building that also served as a workers’ dormitory] that ended in a row” (Scriptorium [May 1960], 17).

Nor did the weather always cooperate. Heavy rains slowed the operation. Work came to a standstill when temperatures were too cold. The roofing quality by tinsmiths from Saint Paul was problematic, as it was subsequently discovered to be leaky. A storm ripped off some of the roof, and much of it had to be replaced with shingles.

Abbey archives

The cornerstone of Saint John’s first church was laid 24 September 1879, and the whole structure was under one roof by October 1880. The feast of All Saints (1 November 1880) was celebrated onsite, as well as could be accommodated due to construction on the church: two solemn high

Masses, two sermons, and two benedictions.

The church interior was a work in progress during these early days, with new installations appearing at irregular intervals.

In April 1881 new pews for the nave came from Minneapolis, and stained-glass windows arrived from Chicago in June that same year. The first Mass was celebrated in the church’s basement on 17 July 1881, and the following year the abbot’s throne was added to the sanctuary. The original organ loft had to be modified in 1891 to accommodate a new pipe organ.

“The lack of any heating system, except for the two wood stoves, and the lack of lighting, except for candles and lanterns, made the use of the large upstairs church almost impossible during the long dark winter months” (Scriptorium [May 1961], 42).

Prior to steam heating beginning in 1888, provided by a boiler house constructed adjacent to the main building, winter liturgies were generally confined to the largest of the basement chapels (the “college chapel”). In 1893 a host of new furnishings was added to the church. The five bells arrived in 1897, transported on wagons, raised to the twin towers above the church, and consecrated in May of that year by Abbot Peter Engel, O.S.B. Electric lights were finally installed in 1898.

The church was consecrated by Bishop Rupert Seidenbusch on

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Brother Clement Frischauf, with the assistance of Mr. Charles Schmoll and Mr. Frank Eisenschenk, began painting the Pantocrator (Christ the King) mural in the apse in August 1933, completing the work in nine months. On 19 May 1934, First Vespers of Pentecost and the namesday of Abbot Alcuin Deutsch, a great white curtain screening off the apse—that had been the “occasion of many a distraction among students attending services”—was removed, and for the first time the apse painting was publicly viewed. The painting is done according to the canons of Beuronese art that aimed at creating liturgical art focusing the attention of the faithful at Mass on the altar. On the lower wall of the apse are ten stylized angels, each colored with a Baldwin Dworschak, O.S.B. slightly varying shade. With their faces buried in their garments, the angels further focus attention on the altar and on the sublimity of the action taking place there (Scriptorium [May 1961], 70–71).

communion rail was necessary to accommodate an influx of clerics from other monasteries and an expanding novitiate.

Regular monastic recitation of the Divine Office was initiated in the upper church beginning in 1930. In 1933 Brother Clement Frischauf, O.S.B., began painting the Pantocrator (Christ the King) mural that still adorns the apse.

As the monastic community grew in numbers over the years and enrollment in the schools continued to increase, the church proved to be too small. Abbot Alexius originally envisioned a space for a congregation of 1,200. However, university

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Legend has it that the abbot stepped off the one hundred and forty-four foot length of the proposed church, then turned north sixty-four paces and commanded: “Dig here.”

In the spring of 1880 a brickyard was laid out northeast of the proposed church and operated by the brothers and hired workmen. Abundant clay of good quality was found on the lands and in the woods around the abbey, and an average of 15,000 bricks a day were soon coming from the kilns, which were operated around the clock. These months were the only time in the first century of Saint John’s that the institution’s grounds were adequately lighted at night, as the red glare from burning kilns illuminated the Collegeville countryside.

[The church’s] portals were flanked by twin towers one hundred and fifty feet high, which became with the years a symbol for the institution itself.

Celebrating the Eucharist in the abbey church, c. 1947.

Abbey archives

Colman Barry, O.S.B. Worship and Work, 141–142

Abbey archives

space requirements in the quadrangle resulted in structural adjustments to the church that allowed only about 400 worshipers to be accommodated at one time. A monk writing in Scriptorium (1961) observed: “[The church] was built by men, and it took living expression from the men who lived and prayed in it. The old church began as a need, and it was built to serve a need. It ends because it can no longer serve present needs” (75).

24 October 1882. The new pews from the previous year, in addition to marble altars, wooden reredos, statues, and stainedglass windows, were all in place.

Decorations, however, were still wanting, and the walls remained unpainted. The consecration marked a double celebration: it was also the date of the silver jubilee of the abbey’s founding monks in Minnesota.

In 1909 the church underwent a complete refurbishment and redecoration by Abbot Peter.

The Saint Peregrin relic (now in the reliquary of the Breuer church) arrived from Europe and was set in place in the crypt in 1928. The following year witnessed widespread changes to the church’s interior. Repositioning the side altars, baldachin, and

Building the Abbey Church

As plans for the new Marcel Breuer church were underway, the original church underwent a period of deconstruction. The steeples were detached in February 1960 to aid in the removal of the bells. The baldachin, sent to Assumption Abbey in North Dakota, continues to adorn that church. The wooden pews were

relocated to a church in northern Minnesota. The pontifical throne is currently in abbey storage, and the first Gothic-style, wooden altar (probably hand carved by Mr. Peter Eich) is still a fixture in the parish of Saint Catherine in Farming, Minnesota. The organ, described by a confrere as “a fantastic and powerful instrument,” was simply dismantled.

Renamed the “Great Hall,” the first abbey church was suitably repurposed into Saint John’s main entrance and continues to serve the need for a centrally located reception and information center, as well as a banquet space or recital hall.

“Though it served as a church, now it ceases to live as a church.

But it will remain a monument to all the deceased members of the community, of those who

helped to build it and those who made it a living building by making it a house of God’s worship” (Scriptorium [May 1961], 75).

Brother Aaron Raverty, O.S.B., a member of the Abbey Banner editorial staff, is the author of Refuge in Crestone: A Sanctuary for Interreligious Dialogue (Lexington Books, 2014).

The first church will remain a monument to all the deceased members of the community, of those who helped to build it and those who made it a living building by making it a house of God’s worship.

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The first abbey church (clockwise, beginning above, left). Basement chapels, c. 1949. Church interior, c. 1911. Monks celebrating the Liturgy of the Hours, c. 1952. Detail of an angel from Brother Clement Frischaufâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s apse, 2019. The Great Hall, 2019. Church interior, c. 1945. Church interior on Easter Sunday 1900.

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Early photos: Abbey archives Color photos: Alan Reed, O.S.B.

