CHAPTER 3
Christmas was almost here. Brother Francis, now alone in his “Hermitage,” a white mobile home just across the driveway from the Oratory and main monastery building, was in a reflective mood. He settled into one of the two green rocking lounge chairs in his office to do some Lectio, meditative spiritual reading. Such a simplistic definition of Lectio is a bit of a disservice to the ancient monastic practice of starting with the written word but ending wherever our Good God takes a person--sometimes to a very non-verbal form of contemplation.
The Abbot was praying with My Life with the Saints by James Martin, SJ. He had been using it for spiritual reading for months now. The point was not to get to the end of a spiritual book but to connect with God, thus the idea of Lectio being meditative reading. He found the book nourishing because it took canonized saints and other well-known people who struggled to find the Sacred out of their plaster molds and turned them into flesh and blood people. The book was humorous and serious, traditional and challenging.
The glass jar containing a mistletoe-scented Yankee Candle shimmered on his desk across the room, and then popped out a soft sound. The monk smiled as he thought of his sister and brother-in-law, who gave the family variously scented candles like this one each Christmas. He thought of his nephew who shared with the family his first real religious memory just last Christmas. It was of Velcro! That’s right; his nephew thought of Velcro when he thought of nuns—really Sisters in apostolic religious communities—but everyone seems to call them “nuns.”
In early grade school this little boy, now forty-something, heard a ripping sound while in class. He and his classmates looked up to see Sister taking off her cincture, a belt, and refastening it on the outside of the long navy blue panel called a “scapular” which hung loosely down the front and back of her habit. She was protecting her garb during art class--not letting the scapular get smeared with paint.
“Don’t worry children, it’s just Velcro,” she explained. The room full of boys and girls truly thought that Sister was tearing her clothing.
Brother Francis’ nephew by marriage added to the “faith sharing” experience. He explained why he calls one of the preachers at his parish “Gloom and Doom.”
“We know that the world is a mess,” the nephew stated with dry humor. “Just give us one hour; just give us an hour a week when we don’t have to wallow in it. You know what his homily, if you can call it that, was about on Mother’s Day? It was about cancer. Can you believe it? Just give us one hour a week. That’s all I ask.” Some of the rant from this gentle giant was intended to get a laugh, but the gist of it was sadly true.
The monk decided not to ask his nieces what their early religious memories were about that night.
Another sub-clan produced by his married siblings had a son on his way to the Philippines for a visit. He had married a warm and wonderful girl from there and it was time to visit her family. Big and brave in the classroom where he taught math to both struggling students and the brightest, this nephew approached the plane with fear and trembling. Fortunately, all went well.
His nine nieces and nephews, along with even more great nieces and nephews, were all blessings to the monk. Not bad for a family that started out with more than its share of sickness and death early on. Those early days seemed to bond his family more closely.
Two siblings were had now gone to Glory—one from smoking, aka lung cancer, and the other after more than seven decades living with Cerebral Palsy. Both brothers were missed but life was still full.
The world invaded his monastic enclosure daily. Patients were in and out and the monk-doctor had a perpetual waiting list. E-mail had quieted the phone somewhat these days but both still demanded his attention.
Health insurance was one of Brother Francis’ main challenges. Either there was paperwork to do in order to stay credentialed as a provider with one carrier or the other, or one or another of the electronic filing applications needed fixing—which meant hours on the phone with support people. Once in a while the Abbot figured out how to fix things himself—always a pleasant surprise—and sometimes a real timesaver.
Tonight was different. The outgoing phone message and automatic e-mail message told folks that he would be away for about a month and gave the names of other clinicians to contact if there was an emergency.
Candlelight and fatigue drew the drowsy monk into a light slumber. Sandals on the floor and feet propped up by the footrest on the chair, Brother Francis drifted away. He awoke around midnight with mixed feelings. Hawaii would be fun, but just having some time to himself here at the monastery would be wonderful also.
People who follow the Gospel and seek God through the Salesian charism try to embrace the “permissive will of God.” He was vowed to God for over forty years now and saying “yes” to God’s permissive will came easily to his mind. Carrying that same “yes” out when life happens was another matter, but Brother Francis usually landed on his feet.
