- Thomas Merton
The quiet trill of the alarm clock wakes me at 3:00 a.m. Drawing on my clothes, I grab a flashlight from the lobby to illuminate the dark path to the church. It is long before dawn, but already some birds are singing, their sleepy chirps mingling with the waning symphony of crickets and peepers. Leaves rustle in the light breeze, my shoes crunch against the asphalt, yet the Great Silence is undisturbed. Silence, I reflect, is not the absence of sound, but the absence of frivolous noise. Silence in the middle of a forest is so profound it is almost palpable, yet the sounds of a living forest never cease.
I cross myself with holy water and bow, Cistercian-style, as I take my pew. The monks begin the liturgy of vigils in low, murmuring voices, husky with the residue of night. O Lord, open Thou my lips and my mouth shall show forth Thy praise. Unlike the other offices, the liturgy of Vigils is spoken, rather than sung. For the monks, there will be no sleep until after Compline, but I return gratefully to my bed after the service for a couple more hours of shut-eye.
The church bell tolls at a little before 7:00 a.m. to announce the start of Lauds. O God, come to my assistance, the cantor chants, O Lord, make haste to help me. The prayer was a favorite of the cenobitic desert abbas and ammas of fourth-century Egypt. It was already old by the time that Benedict of Nursia got around to codifying the rules that govern most Catholic monastic communities to this day.
As the Trappists sing the psalms and canticles, I wonder how they keep the liturgy fresh. George Fox, the eminent early Quaker, inveighed stale ritual and rote recitations, arguing for a dynamic and mostly formless relationship with God. Yet these monks sing the same songs, the same intercessions, the same verses, day after day, month after month, year after year, for the rest of their lives. Surely they must experience periods of spiritual tedium or flatness, times when the familiar words become insipid and inert on their tongues. Looking at their faces, though, I think perhaps not. The elderly brother who uses the walker has tilted back his head slightly as he sings, his eyes closed, his face rapt. Perhaps for him and the other monks, praying the hours five times each day is like returning to draw from a spring: the source remains constant, but the water itself is always changing, clear, bracing, new.
Breakfast is corn flakes and toast with almond-infused creamed honey made here at the monastery. The coffee is not the hoity-toity stuff I've spoiled myself with at home, but I gulp it down greedily anyway. Every retreat center I've ever visited, regardless of its religious affiliation, runs on an ever-flowing river of coffee. Cookies, too. Any retreat center worth its fee has to have cookies on hand at all times. The sugar cookies here in the Holy Cross kitchen are also made on the premises, and they're delicious.
I spend some time kneeling in the chapel of the Guest House. I pray for the clarity to discern God's will, the wisdom to understand how to carry it out, and the courage to act on it. Outside, rain is coming down in torrents. I am strangely comforted, as I have always been, by the sound of it striking the windows and the roof. I kneel and listen, straining my ears and my heart to hear God's voice speaking to me through the downpour. I remember sitting in worship through a shower such as this one years ago at Gunpowder Meeting. An elderly Friend rose creakily to his feet and declared that the love of God was so boundless that it had overflowed the heavens and burst the clouds.
Someone enters the chapel and sits in a pew across the aisle. Dimly, through the sound of the rain, I hear the laughter of crows.
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