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Saint Thomas Christian Texts tices recorded in the Saint Thomas Christian texts can provide scholars with a richer and more diverse image of Christianity’s roots.

Melissa Moreton

O

n the southernmost tip of India, facing west across the Arabian Sea, in the lush foothills of the Western Ghats mountain range, is an ancient community of Saint Thomas Christians that still practices a unique blend of Christianity—mixing early Syriac, Indian, and European traditions. They live in Kerala, a region that includes the historic city of Cochin/Ernakulam and a half dozen other districts along India’s southwestern coast. The region, known historically as the Malabar coast, was famed for its spices. The manuscript tradition of the Saint Thomas Christians includes Christian religious codices on paper written in Syriac and Malayalam Garshuni (the local Malayalam language written in Syriac script), along with palm leaf manuscripts written in Syriac, Tamil, and Malayalam. These texts were inscribed onto palm leaves, the local book material of choice, which were then trimmed, stacked, and held between wooden covers. Archival and commercial records were written on single, untrimmed palm leaves. These palm leaf documents date to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and contain a wealth of local economic, social, and religious history including genealogies, chronicles, slave deeds, account books, dowry records, land grants and letters, as well as biblical texts such as the Acts of the Apostles.

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HMML archives

The Syriac colophon from a 16th-century Kashkul from Kothamangalam, India, survived the 1599 destruction of religious texts following the Synod of Diamper.

HMML project number APSTCH THRI 22.

The Hill Museum & Manuscript Library (HMML) began digitizing manuscripts in Kerala in 2008, led by archivist and Syro– Malabar Catholic priest Father Ignatius Payyappilly [right]. The seeds of the project began even earlier, in 2000, when Hungarian scholar Dr. Istvan Perczel of the Central European University connected with church leader Mar Aprem (Metropolitan of India for the Church of the East), local scholar Dr. Susan Thomas, and photographer Fabian da Costa to locate and digitize texts in Kerala and the surrounding villages and towns. With support from the University of Tübingen in Germany, and in coordination with Dr. Perczel and local partners, HMML digitally imaged over 3,300 palm leaf and paper manuscripts. The value of these texts lies in the

rich historical record they contain that tells the story of a religious community developing independently for centuries on the south Indian coast. As an early branch of Syriac Christianity, the unique religious prac-

Father Ignatius Payyappilly

Wayne Torborg

The district of Kerala is home to 4.5 million Saint Thomas Christians, with more accounted for throughout a global diaspora.

The community’s foundation story recounts the arrival of their namesake the Apostle Thomas to Malabar in A.D. 52. At that time there were Roman military camps along the coast to protect spice traders traveling to and from the West. Historians note that Persian sea merchants traveling along their trade routes in this period spent much time on the Malabar coast—the monsoon winds forcing them to remain for months, until conditions were favorable and shifting trade winds allowed ships to set sail again. These seasonal stopovers brought new people and religions to the area, including Syriac Christians and Muslims from the Middle East.

The earliest archaeological evidence placing Christianity in the region dates to the ninth century —a copper plate inscription in Old Malayalam and Tamil issued by the local ruler that granted land to Christians, Jews, and Muslims. Kerala still has a diverse population including these three communities as well as Hindus and the largest percentage of Christians in India.

The Malabar coast became a destination for travelers in the

late fifteenth century when Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama (ancestor of photographer Fabian de Costa) charted a new sea route from Europe, opening the community to contact with European sea traders and the Roman Catholic Church, which brought the Saint Thomas Christians under their jurisdiction.

The Portuguese missionaries who arrived in 1498 did not look favorably upon the community’s unique textual tradition that was rooted in the Syriac Christianity of Mesopotamia and incorporated elements of local culture.

One hundred years later, the Synod of Diamper (today Udayamperoor, Malabar), held in 1599, condemned traditional Saint Thomas Christian beliefs and called for the burning of their Syriac Christian manuscripts. Though there is schol-

arly debate about the amount of material destroyed, this was clearly a pivotal moment, and few manuscripts survive from the pre-1599 period.

One recent visitor to the Hill Museum & Manuscript Library, Romanian Radu Mustaţă, is working to trace the connections between the pre- and post-Synod period to determine how the banning of texts affected the Saint Thomas Christian tradition. He discovered one preSynod text (dated 6 September 1585) on HMML’s digital library (vHMML.org). The manuscript is a liturgical book called a Kashkul—a compilation of prayers used to celebrate weekday evening services for feast days. The colophon states it was copied in Kothamangalam (a town in the district of Kerala) by

Wayne Torborg

The Hill Museum & Manuscript Library’s manuscript preservation project in Kerala, India, trained and supported locals to digitize their palm leaf manuscripts.

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Benedictine Seeds “Matthew, son of Joseph, the priest of the Punarkaden family.”

The manuscript is a rare survivor from this pre-Synod era. The Vatican Library may hold the only other surviving examples, all of which are liturgical. This manuscript in HMML’s digital collections will provide important information about the composition of texts from the period.

Another important manuscript is a Syriac Christian canon law text. In the post-Synod period, the text was “corrected”: texts were crossed out or pages were removed altogether from the manuscript. Resisting the attempts to reform their religious practices, the Saint Thomas Christians were determined to hold on to their own manuscript tradition and continued to create texts that reflected their traditional practices. Mr. Mustaţă [below] observes: “What one sees in the postSynod period is a local community striving to preserve its own

Radu Mustaţă

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Melissa Moreton

Joel J. Roske

G

rowing up within walking distance of Saint John’s, I always felt that the shade of the church bell banner and the sun across Lake Sagatagan were in my backyard.

I can recall one time when my brother and I decided to run away from home. We had the red wagon packed and were headed to the Saint John’s woods. We didn’t get far, but today I still feel the same sense of comfort and belonging under the woods’ leafy canopies.

HMML archives

A Syriac Christian canon law manuscript produced in the Middle East that came to Kerala and was corrected by crossing out pages and removing others. HMML project number ISL 326.

unique identity by copying out Syriac Christian texts.”

Devastating floods hit the region in early August 2018, displacing one million people and killing almost 500. Though monsoon season always brings large amounts of rain, a combination of higher than normal rainfall, poor water resource management, and coastal development made last year’s rains the worst the area has seen in almost a century. Amazingly, the manuscripts survived the massive flooding. Nonetheless, this disaster underscores the importance of safeguarding cultural treasures for future generations, so they can be accessed both by local communities and the global community of scholars who study these texts to understand the roots of Christianity.

