First Impressions
I confess. I’ve spent a lot of time as a monastic guest, and I’ve loved every minute of it. Hearing the sound of the bells calling me to chapel four to seven times a day (depending on the monastery) filled me with inexplicable joy, and the time spent chanting each Office was sacred time permeated with God in a way I hadn’t experienced before. But I wasn’t sure how that would translate when it became my everyday life; I was a little afraid of the sacrifices I would have to make, the loss of control, and the enormity of the ongoing conversion that was expected.
On most days we pray Morning Prayer at 6:30 followed by Mass, Midday Prayer at noon, Vespers at 5:30, and Compline at 8:15 followed by the Great Silence until after Mass the following morning (the schedule changes a bit on the weekends and Monday is our monastic Sabbath). It has been said of monastic life that “it’s not hard but it’s relentless.” No matter what we are doing… or feeling… we show up in chapel and pray. I remember one day I was very upset about something and all I wanted to do was lay in my bed under the covers and be alone. But when my alarm chimed for Vespers I put on my habit and went to the chapel because that’s what we do, and while I was praying before Vespers began I heard a voice very clearly telling me that I don’t really want to lay in bed alone and angry, that what I truly want is the peace that only God can give; and that peace can be found right there in the chapel praying Vespers. I heard – and felt very quickly – that this routine was a gift and exactly what I’d been needing for a very long time. My spiritual director, himself a monk, has been telling me for eleven years about monastic detachment and in that moment, I got it. Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life; all else is secondary.
I usually wake up by 4:45 to spend some time alone with our Lord in Adoration before Morning Prayer. Just Jesus and me; he’s in the lunette and I’m in my pajamas… It’s quiet and dark except for the light of his countenance. It helps to start my day by reminding myself that the goal of monastic life is growth in holiness that requires singleness of heart in order to truly experience God.
By day four I discovered that the rhythm of our new life was settling into my body, that my insides were already being cleaned and rearranged to make more room for God by letting go of some of the cares and worries that I obsessed over before. I felt more at peace, less angry or afraid, more content.
And on that fourth day I remembered that in July of 2017 when Rob and I were at the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky discerning a call to St. Paul’s in Seattle, at some point I heard a voice loud and clear telling me that my salvation lay in community. I finally understood what that meant. My growth in holiness requires the kind of communal living that doesn’t allow me to escape my sins and shortcomings, but also allows me to confess and receive absolution twice a day; it requires that I spend not one but several hours each day in prayer; it requires that I do it with other people so that I can begin to give up my selfish wants and desires and learn to want the good of the other; and it requires ever-deepening levels of humility, trust, acceptance, and self-emptying love. The happy surprise is that all of this is accompanied by a grace-filled joy.
As the days pass (it’s day 21 as I write this), I begin to notice that the three of us living here at the Abbey are truly becoming a monastic community; we do things for each other without being asked, we apologize a lot, we respect each other’s silence, we laugh and have fun together, and we overlook each other’s flaws and mistakes . The Desert Fathers and Mothers never reproved each other because they knew they were also sinners and because “love covers a multitude of sins” (1 Peter 4:8). When something happened that annoyed me and I kept my mouth shut I felt an overwhelming sense of relief. I didn’t have to worry about saying the wrong thing or having what I said misinterpreted. I am not in control here and there is an incredible freedom in that.
I am also noticing that my health is improving. My incapacitating daily headaches are not as bad and not every day; my Tourette’s Syndrome, wildly out-of-control and completely debilitating for the past few years, is improving. It is clear to me that the Abbey here in Michigan City is a gift of Divine Grace; I now trust completely that God has brought the three of us to this place in this time to do the work He has called us to do, even if we don’t know all of what that is yet. But I’m not naïve -- I know there will be hard times ahead and probably there will be times I’ll want to run away from this Promised Land all the way back to Egypt, but I trust that the joy of this life will give me – and all of us – whatever we need to sustain and to do whatever He wills.
--Sister Debra Susannah Mary Rhodes
