BITS OF MONASTIC NEWS

This past Advent began with us truly being a people living in darkness.  Power lines were brought down all over eastern South Dakota because of the ice that had formed on them in our first winter storm. We were without lights for several days when our generator for such emergencies played out. Fortunately, we were able to borrow another one. A week had passed before the power company was able to restore service.  It was a minor inconvenience. We prayed in the daylight.  Lauds was delayed until rising of the sun. And we ate supper by candlelight. “When was the last time you dined by candlelight?” one monk asked another. The confrere replied, “Last night.”

There were icy roads on the Sunday afternoon at the end of January when participants in the annual retreat for church musicians performed their concert.  Nevertheless, a good number of people risked driving on the ice. This year the theme was “Tend My Sheep, Feed My Lambs.”  All of the hymns, accompanied by various instruments, reflected that theme.  The event is sponsored by the South Dakota Chapter of the American Guild of Organists. Paul Klemme, organist and choir master at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Salem, Oregon, and Ken DeJong, music director and organist at St. Andrew’s Lutheran Church in Bellevue, Washington, have been putting together the festival for the past four years.

During the month of December, very few retreats are held here.  Everyone is occupied with preparations for Christmas.  With the beginning of the New Year, the retreatants come back. Abbot Thomas was asked to conduct a rather unusual retreat.  Father Dana Christensen, a priest of the Sioux Falls Diocese, and Tom Hartman requested a coffin-making retreat.  In the morning, they had a conference, and in the afternoon they learned how to build a coffin.  Abbot Thomas is our coffin builder.
 

Brother Michael was installed in the ministries of reader and acolyte by Abbot Thomas in January. Brother Michael will be ordained a transitional deacon in May. When Brother Michael becomes Father Michael, his will be the first ordination in our community since 1982.

Brother Benet is once again editing the newsletter and is in charge of the development office. This is where he started nearly fifty years ago when he fell out of a window while washing it. He was assigned to the office when he came home from the hospital with a cast on his left foot.

On November 10, 2005, our confrere, Father Wilfrid Lambertz, OSB, died at the abbey while taking part in our customary Thursday evening agape.   We had just come from celebrating the Eucharist and were enjoying a social in the community recreation room before dinner.  Sitting at a table with several confreres, Father Wilfrid suddenly fell from his chair and onto the floor.  Efforts were made to resuscitate him, but without any success.

Father Wilfrid was born in Urbank, Minnesota on May 19, 1927.  Near the end of World War II, he joined the Marines and served in China.   Returning to the United States, he attended the College of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota.  Soon after graduating from there, he came to Blue Cloud Abbey.  He entered the novitiate in 1953 and made vows the following year.  His ordination to the priesthood took place in the spring of 1958.  Then for six months he was assigned to St. Paul’s Mission on the Yankton Reservation here in South Dakota.

Most of his work among the Indian people, however, took place on North Dakota reservations.  He was the mission superior at St. Michael’s from 1974 until 1978 and served as the superior at St. Ann’s twice:  from 1972 until 1974 and again between 1978 and 1987.  In 1962, Father Wilfrid assisted the monks of Assumption Abbey, Richardton, North Dakota at their foundation in Bogotá, Colombia.  This prepared him to assume the role of prior when we made a foundation in Coban, Guatemala .  He was assigned to Resurrection Priory from 1964 until 1972, and he was the prior once more in Guatemala from 1987 until 1989.  In 1991 he was named the administrator of Blue Cloud Abbey.  Among the community members he seemed a likely candidate for the abbatial office, but he pleaded not to be considered one when it came time for an election a year later.

Father Wilfrid was the pastor of St. Lawrence’s Church in nearby Milbank two different times: from 1990 until 1991 and from 2002 to 2004.  For several years, he was our vocation director. At the time of his death, he was the chaplain of St. William’s Nursing Home in Milbank and the pastor of St. Charles Church, Big Stone City, South Dakota.

Father Wilfrid was gregarious and gracious.  The people in the many different places where he served as a priest liked him a lot.  And so did people who were not parishioners.  He liked being with people, and he liked traveling to be with them.  A trip was never a burden for him.

Although his death occurred as a terrible shock to our community, he died celebrating with his confreres.  It was a comfortable setting for his departure from this life.

On January 22, 2006, our confrere and a founding member of the community, Father Stanislaus Maudlin, O.S.B. died at St. William’s Home in Milbank, South Dakota.  In December, he had received an honorary doctorate from Mount Marty College, Yankton, South Dakota, and a couple weeks later, he suffered a stroke that necessitated his receiving care in the nursing home.

Father Stan, as he was known by all of us and his many friends, was born in Greensburg, Indiana on December 16, 1916.  After having attended the minor seminary at St. Meinrad’s Abbey, he entered monastic life there in 1934 and professed vows on August 7, 1935.  He was sent to Rome for the completion of his theology at Sant’ Anselmo, and the pursuit of a S.T. D.  While in Europe, Father Stan made his solemn profession at St. Meinrad’s motherhouse in Switzerland, the Abbey of Maria-Einsiedeln.  Circumstances abroad were the cause for his untimely return to the United States. 

Father Stan was often heard to say he would have probably still been teaching in the seminary if it had not been for Hitler’s rise to power.  Father Stan, not having attained his advanced degree in theology, was sent to the Indian missions following his ordination to the priesthood in 1942. 