Recently HMML began a new digitization project of Islamic Persian manuscripts in northern India at the family library of the Raja of Mahmudabad in Lucknow (Uttar Pradesh). Like the Saint Thomas Christian manuscripts, this collection demonstrates the blending of many traditions—the religious and literary texts of the Muslim world with local Indian textual traditions. These projects illustrate the rich diversity of cultures on the Indian subcontinent, whose heritage the Hill Museum & Manuscript Library will continue to explore, preserve, and share in collaboration with local partners.

My seeds of Benedictine life were sown early. From the monks I learned about caring for the woods that helped heat our home and employ my father, a woodworker for the abbey.

From him I learned how to care for furniture—and that it was really a metaphor for caring about people, animals, and things in one’s life. I often walked from my elementary

school in Saint Joseph to my mother’s office in Clemens Library at the College of Saint Benedict (and later to her office in the Saint John’s University archives, while I was a student at the prep school and university), where I learned to care for history. I also learned that all these different ways of caring had names. Stewardship, hospitality, community, and others had been framed on our living room wall. I never anticipated how big of a role they would play in my life.

After I graduated from college, I participated in the Saint John’s Abbey Benedictine Volunteer Corps. Apparently growing up near a monastery wasn’t enough.

I had to live in one! Beyond teaching English, my two years in Bogotá, Colombia, were mostly spent learning. From my students, I learned the value of devoting oneself to others. From monks and fellow travelers, I learned that the stewardship

and community values of my upbringing didn’t stop at the borders of the abbey arboretum.

I have since returned to Collegeville to pursue a career in education. I continue to learn as I live in community—resident students of the prep school and I are developing a mutual patience with one another (more might be required on their part).

Recently the prior of the Colombian monastery sent a note, asking if I were “still feeding on Benedictine spirituality.” I told him I hope to do so for a long time, but I also hope to bring something to the table.

Working where I once studied gives me the opportunity for reflection. What strikes a chord with me is not any individual Benedictine value, but rather the balance and intentionality with which they are all lived in a tradition that has had such a positive impact on my life.

Mr. J. J. Roske is a resident assistant at Saint John’s Preparatory School.

Different ways of caring: Stewardship hospitality community

Dr. Melissa Moreton is assistant director for strategic initiatives at the Hill Museum & Manuscript Library.

Aidan Putnam

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Lives of the Benedictine Saints Anselm of Canterbury Richard Oliver, O.S.B.

S

aint Anselm was born in 1033 in Aosta, a town in northwest Italy. From an early age he was fired with the love of learning. Eadmer, his biographer, adds that the boy was beloved by all and made rapid progress in learning.

After a dispute with his father, Anselm wandered for three years through Burgundy and France.

Anselm became a student of the widely honored Lanfranc, schoolmaster at the Benedictine Abbey of Bec, northwest of Paris.

Located near the Bec River, the abbey grew and prospered under the good work begun by its first abbot, Herluin. When the site proved unsatisfactory, however, it was necessary to build a larger monastery. The new foundations were laid higher up the valley of the Bec and farther away from the river. This change was really the work of Lanfranc, who was now the prior and the right hand of the aged Abbot Herluin. As the first site was closely followed by the arrival of one great teacher, this second foundation was almost coincident with the coming of a yet greater glory of the abbey, Saint Anselm of Canterbury.

In the golden age of Lanfranc and Anselm, the Abbey of Bec held a unique position and exerted a far-reaching influence on the course of Church history

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and the advancement of theological learning. John Richard Green writes of Lanfranc: “His teaching raised Bec in a few years into the most famous school of Christendom. It was, in fact, the first wave of the intellectual movement that was spreading from Italy to the ruder countries of the West. The whole mental activity of the time seemed concentrated in the group of scholars who gathered around him.

The fabric of canon law and of medieval scholasticism, along with the philosophical skepticism that first awoke under its influence, all trace their origins to Bec” (A Short History of the English People, I, ii, 3).

In 1060 Anselm took his vows as a monk. In 1063 Lanfranc left Bec to become the Abbot of Caen, and Anselm succeeded him as prior and the principal teacher in the school. He overcame opposition to the appointment of one as young as he in the monastic life by gentleness, and he quickly won the affection and obedience of his former adversaries.

During this time Anselm composed some of his philosophical and theological works, notably, the Monologium and the Proslogium, his ontological proof for the existence of God. Anselm lived during a period in which reason and dialectic acquired a renewed significance in the intellectual history of the West. His attraction to the solitude of a hermitage led him to feel oppressed by his busy life, however, and he longed to lay aside his office and give himself up to the delights of contemplation.

In its early days the abbey gave three archbishops to the See of Canterbury: Alan Reed, Lanfranc, Anselm, Mural by Clement Frischauf, O.S.B., 1932 and Theobald, the fifth abbot of Bec. Among and Gilbert Crispin, Abbot of other prelates who came Westminster. Bec continued in from this famous school were existence until the French RevoPope Alexander II; William, lution. Olivetan Benedictines Archbishop of Rouen; three refounded the monastery in bishops of Rochester; Ivo of 1948.

Chartres; Fulk of Beauvais;

O.S.B.

Abbot Herluin, the founder of Bec, died in 1078, and the monks of Bec elected Anselm second abbot when he was 45. Besides giving good counsel to the monks under his care, he found time to comfort others by his letters. Shortly thereafter, Anselm was called to take the place of his old master, Lanfranc, as Archbishop of Canterbury, a responsibility he reluctantly assumed.

When Lanfranc died, King William Rufus, who had kept

the See of Canterbury vacant for four years, seized its revenues, and kept the Church in England in a state of anarchy. To many, the Abbot of Bec seemed to be the man best fitted for the archbishopric. The general desire was so evident that Anselm felt a reluctance to visit England during the see’s vacancy lest it appear that he was seeking the office. At length, however, he yielded to the entreaty of Hugh, Earl of Chester, and went to England in 1092.

At a private interview with the king, Anselm spoke freely about the evils by which the land was made desolate. Anselm’s own affairs kept him in England for some months, but when he wished to return to Bec, the king objected. Meanwhile the people made no secret of their desires.

With the king’s permission, the bishops ordered that prayers be offered in all the churches that God would move the king to appoint a pastor for the Church of Canterbury. The king fell ill early in the new year (1093), and on his sickbed he was moved to repentance. Anselm was consecrated Archbishop of Canterbury, 4 December 1093. He regarded his years as archbishop as “a time of grief and affliction” (Richard W. Southern, Saint Anselm: A Portrait in a Landscape, 231).

Anselm was a spiritual genius who transformed Western piety forever. He was the first to establish the feast of the

Immaculate Conception in the West, and he developed the theology of atonement. Scholars recognize Anselm as the most influential Christian intellectual between Augustine (354–430) and Aquinas (1225–1274).