He shook his head, pulled his habit out of the folds of the chair and thought of Velcro again. This time it might really be a ripping of clothing if he was not careful.
The monastic walked to the far end of the Hermitage, prepared for bed, and flopped down in his small cell.
The buzz of his little silver travel alarm woke him at five o’clock. The gloom and doom homilist from his nephew’s church came to mind. The Salesian Rule suggested that the monk or nun focus on thoughts of the Resurrection of Christ when rising from sleep. He did his best every morning but those thoughts didn’t come naturally. Usually it took about a half hour for his thoughts to turn a least a little spiritual—later and in the Oratory.
This was Brother Francis’ usual time for rising but today he had to sit on his suitcase, more importantly get it to close, and drive to the Lehigh Valley International Airport about thirty-five minutes away by car.
Lights were going on in the main building and it looked like someone was already in the Oratory. That was probably Sister Scholastica. She was very faithful to her times of mental prayer and meditation throughout each day. He thought of her unique background, the life she lived before entering the monastery. The members of the community were very good at keeping confidential matters confidential. He had no idea what she had shared with any of her monastic sisters or brothers, if anything. That’s the way he left it.
The sixty-some year old moved easily through his rising and travel preparations. His suitcase screamed for mercy as he closed it. He thought of his sister, who was a Sister of Saint Joseph. She often fooled with the contents of her suitcase, trying to garner a little more room inside. The truth be told, his sister traveled lightly, not like her brother.
On a pilgrimage to Israel, Brother Francis’ sister got her little suitcase all packed and re-packed and then got into the twin bed next to the Sister she was rooming with in the hotel and shut out the light. About one minute later a thud reverberated throughout the room. The suitcase somehow fell off the bureau and landed on the floor scattering the precisely packed contents all over. The story goes that the roommate showed little sympathy—and actually laughed herself to sleep.
The Abbot walked by moonlight over to the main house to get a quick breakfast and check in on Brother Benedict. His brothers and sisters were quietly stirring in their rooms and would soon gather in the Oratory to celebrate the Office of Vigils, keeping watch for the God who was with them throughout the dark of night and who would break into the day at dawn, and again at the end of time.
Brother Benedict was breathing softly and sleeping peacefully. Might this be the last time I’ll see him alive? The Abbot reflected on the much younger man who wrote him from Connecticut at the suggestion of a Trappist monk friend of Brother Francis. The Trappist thought that Brother Benedict might do well in a small monastery rather than a large Abbey. His personality was larger than life at first but over time the new monk mellowed, for which the community was grateful.
The microwave beeped as Brother Francis closed Brother Benedict’s cell door. Hot cereal was his usual breakfast—seven grain—and purchased right down the road at the local produce stand. The Abbot was a Doctor of Natural Medicine so he kept the use of the microwave to a minimum, knowing that it denatured the enzymes in food, thus depleting whatever was cooked in a microwave of most if its nutrition. He was especially careful not to microwave anything covered with plastic wrap, understanding that molecules of plastic can easily enter into the food during that process.
A generous garnish of walnuts, raisins, and cinnamon raised the nutritional value of his cereal. Yin and yang, our goal is a life of balance in body, mind, and spirit. The Abbot had several of his high blood pressure patients on a regimen of cinnamon capsules along with a form of meditation developed by a cardiologist named Herbert Benson called the “Relaxation Response.” Between the two approaches, his grateful patients typically did very well.
The frequent flyer monk, as he had been called once or twice, went back to the Hermitage, picked up his suitcase, and made a brief visit to the Oratory. He knelt in the back of the little chapel for a few minutes as the community gathered in the dark for the first common prayer of the day, Vigils.
The roads were clear of ice and snow and by the time he reached Lehigh Valley Airport the sun was starting to peek up from beyond the mountains. People in Colorado or Asia would call these mountains “hills” but folks in this part of Pennsylvania called them “mountains.” Friends and relatives in Philadelphia referred to Brother Francis as someone who lived “up the mountains.” They also went “down the shore” during the summer if they could afford a vacation.