Faith Works 4-13-19
Jeff Gill
Silence is more precious than gold
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When I first came to Newark thirty years ago, I was asked to participate in some ecumenical programs on behalf of our church, and in going to meetings I made a friend. Father Thomas Shonebarger was the priest at Blessed Sacrament, an active clergymember in our community, and promoter of much that could be shared in common among Christians.
He and I ended up having many conversations that ran far beyond our meetings at the Old Landmark Restaurant, now a parking lot off courthouse square, but where they had the best French Onion Soup I'll eat this side of heaven.
Father Tom became a mentor in ministry to me, and for the whole working group he was our theological grounding. He'd suggest each year in Lent that we should spend some time "contemplating our mortality." That phrase has stuck with me. "Contemplating our mortality."
He also told me about his seven years as a monk, where he discerned his calling to the priesthood, and back into the parish. We talked about parish ministry and he shared from his experience and wisdom; I should note that he was 57 when I left here for West Virginia, the age I am now. And he encouraged me to visit his monastic home, the abbey where he had been a brother, and from which he became a parish priest -- Gethsemani Abbey in Kentucky. His novice master was Thomas Merton, and when Merton died in 1968 in Thailand, Father Tom was one of his pallbearers, one of his last acts as a member of the community before leaving it to rejoin the Diocese of Columbus. But he kept in touch, and said he thought I would enjoy visiting there.
Three times I came to Gethsemani as a day visitor, and finally, 26 years later, I went back to stay for three precious days. I visited Merton's grave, remembered Father Tom in my prayers -- he died in 2012 at the age of 75 -- and kept the pattern of the monks for the time that I had from Monday evening to Thursday morning. Which included getting up each morning at 3 am for the first of seven services each day (which isn't so bad when you remember they go to bed at 8 pm), and the practice of silence.
I've done silent retreats before, but usually at the Loretto Motherhouse 12 miles to the east. For me, it was a long-standing goal to spend at least a few days and nights at Gethsemani; if you have never heard of Thomas Merton, not to worry, but his life and legacy loom large on the American religious landscape even fifty years after his death, and his connections to central Ohio, Licking & Muskingum Counties, are a sermon in themselves.
What I found at Gethsemani, though, was unexpected. I discovered the Psalms.
As I said, they start early, those Trappist monks do, and seven times a day plus the Eucharist (what you might know of as Mass) gives you many opportunities to sing and chant or just listen to psalms read or shared together.
At Gethsemani Abbey, they go through all 150 psalms every two weeks, and more really, as quite a few get repeated for certain occasions. But ever since the first French Trappist monks arrived in December of 1848 they have prayed the psalms daily, and observed one form or another of a cycle that takes the community through the entirety of the Book of Psalms again and again. You see the words on the page, you hear the tuneless music of the chanted psalm, and you listen to your own voice and those of others softly singing around you.
On a weekday you become a part of a psalm or two at 3:15 am Vigils, 5:45 am Lauds, 6:15 am Eucharist, 7:30 am Terce, 12:15 pm Sext, 2:15 pm None, 5:30 pm Vespers, and 7:30 pm Compline. The names of the monastic hours comes from Latin and represent the rough approximation of time the medieval world found good enough: such as three hours after dawn, six, nine, and vespers for evening. Up with the vigil in the middle of the night for most of the world, and lauding the sunrise, and "Compline" simply means completed.
They sing them still, even after I've come home, whether we're paying attention to them or not. And somehow their faithfulness to the psalms keeps them alive for me in a new way now that I'm back here, words of faith and songs of hope, in a cycle that only God can bring to completion.
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