Lying on sackcloth and ashes, Anselm died at age 76, 21 April 1109, in the forty-ninth year of his monastic life. He is buried in his cathedral in Kent, England.

Pope Clement XI proclaimed him a Doctor of the Church, 1720.

Saint Anselm’s intellectual prowess is commemorated today

by St. Anselm’s Abbey School, Washington, D.C.; Saint Anselm College, New Hampshire; and the Pontifical Athenæum of St. Anselm, Rome. Saint Anselm’s commitment to monastic life led the Archbishop of Canterbury in 2016 to invite young Christians from around the world to spend a year living in a new monasticinspired community based at his residence, Lambeth Palace in London. His vision for the Community of St. Anselm is for young people to follow an intensive pattern of prayer, study, and serving local communities that Saint Anselm and the ancient monastics would have recognized and applauded.

Brother Richard Oliver, O.S.B., president emeritus of the American Benedictine Academy, is the coordinator of abbey church tours.

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Meet a Monk: John Meoska Timothy Backous, O.S.B.

T

he Rule of Benedict lays out a rugged process for those wishing to be monks.

When candidates present themselves, they are not to be granted an easy entrance. If they persist in their desire to become a monk —knocking on the door for “four or five days”—they are allowed to stay in the guest quarters for a few days and are then moved to the novitiate, where a senior, “skilled in winning souls,” watches over them with the utmost care (RB 58.1-6).

Abbey archives

At Saint John’s Abbey, Father John Meoska, O.S.B., is that “senior.” Since 2013 he has served as the abbey’s formation director, caring for the novices and junior monks. He is their constant companion, mentor, and cheerleader. He oversees their education, work schedules, and career development. He is their first teacher in the ways of monastic life and helps shape the experience of their new monastic family. It is a daunting, challenging task that demands a skillful eye, ear, and heart in order to win souls.

The fourth of five children of Joe and Hazel Meoska, John was born in 1955 in Bloomington, Wisconsin. His father is deceased; his mother still lives on the family farm. His older siblings are David, Tom, and Janet, while Kathy fills the role of the family’s youngest. John’s

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education was solidly Catholic, solidly Wisconsin: grade school at Saint Mary’s in Bloomington, and high school at Holy Name Seminary in Madison. He enrolled at the University of Wisconsin (Richland Center and Madison) with the intention of becoming a veterinarian, but his call to the priesthood overrode that plan.

In 1976 John accepted an invitation to visit friends who were studying theology at Saint John’s. “I thought I was just coming for a social visit,” he recalls. “But God had other ideas for me!” During the return to Wisconsin, one of his traveling companions asked, “So when are you coming back?” John knew something was different.

He did go back to Collegeville.

Though Saint John’s School of Theology and Seminary provided the space for his priesthood preparation, the call to monastic life had yet to be clarified. John forged ahead with his sights set on parish ministry in his beloved Wisconsin. He reflects: “Several retreats at New Melleray Abbey (Peosta, Iowa) during my seminary years opened my eyes—but even more importantly, my heart —to the contemplative life of prayer and work. During my final two years of seminary studies at Saint John’s, I recognized I was being called to contemplative life. But I had no idea where God was calling me to live that life.”

where I was educated, where I frequently went for retreats, where I chose to go for a sabbatical,” he explains. In March 2008, after being released from his vows as a hermit and given the blessing of his former community, he requested permission to explore monastic life as a Benedictine monk at Saint John’s Abbey. John quickly re-rooted himself in Collegeville, finding the pace and space he needed to answer that earlier call to be a monk. Between 2009 and 2013 he served as the manager of the abbey woodworking shop. In addition to woodworking, he enjoys iconography, gardening and cooking.

Michael Crouser

John was ordained in 1982 and served parishes in Madison and Portage, Wisconsin, until 1986.

While he was in Portage, a young priest from a community

Father John and his famous dill pickles

Ælred Senna, O.S.B.

Creative labor at the abbey woodworking shop

of contemplative hermits led a parish mission there. “Within a few hours of listening to him,” remembers Father John, “I knew where God was calling me!”

For the next twenty-two years he lived as an apostolic hermit in the Spiritual Life Institute. In 1995 he was one of six monks who pioneered a new cluster of hermitages in County Sligo, Ireland.

The original call to monastic life, however, had not yet led John to his final destination. With the aid of his spiritual director, he discerned that it was time to take up the cenobitic monastic life.

“I became aware of the place that Saint Benedict and all things Benedictine had in my life—

What stirs Father John’s passion for Benedictine life? “Every day I get to do what I love to do: serve the people of God as a priest, spend time in prayer with

Father John has written a number of icons, including of the Annunciation, Saint Gabriel the Archangel, two of Christ Pantocrator, two of Mary, and the Trinity. He explains: “I wanted to learn icon writing since I was a young monk and was offered opportunities to attend workshops by master iconographers. Iconography is a spiritual practice more than a way of making art, so prayer, reflection, and fasting are integral to the process. Every step of the process has symbolism and meaning, from making the board and applying gesso, to choosing and applying the pigments, to sealing the finished icon with oil and a blessing.”

my brother monks and our guests each day, and work to support our community and carry forth our mission. I love our carefully balanced and ordered life. Living as part of a 1500-year tradition, I don’t have to wonder what I’m supposed to do when I wake up each day.

I know! Another great part of being a monk is the fraternity I experience day in and day out: the support of many brothers, the wisdom of our elders, and the dedication of our neighbors, colleagues, and friends who make up the larger Saint John’s community.”

Father John Meoska’s life veered far from his original desire to be a veterinarian. But his deep sense of fulfillment and daily energy confirm that the call to be a monk led him to the right place.

Michael Crouser

Spring 2019

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Kieran Nolan

Easter Verse Kathleen Norris

Death of a Monk at Easter-tide His pale hand in mine, he coughs.

“I am in the great transition,” he says, “from life—to life.

He went before me, and that makes it easier.”

Shifting in the bed, he opens his eyes and looks at me, but it’s not me he is seeing.

His mother and father stand in the doorway.

He brought them through their deaths; now they have come to see him through his own.

With a weary smile, he squeezes my hand and says, “Heaven is here.”

Easter lilies keep vigil in the abbey church.

The morning after, his confreres sing him to his rest.

The tolling begins and ends.

Moonset, 5 A.M., in the Octave of Easter I walk between the moon and the sun, between your absence and presence, cold and hungry in the cold light of dawn, as ground-nesting birds begin their song.

Somewhere, cool water breaks over stones, the flesh of earth.