Drummers and singers for Fr Stan’s wake

From 1943 until 1950, he was at St. Ann’s, Belcourt, North Dakota.  In 1950, he became the superior at St. Michael’s, St. Michael, North Dakota.  After six years there, he was assigned to one of the South Dakota missions, Immaculate Conception, Stephan, South Dakota.  Father Stan was with the search party from St. Meinrad’s on the day in 1949 when the site was found for Blue Cloud. Five years later, he and the other St. Meinrad monks in the Dakotas transferred their stability from the Indiana monastery to the newly created Blue Cloud Abbey.  In 1967, Father Stan became the executive director of the American Indian Culture Research Center here at Blue Cloud.  He was enthusiastic about this work until the very end of his life.  Within the past few months, the AICRC was involved in establishing a digital library and long term archive to preserve tribal photographs.

When Bishop Paul V. Dudley was the Ordinary of the Diocese of Sioux Falls, he appointed Father Stan as his Vicar for the Indian Ministry.  Upon Father Stan’s resignation from this position in 1992, Bishop Dudley wrote to him: “You are sort of the ‘patriarch’ of Indian ministry in South Dakota.  People of every faith respect you deeply. The Native Americans have an awesome reverence for your priestly ministry.”  In these later years, Father Stan wrote a monthly column for the Sioux Falls diocesan paper, and this earned the admiration of many readers.

Fr Stan’s sister, Sr Marie Kathleen sprinkling his coffin with holy water

The last month of Father Stan’s life was spent in and out of reality.  One day he was under the impression that he was living in Alaska.  The following day, people from the Crow Creek Reservation visited him.  He not only recognized them; he spoke Dakota with them.  Chet and Colleen Cordell and Rebecca Durrenberger were with him when he died.  Colleen had been his secretary for many years and Rebecca was recently hired to manage the photo project.

A.A. and the Rule of Benedict

Although Alcoholics Anonymous is not identified with any religious denomination, a lot of A.A. meetings are held at churches. Here at Blue Cloud Abbey patients at the treatment center on the nearby reservation have us hear their Fifth Steps.  A.A. meetings are held at the abbey on Saturday evenings. When referring to the spirituality of Alcoholics Anonymous, one quickly discovers that it has an affinity with that of the Benedictines. 

In the Prologue to the Rule, St. Benedict says, “Our life span has been lengthened by way of a truce, that we may amend our misdeeds.”  For an alcoholic, the truce is called hitting bottom.  From there, he or she can climb back up.  St. Benedict says, “Let us get up then, at long last, for the Scriptures rouse us when they say: It is high time for us

to arise from sleep (Rom 13:11).”  He concludes the Prologue by stating that his Rule is a way of recovery for people who have been drifting away from God through “the sloth of disobedience” and self-will.  An alcoholic will confess to this same kind of behavior when taking a personal inventory of “defects” and “wrongs.” 

In drawing up his rule of life, St. Benedict hopes to “set down nothing harsh, nothing burdensome.  The good of all concerned, however, may prompt us to a little strictness in order to amend faults and to safeguard love.  Do not be daunted immediately by fear and run away from the road that leads to salvation.”  Although it may seem difficult at the beginning, St. Benedict predicts that one’s heart will eventually overflow “with the inexpressible delight of love.”  How often one hears a recovering alcoholics admit: “I can’t begin to describe what the program has done for me.”  A.A. promises that by faithfulness to this program a person’s “whole attitude and outlook upon life will change.”   The program becomes more than program.  It becomes a way of life.

A.A. members may also feel daunted in the beginning.  “Many of us exclaimed, ‘What an order!  I can’t go through with it.’”  The A.A. Big Book advises the newcomer: “Do not be discouraged.  No one among us has been able to maintain anything like perfect adherence to these principles.  We are not saints.  The point is, that we are willing to grow along spiritual lines.  The principles we have set down are guides to progress.  We claim spiritual progress rather than spiritual perfection.”  This quote is from chapter 5, “How It Works.”  At the end of his Rule, St. Benedict says something similar.  After telling us in 72 chapters how it works, he concludes, “The reason we have written this rule is that, by observing it in monasteries, we can show that we have some degree of virtue and the beginnings of monastic life.”  In both the A.A.and Benedictine manner of living, making progress is what counts and not the achievement of perfection.  Our conversion and recovery are on going.  “Is there anyone here who yearns for life and desires to see good days?” St. Benedict asks, quoting Psalm 33.  “The Lord waits for us daily to translate into action,

as we should, his holy teachings.”  St. Benedict’s emphasis on the day-to-day living of our calling is not unlike A.A.’s “one day at a time.”

There are other parallels.  St. Benedict says the one who wishes to follow his way of life “should speak the truth from his heart…and not practice deceit with his tongue.”  A.A. asks members to develop “a manner of living which demands rigorous honesty.”  The Prologue to the Rule: “These people fear the Lord and do not become elated over their good deeds.  They judge it is the Lord’s power, not their own, that brings about the good in them.”  A.A.: “We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable.  We came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.”  The Prologue: “What is not possible to us by nature, let us ask the Lord to supply by the help of his grace.”  A.A.: “God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves.” The Fifth of the Twelve Steps in A.A. is “Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.” St. Benedict has twelve steps of humility, the fifth being: “that a man does not conceal from his abbot any sinful thoughts entering his heart, or any wrongs committed in secret, but rather confesses them humbly.”

In chapter 40 of the Rule, St. Benedict, with “some uneasiness,” addresses the subject of drinking.  Admitting that he has read wine is not a suitable beverage for monks, he realizes the monks of his day can’t be convinced of this.  He urges them “to drink moderately and not to the point of excess.”  And not to grumble if the amount of wine needs to be reduced or if it has to be eliminated altogether.  Furthermore, abstinence has a reward for those monks who don’t drink at all. And so has it for members of Alcoholics Anonymous.