A Monk's Diary Archive

Everything about Christmas Midnight Mass is glorious, mysterious, and unsettling. It is unsettling for a monk to have his normal schedule completely blown to smithereens by getting up at 11:30 at night. It is unsettling to walk into church, and find a hundred men women and children sitting there facing the altar with quiet expectancy – and I mean quiet. It is amazing to me that one hundred people can be together in a room and not make a sound.

Small crowd at mass this morning. Even some of our most devoted regulars are not there. Icy conditions on the roads this morning are disrupting even the most basic daily routines of the monks and our neighbors. It's really, really, cold. I desperately crave some fresh air and an opportunity to stretch my legs. After mass, I make my way out past the deck behind the infirmary toward the Quarry Field, a vast expanse of clean snow, brilliant under a sun heralding the new day.

In the monastery it's Advent, but out there, it's Christmas, the time of year when newspaper journalists tend to swoop down for a closer look at the monks and our unusual way of life. Does super-secular America feel a touch of apprehension as the mysterious night approaches? Is that why, every December, the newspaper journalists show up? By the time they arrive, we're expecting them. One of the monks cries: “In-coming!”, and we all dive into our fox-holes.

Well, the results are in. Bro. Stanislaus has come through the mid-term community evaluation, and . . . he's still here. Not that I had any real doubts about him being approved. Even so, he is a Junior and I am the Junior Director responsible for accompanying him through three years of formation, so the process had both of us on pins and needles for a few days.