Trees stand along your river in the shaggy garment of spring— —your outstretched hand, your dear, tired flesh— —this land so arid, and my trees so few— how would I know you, were you to call my name?

Ms. Kathleen Norris, an oblate of Saint Benedict and former scholar in residence at the Collegeville Institute for Ecumenical and Cultural Research, has published seven books of poetry. She is an editorial advisor for Give Us This Day published by Liturgical Press.

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July 1954, and received his bachelor’s degree in philosophy in 1956. Following seminary classes, he was ordained to the priesthood on 19 September 1959.

F

ather Kieran Nolan, O.S.B., the sixth of eight children of Michael James and Anne Marie (Connolly) Nolan, was born in Bronx, New York, on 20 August 1933 and baptized Peter.

His parents were deeply religious and deeply Irish, hailing from County Galway, Ireland.

Throughout his life, Father Kieran celebrated his Irish heritage and spoke flawless Bronx English.

From an early age, Kieran dreamed of becoming a priest but struggled with the choice of a religious order: “I wanted to be a priest. And I wanted to do God’s will. And that was all. If the Benedictines could help me to do both, then I would be a Benedictine.” He began his undergraduate education at Saint John’s University—in Minnesota—in 1951, entered the novitiate of Saint John’s Abbey in 1953, professed his first vows as a Benedictine monk on 11

Father Kieran began teaching theology courses at Saint John’s as early as 1963 after completing a doctorate in moral theology at the University of Munich in Germany that same year. Undergraduates, graduate students, and seminarians all marveled at his uncanny ability to take the most complex Church teachings, the most abstract theological concepts—and make them even more abstract. He would go on to serve as the director of campus ministry at the university (1972–1975), pastor of Saint John the Baptist Parish in Collegeville (1972–1978), and rector and dean of Saint John’s School of Theology and Seminary (1975–1980).

Kieran played a pivotal role in conceiving and initiating what was to become the Permanent Diaconate Program of the National Council of Catholic Bishops, the first program of its kind in the country, with Kieran its first director. The first workshop for candidates was held at Saint John’s in August 1969. In 2009, Kieran was honored during the celebration of the program’s fortieth anniversary.

Abbot Jerome Theisen appointed Kieran subprior (major superior) of Saint John’s Abbey (1982–

1985). In 1986 he moved to Saint Anselm’s Priory and Parish in the Meguro district of Tokyo, Japan. From March 1988 until November 1999, Kieran served as prior of the community. During his tenure, the monks discerned the need to move from the metropolis of Tokyo to Fujimi, a small city about a hundred miles west of Tokyo, where they established Trinity Benedictine Monastery in 1999. In 2009 Father Kieran was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease that was progressively debilitating.

In May 2011 he returned to Collegeville.

Despite his declining physical health, Kieran maintained the same positive attitude, curiosity about life and learning, and the Irish humor that he had expressed throughout his life.

He was consistently generous, thoughtful, and disorganized.

He favored the color green.

Father Kieran joined his Irish ancestors on 30 December 2018 as a few of his confreres were praying Compline with him.

Following the Mass of Christian Burial on 5 January, he was laid to rest in the abbey cemetery.

Father Kieran grew to love the Japanese culture and its people.

He was beloved for his good humor and pastoral sensitivity.

Abbot John Klassen, O.S.B.

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Cloister Light The daily routine within the cloister is enlivened by the antics of the “characters” of the community and by the continual retelling of monastic stories—stories, from the oral tradition, often filled with mispronunciations or spoonerisms; or stories of messages posted on the abbot’s bulletin board, famous for their subject matter, misspellings, or tortured syntax.

Here are a few tidbits.

Who trustingly loaned me $50 yesterday? I’ve clean forgotten.

(Please, not more than one claimant.)

Godfrey, o.s.b.

Since nobody noticed any difference when I resigned as Director of the Universe, I hereby resume my position.

Bro. William

The floggings will continue until morale improves.

Abbot Jerome P. Theisen, O.S.B.

[Note handed to Father Anthony

by Father Ian during Evening Prayer:] Did you know you have a sock in your hood?

Dear Father Prior, Would you please post a “reminder” notice from the laundry personnel that we are not responsible for emptying shirt and pants pockets, and would the monks please double check their pockets.

In the past 10 working days a handful of screws, 3 billfolds, and a tube of Chapstick have been washed. We are not in the money laundering business.

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The Laundry Ladies

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Abbey Chronicle And then there is Father Celestine’s story of the hand-picked mushrooms that Father Matthew was eating one day when he began to wonder whether they were really the nonpoisonous kind. So the rectory cat was given a mushroom to nibble on. A short time later the cat started to look and act sickly and seemed to be having convulsions.

Father Matthew rushed to the hospital to have his stomach pumped.

When he returned, he discovered that the cat had had a litter of kittens.

Brother Leonard’s Notes Fortunately, spell check programs did not exist during most of Brother Leonard’s life—or the community would have been deprived of much entertainment from his typos.

A festivity meal will be severed in the monastery dining room at 6:00 on the feast of Saint Benedict. Also, there will be lacquers served with dessert.

There is a need for table waiters during the Triduum and Easter Sunday noon meal. There is a listing of time sloths when help is needed.

Please sign up.

The Alcuin Conference Room needs some plaster repair and a pain job.

The walls and lockers of the quad locker room will be painted on February 22. You might want to cover the continence of your locker to prevent additional contamination.

Pinkerton, the company who has installed and maintains our fire alarm systems, will be here on Wednesday, January 23rd to test the smoke detectors. This check includes the dictators in the private rooms.

Please review your entry in the Campus Phone Book, making any corrections, addictions, etc. as necessary.

Barber Bits When the practice of tonsure was abandoned, a cottage industry developed within the monastery: monk barbers. Sometimes their zeal for service exceeded their talent.

Help Help Help I had Father Alban give me a haircut! I need some remedial adjustment. Can you help me?

Kilian

Fr. Egbert would like a haircut today. This may be your last chance.

Fr. Egbert

Barber sign-up sheet

Saturday, June 29, 1974 Barber: Peter 8:00 Fr. Roland 8:20 T. F. 8:40 Benjamin, osb 9:00 Bro. Gabriel (if alive) If not, Bro. J. Fred

When all aloud the wind doth blow, And coughing drowns the parson’s saw, And birds sit brooding in the snow, And Marian’s nose looks red and raw . . . .

Love’s Labor’s Lost

I

f William Shakespeare were to visit Minnesota, he would recognize our winter of discontent. Cold and snow— bitterly cold, lots of snow—was the story of winter in Collegeville. January began on a frigid note, -14°F, and ended with windchills in the -50s that reddened noses and closed schools throughout the state. March came in like a polar bear, adding four more inches of white to the local landscape, followed by another twelve inches on 9 March. Moderate temps and bright sunshine beginning at midmonth created favorable conditions for the annual maple syrup production in the abbey woods.

We hope that Easter blessings include a gentle spring.

Come, Lord Jesus!

December 2018 • The Collegeville community extended congratulations and best wishes to Mr. John Geissler, abbey land manager, who presented and successfully defended his thesis for a master’s degree in forestry at the University of Minnesota on 28 November.

John’s thesis was focused on the oak tree regeneration project currently underway at the Saint John’s Abbey Arboretum.

Chilly cardinal (Cardinalis cardinalis)

• The December 2018 issue of National Geographic featured images from The Saint John’s Bible and photos of rare books from the collection of the Hill Museum & Manuscript Library (HMML). In an online version of the article, “The Bible Hunters: Inside the cloak-and-dagger search for sacred texts,” Father Columba Stewart, director of HMML, makes a cameo appearance.

• Father Jonathan Licari, headmaster of Saint John’s Preparatory School, announced that a fifth-grade pilot program for the prep middle school will be introduced during the 2019–2020 academic year. The pilot program will integrate grades 5 and 6 with a goal of furthering the development of students’ writing and mathematical skills, language basics, and fine arts training.

Saint John’s Prep serves day and boarding students in grades 6–12.

Robin Pierzina, O.S.B.

• To reduce the deer population of the abbey arboretum to a level that allows natural regeneration of the forest ecosystem, the abbey hosted its seventeenth controlled deer hunt since 1933. The archery hunt, primarily for antlerless deer, opened on 17 October and concluded on 31 December.

Twenty deer were taken.

January 2019 • During the annual observance of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, the Rev. Cynthia Williams, Methodist pastor and former scholar in residence at the Collegeville Institute for Ecumenical and Cultural Research, preached at the community Eucharist on Sunday, 20 January.

Reflecting on Deuteronomy 16:20, Rev. Williams’ theme was “Justice, Only Justice, You Shall Pursue,” which she delivered with a passion rarely expressed by Catholic homilists.

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February 2019 • As a prelude to the Super Bowl on Sunday afternoon, 3 February, Father Robert Koopmann presented “Classics and Improvisations,” a recital of piano music with commentary.

In addition to works by Sergei Rachmaninoff, Alberto Ginastera, Robert Schumann, and Johannes Brahms, Father Bob entertained with improvisations on “Shall We Gather at the River” and “Abide with Me.” He scored far more than either the Patriots or the Rams.

• The board of directors of the Episcopal House of Prayer hosted an open house on 3 February to honor and welcome its new director, Dr. Christine Luna Munger. A graduate of the College of Saint Benedict, Dr. Luna Munger is adjunct professor of theology at the College of Saint Benedict and Saint John’s University where she teaches Benedictine spirituality.

• As they have for most of the past twelve years, members of the Old Testament Colloquium met in the abbey guesthouse for their annual critique of one another’s work in Scripture studies. The organization was founded in 1985 by the late Brother Aloysius Fitzgerald, F.S.C., professor of Old Testament and Semitics at The Catholic University of America, and includes a number of his former students and other younger members of the Catholic Biblical Association (CBA). The

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Robin Pierzina, O.S.B.

colloquium typically numbers twelve to fifteen attendees, and “It has proven invaluable as a sounding board for writing that has then moved on to be published,” commented Father Dale Launderville, a member of the colloquium and dean of Saint John’s School of Theology and Seminary. Several members, including Father Dale, have served as president of the CBA; many have had works published

by Liturgical Press.

• A busload of monks made the annual jaunt to Saint Benedict’s Monastery in Saint Joseph, Minnesota, where the sisters hosted a celebration of the feast of their patroness, Saint Scholastica. Following Evening Prayer and a delicious supper, the assembly was treated to a hilarious program staged by several of the sisters who portrayed the challenges and pitfalls—faced by so many mem-

bers of the two communities—of dealing with modern technology, especially wireless microphones, and the curiosities of social media. A fun evening was had by all, and no one got hurt.

• The Phi Beta Kappa Society (ΦΒΚ) announced the appointment of fifteen visiting scholars for 2019–2020, including Father Columba Stewart. Father Columba, the director of the Hill Museum & Manuscript Library, is writing a new study on the origins of Christian monasticism.

He will visit several colleges or universities with ΦΒΚ chapters, sharing his research as well as the work of HMML. The purpose of this program is to contribute to the intellectual life of the member institutions by making possible an exchange of ideas between the visiting scholars and the resident faculty and students of the Phi Beta Kappa chapters.

March 2019 • Ajahn Jotipālo Bhikkhu, an American Theravada Buddhist monk of the Thai Forest Tradition of Ajahn Chah, and currently a resident scholar at the Collegeville Institute, spoke on metta meditation to the oblates of Saint John’s Abbey during their Lenten day of reflection on 17 March. Metta meditation is often translated as lovingkindness, but Jotipālo prefers the translation “goodwill.” Its practice is designed to share good wishes and a sense of benevolence for oneself and others.

During the day of reflection, two oblates made their final oblation.

Mr. Mark Hawkins, a Saint John’s University alumnus from Coon Rapids, Minnesota, reflected: “The oblate way of life helps me grow in God and see the presence of God in others. I love coming to Saint John’s— walking near the lake, enjoying the woods, and joining the monastic community for prayer.”

Mr. David Neff, a retired hospital chaplain and permanent deacon, now lives in Denver. He agrees with Esther de Waal: “My most profound desire is to be at home, in all the senses that I understand it; home in my own inner self, at home in the place where I belong, at home in the family of the Church.”

• Sap collecting, syrup cooking, live music, and hot maple syrup sundaes were part of the 2019 Maple Syrup Festival in the abbey arboretum on 30 March.

Following his nomination by Abbot John Klassen, the Saint John’s Preparatory School Board of Regents elected Mr. Jon McGee to head the school, effective 1 July 2019. A Saint John’s University alumnus, Mr. McGee is the vice president for planning and strategy at the College of Saint Benedict and Saint John’s University and the author of Prep archives Breakpoint: The Changing Marketplace for Higher Education (The Johns Hopkins University Press). He will be the first lay leader of the prep school, succeeding Headmaster Father Jonathan Licari and twenty-eight other Benedictine monks who have led the school since its founding in 1857.

Board chair Mr. Chris Twomey noted that Jon’s “passion for prep and the Benedictine values” was evident throughout the national search and review process. “We look forward to working with Jon to steward this extraordinary academic experience in the Catholic Benedictine tradition for our students and our community.”

Jon, who expressed his deep appreciation for “the confidence of the community,” is no stranger to Saint John’s. “This is my home!” He and his wife Ann have four children—two are graduates of the prep school, and two are current students—leading him to reflect: “Our children have received an extraordinary educational experience at Saint John’s Prep, and I look forward to ensuring that those advantages remain for students for generations to come.”

Amy Saupe

Spring 2019

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Fifty Years Ago Excerpted from Confrere, newsletter of Saint John’s Abbey:

15 January 1969 • The Epiphany gift of gold materialized for Saint John’s in the form of an appropriation of $230,820 from the Louis W. and Maud Hill Family Foundation for the support of the [Hill Museum & Manuscript Library].

Dr. A. A. Heckman, executive director of the Hill Foundation, said, “We believe that the abbey and university at Saint John’s are developing a library that will be a major resource and center for scholarly research in all of North America.”

17 February 1969 • The abbey’s pet deer Twiggy severely injured her hind leg last month when she leapt through a pane of glass in Saint Mary’s Hall. Tender, loving care has improved her condition.

• From Vinh Long Chapel in Vietnam, Father Peregrin Berres writes: “I’ve been exposed to a whole new world. The best description I have is to say that Vietnam is a land of contrasts.

Flying low out of Saigon to my assignment down in the delta gave me a view of the wealthy palatial gardens with their unique beauty. But the sea of rusted tin and thatched roofs stretching for solid blocks made me wonder how the two could exist so close together. . . .

I’ve experienced graft where I am. To get a job at the airbase a

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Monks in the Kitchen Vietnamese gate guard has to be paid off and a monthly cut goes to the one who got you the job and another cut goes to someone else to keep it.”

• The community at Monasterio San Antonio Abad in Humacao, Puerto Rico, decided recently to ask for a visitation to help the community in Puerto Rico set up guidelines for independence.

Prior Eric Buermann reports: “All of us are determined to work with all our might so that we may achieve independence.”

architectural and aesthetic triumph in this church that is truly ‘an architectural monument in the service of God.’” The award was presented to Abbot Baldwin Dworschak by Governor Harold LeVander.

18 March 1969 • On the afternoon of March 16, a thousand-pound icicle broke off from the corner of the quadrangle and went hurtling through the roof of the Reception Center, narrowly missing a family that was visiting there, and plunged through the floor of the Great Hall into the college bookstore below. Workmen are presently repairing the damage.

• The Minnesota State Arts Council has selected the abbey and university church for one of its 1969 awards. The governing board of this council selected nine projects and programs that evidenced such outstanding contributions to the aesthetic and cultural life of Minnesota that they merited the honor and recognition of their state. The citation reads: “. . . the Abbey and University Church designed by Marcel Breuer [is] perhaps the most important piece of architecture in the State. . . . and one of the finest religious structures of modern times. . . . The symbolic vision of the Abbey, brought to reality by the total effort and devotion of the entire Benedictine community, Abbey archives have combined with the Prior Berthold Ricker inspects the huge icicle that genius of Breuer to give crashed through the roof and first floor of the Minnesota a renowned Great Hall.

And the winner is . . . Ælred Senna, O.S.B.

F

irst, I must say a big thank you to all who sent in recipes for the hotdish challenge issued in the winter Abbey Banner. I received many emails and more than a few good, old snail mail entries. There were a couple of duplicate recipes— variations on the theme of hamburger and chow-mein-noodle hotdish. For those uninitiated in the midwestern world of hotdish, this is a classic that typically is made with either chicken or ground beef. Besides this classic, there were other more “outsidethe-box” ideas and even one that originated from one of my confreres of happy memory, sent in by a former student of his. I have decided to hold back several of the recipes for sharing in future issues. All are worth sharing, but I must constrain my exuberance and share only one at a time!

The recipe that I found most unusual and innovative was sent

by DeAnn Kautzmann. DeAnn’s email address was from the University of St. Thomas, Minnesota, the archrival of Saint John’s! But we won’t hold it against her, since her recipe is so delicious! She calls it sauerkraut casserole, but I’m going to call it sauerkraut hotdish because, you know . . . you say casserole, I say hotdish!

Until next time, happy cooking and eating!

Sauerkraut Hotdish (Serves 6–8) • 2 teaspoons oil • 1-½ lbs. pork, cubed • 1 medium onion, chopped (1 cup) • 2 ribs of celery, chopped (1 cup) • 16 oz. sauerkraut, undrained (regular or “sweet”) • 8 oz. cooked egg noodles • 1 can cream of mushroom soup • 8 oz. can mushroom stems and pieces, drained • Salt, pepper, and garlic powder to taste Preheat oven to 350°F. Heat a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add oil. When hot, brown the pork.

Add onion and celery. Cook until celery is translucent.

Stir in sauerkraut, cooked noodles, soup, and mushrooms.

Season with salt, pepper, and garlic powder to taste—don’t be stingy with the garlic powder!

Spoon mixture into a greased baking pan (9”x12”). Cover with foil.

Bake for 1 to 1-½ hours, until meat is tender.

Brother Ælred Senna, O.S.B., is associate editor of Give Us This Day and a faculty resident at Saint John’s University.

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In Memoriam

Purposeful Life

Please join the monastic community in prayerful remembrance of our deceased family members and friends:

Timothy Backous, O.S.B.

Nancy J. Mista Anderson Ann Arceneau, O.S.B. Lisa J. Botz Backus Paul Arthur Bauer Wendy Beckett, O.C.D. Bradley Arthur “Brad” Beniek George Bremer Benz Robert “Bob” Bester Raymond Borash Ellery J. Bresnahan James Ervin “Jim” Bruner Theresa M. Cahoy Angela Marie “Angie” Callahan Paul Leonard Callahan Thomas Carkhuff, O.S.C. Noreen Laura Muggli Carroll Dana Jean Kelly Christenson William Clark John Culloton Rev. Remy David James C. “Jim” DeMorett Mary Jo Donaldson, O.S.B. George V. Durken James J. Durning Brigitta M. Ehresmann Ethel A. Euteneuer Victor Feser, O.S.B. Marilyn “Sis” Queen Filan Diann Joan Finken Jacob “Jake” Froehle Gary “Buzz” Grooters

Elvira E. “Vi” Grundmayer Abbot Odo Haas, O.S.B. Sally Ann Haik, Obl.S.B. Elizabeth “Betty” Mandell Heymans Alvin Louis “Al” Houle, Obl.S.B. Sally Ann Jasmer Terrence Kardong, O.S.B. Ann “Dolly” Kershner Mary Kuebelbeck Esther K. LeBlanc Carole A. Queen Lenz Edward Markley, O.S.B. Theresa A. “Terri” McGee Patrick B. “Pat” McKee Ken Mehr Catherine “Cathi” Merck, O.S.B. Msgr. Edward G. “Ed” Meulemans Clara J. Meyer Dominic Milroy, O.S.B. Kathleen M. “Kelly” Moorse Richard John Moorse Msgr. Preston Moss Howard Moussier, O.S.B. Kieran Neilson, O.S.B. Kieran Nolan, O.S.B. Margaret “Peg” Olsem Ralph E. Petersen Catherine E. “Cotton” Petters Mary Mercita Pipp, O.S.F. Mary Madelena Pohlman, S.N.D. Rev. COL G. Robert Pryor

Jeanette Quinn, O.S.F. Marie Rademacher, O.S.B. George Elliott Rafferty, F.A.I.A. Paula Reiten, O.S.B. Curtis D. Rothstein Mary Bernarda Sanoski, O.S.F. Rev. Jacob “Jaha” Savarimuttu Lucille Schafer, O.S.B. Jeanette Schmall, Obl.S.B. Rick A. Schmitt Elmer M. Schreifels James Joseph Schuler Clare Shadeg, O.S.B. Abbot Aidan Shea, O.S.B. Kevin J. Shimota Lorraine Mackay Stewart Alvin D. Stommes Shizue Monica Tada Dolores M. “Lori” Tamm Mary Gail Thamert Eugene A. Theisen, M.M. Mary Hope Uphoff, O.S.F. Ralph Verhoff Anthony Vorwerk, O.S.B. Virginia M. “Ginny” Weis Katherine A. Welter Rose Wiechmann Ida-Lorraine Jules Wilderson Lucille Winter Rita Aileene Wurtz

Precious in the eyes of the LORD is the death of God’s faithful ones.

Psalm 116:15 A Monk’s Chronicle Father Eric Hollas, O.S.B., offers spiritual insights and glimpses into the life of the Benedictine community at Saint John’s Abbey in a weekly blog, A Monk’s Chronicle. Visit his blog at: monkschronicle.wordpress.com.

Father Don’s Daily Reflection Father Don Talafous, O.S.B., prepares daily reflections on Scripture and living the life of a Christian that are available on the abbey’s website at: saintjohnsabbey.org/reflection/.

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M

ary Oliver, whom a New York Times critic once described as “far and away, this country’s best-selling poet,” died in January, and the world is that much more silent. Her poetry seemed impossibly spare, yet full of insight. It was as if the words shouldn’t have been saying what they, in fact, were. A wonderful example is the ending of a poem entitled “When Death Comes” in which she says: “When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder if I have made of my life something particular, and real. I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened, or full of argument. I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.” This passage is especially meaningful to Benedictines who are told by our founder “to keep death daily before one’s eyes” (Rule 4.47)—an exercise of discipline that encourages monks to see the treasure of every lived moment.

Ms. Oliver’s poem was on my mind when I visited and anointed a friend who was dying of cancer. Already weak and confused by drugs and cancer cells, he bravely sat on his living room couch, sharing with me that he was down to his last month and wondered why. He asked the impossible: “Help me understand this.” I tried to be as honest as I could and said that no one could make sense of these mysterious and seemingly random twists of fate. Why do people drop dead of heart attacks? Why do babies die in their sleep? Why do some of us live to be one hundred, while others die much younger? The answers seem feeble: genes, lifestyle, bad luck. None of the answers satisfied him.

“Help me understand this.” This is where Mary Oliver may provide the most comfort: the question is not “why” I’m dying but rather, “What can I make of my life?” “What have I made of my life?”

Life is not just a visit.

Just before visiting my dying friend, I had attended a workshop on aging, during which William Barclay’s insights were shared: “There are two great days in a person’s life: the day we are born, and the day we discover why.” This is the why question most worthy of our attention, and I shared it with a man who had very little time left to answer it.

I suggested he answer that question and even write it down for his family and grandchildren to cherish throughout their lives. I was told later that in a subsequent phone call to his son, his voice was filled with a palpable sense of peace. Perhaps he had answered the “why” question and felt the reason his being born had been fulfilled. I hope he realized that his life was not just a visit but the fulfilling of a purpose.

The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Spring 2019

4 This Issue Robin Pierzina, O.S.B.

14 Christianity and the Zodiac Martin F. Connell

5 Easter Transformation Abbot John Klassen, O.S.B.

16 Saint John’s First Church Aaron Raverty, O.S.B.

6 Navigating the Chaos Michaela Hedican, O.S.B. Abbot John Klassen, O.S.B.

22 Saint Thomas Christian Texts Melissa Moreton

9 Rule of Benedict: When Monks Disagree Eric Hollas, O.S.B. 10 Benedictine Volunteer Corps Kyle George Munshower 12 Sounds of a Healthy Landscape John Geissler

25 Benedictine Seeds Joel J. Roske 26 Lives of the Benedictine Saints: Anselm of Canterbury Richard Oliver, O.S.B. 28 Meet a Monk: John Meoska Timothy Backous, O.S.B.

Volume 19, Number 1

31 Obituary: Kieran Nolan 32 Cloister Light 33 Abbey Chronicle Robin Pierzina, O.S.B. 36 Fifty Years Ago 37 Monks in the Kitchen: Sauerkraut Hotdish Ælred Senna, O.S.B. 38 In Memoriam 39 Purposeful Life Timothy Backous, O.S.B.

30 Easter Verse Kathleen Norris

The Spiritual Life Program of Saint John’s Abbey offers private and directed retreats throughout the year.

Private retreats provide solitude for rest, reading, reflection, a walk in the woods, and prayer, including the opportunity to join the monks for prayer services. Directed retreats include one-to-one conversation with a spiritual director. Meals are served in the abbey guesthouse dining room. Retreatants choose dates that fit their schedule.

Triduum Retreat Baptized into Death and Life: Through the Triduum with Saint Benedict Thursday–Sunday, 18–21 April 2019: Presented by Father Columba Stewart, O.S.B. The retreat begins at 4:00 P.M. on Holy Thursday and concludes Easter Sunday after lunch.

Cost: Single room, $290; double room, $520 ($260 per person); meals included.

Register online at: abbeyguesthouse.org; call the Spiritual Life Office: 320.363.3929; or email: spirlife@osb.org.