The Warmth of Other Suns in Our Refectory

“There is no mistaking what is going on ; it is a regular exodus.  It is without head, tail, or leadership.  It’s greatest factor is momentum, and this is increasing despite amazing efforts on the part of white southerners to stop it.  People are leaving their homes and everything about them, under cover of night, as though they were going on a day’s journey – leaving forever.”  So reported the Cleveland Advocate on April 28, 1917.  “The Great Migration” of black citizens, about six million people between 1915 and 1970, fleeing the “Jim Crow” south to make new lives in the north and western states.  Isabel Wilkerson in the Pulitzer Prize winning “The Warmth of Other suns”, is educating the monks concerning the gritty details of life in the south for blacks prior to the civil rights movement.  This is a tough read and some graphic descriptions of violence were not read in the monastic refectory.  But we have heard enough to have formed a completely new appreciation of the courage, imagination, and faith of millions of migrants stirred by the most elemental call to give expression to their God-given dignity, as well as a desire to develop their talents.  Isabel Wilkerson is the first black woman to win a Pulitzer Prize in journalism. 

Brother Tobias Dies February 2

“The monks of New Melleray recently celebrated the entrance into eternity of our brother Tobias Shanahan. Brother Tobias, born in Toledo Ohio, entered the monastery in 1958.]  He was subsequently trained as an accountant and served the community for years as a book keeper.  For a period of time, he offered assistance to the monks of Assumption Abbey in Ava Missouri, a foundation of New Melleray.  He made good friends there with monks whom he would correspond with for years afterward.  In recent years, Brother Tobias worked in the front office at Trappist Caskets.  He assisted with book keeping but mainly served on the phone, welcoming and assisting grieving families who were delighted to find themselves talking to a monk about funeral arrangements for their loved one.  These phone conversations are often conducted with people in tears and can take thirty minutes to complete.  Brother Tobias will be remembered for the exquisite gentleness and patience he brought to these encounters.  The monks thank you for your prayers for our brother who has finished the race, that he enjoy the vision of God’s face promised by Jesus to those who persevere to the end.  

June Information

This month’s Information Forum provided a lively exchange of news and events that have been shaping our lives together.  The first item of widest interest is our decision to delay the opening of our guest house until October 15th. Our visitation has been scheduled to begin on October 3rd, and it will be valuable for the community to have private time and space during the sessions and meetings.  Some divergent strains of the virus have been active recently, and not everyone has agreed to be vaccinated.  To use an already much-used phrase, we prefer to use an abundance of caution in protecting an elderly and vulnerable population of monks.  When we do open our doors again, we will initially  limit the number of retreatants to twelve (half of our capacity).  If all goes well, we can then resume full occupancy at the beginning of Advent.

During this interim period, some changes have been made in the staffing of the guest house.  Proceeding more slowly in reopening will facilitate the adjustments that need to be made.  We will greatly miss Ann Kennedy Busch who has retired after  long years of service in the guest house dining area.  She managed to have all the bases covered and take the panic out of inevitable emergencies.  We are afraid that we might discover she was as indispensable as she said she was.

The July calendar is already filling up.  The liturgical highpoints will the the feast of St. Benedict on July 11th and the anniversary of the founding of New Melleray on July 16th.  Competing with these for our attention is an invitation made by our sisters at Mississippi Abbey.  All able and willing monks are welcome to join them in a festive picnic on July 5th to celebrate the independence of our country.  Our local prayer and meal schedule will have to be modified according to the number of those who accept this compelling offer.

We had been experiencing drought-like conditions until two inches of rain fell on June 20th.  The storm included a tornado which touched down in the nearby town of Bernard, Iowa.  There was only property damage and no personal injuries.  Some of the corn did not germinate well, in part because of hard and compact soil.  Minimum- and no-till procedures are used to minimize erosion problems, but they can create other problems.  Members of the County Conservation Board have been here to plan practices which will reduce erosion around the creeks and waterways that pass through our property.  Some dead trees have been removed from the area on front of the guest house.  Garden produce is slowly coming in to the kitchen, delayed somewhat by the heat and dry weather.  There was a bumper crop of rhubarb which appeared in a variety of forms in our menus. Foremost was a highly popular home-made jam which can compete with any on the market.  Spencer, beware!

To supplement the monthly listing of the contributions we make to various causes, Br. Nicholas reported on the substantial support we give to a prison ministry through the Archdiocesan Catholic Charities.  This gave our community an even closer connection to the killings of a nurse and correctional officer last March at Anamosa Prison which is literally just down the road (Hwy 151) from us.

An oil cap on the engine of one of our cars  came loose and fell off, spewing oil all over the engine of the car before it was discovered by one of the more inquisitive monks who thought that a puddle under a car might mean something.  Fortunately, his curiosity prevented serious damage to the engine and a car stalled in the middle of nowhere.  We can supplement the good maintenance given our vehicles by Br. Denis with a bit of attentiveness when we use the cars.  These meetings are part of our “on-going formation.”

During the spring and summer, we have been hosting several young men in the process of discerning their vocations and with an interest in monastic life.  They reside in the guest house, but pray, eat, and work with the monks.  This exposure will give them more experience to incorporate into their discernment and will hopefully be valuable in itself.

 

   

 

 

 

 

A Letter from Father Immediate Peter

July 1, 2020

 

Dear Brothers of New Melleray,

Peace to you in the Lord!

I write to you on a matter of concern to each of you and certainly to me as you delegated Father Immediate. We are all well aware that your Abbot, Fr. Mark, will end his six year mandate as you superior this July 15, 2020. He has been clear that he will not be available in the capacity of superior after that date. The normal scenario would be an election on that day, or the appointment of a superior ad nutum if it does not seem possible or advisable to hold an election.

The stark reality of today’s world pandemic is that I am unable to come to you anytime in the near future. What follows then is that I state in writing that Abbot Mark’s mandate has ended on July 15th and we then move to a sede vacante situation, that is the house is without a superior. Then Cst. 39.1 is applied that says, “The Father Immediate assumes responsibility of all things when a daughter-house is without an abbot”.  Which means that:

The Father Immediate is responsible for the daily administration of the house, but he is not the “superior” of the house (which, precisely, is without a  superior). Of course, no important decisions affecting the future of the community can be made during this period.

The Father Immediate has the option to appoint a delegate from within the community to act in his name. It would normally be the prior, but it could be someone else. In any case, it would be misleading to call that person “the superior”.

I have asked your Fr. Stephen Verbest to act as my Delegate during this period and Fr. David Bock and Fr. Ephrem Poppish to serve as our advisors. I am very grateful to them for their willingness to serve in these capacities. The four of us will meet regularly by phone throughout the sede vacante period.

As soon as feasible, I would then make a Visitation, accompanied by Dom Gerard to determine whether it is advisable to have an election or whether it is more opportune to appoint a superior ad nutum.

I want to also take this opportunity to express my gratitude to your Abbot Mark for his very generous service throughout these last six years. I feel certain that you join me in wishing him many blessings in this next stage of his monastic journey.

It only remains for me to ask you to please join your good prayers to mine that this very unique “season” of your community history may bring many blessings to your common life and prayer.

Your brother,

Peter McCarthy, Abbot of Guadalupe

Delegated Father Immediate of New Melleray

 

   cc: Dom Eamon Fitzgerald

   Dom Richard Purcell

   Dom Armand Veilleux

  

 

 

The Annual Mass of Remembrance

On Thursday, October 8, 2020 the Community of New Melleray Abbey celebrated the annual Mass of Remembrance for those buried in a Trappist Casket or urn and for their loved ones. Because of the pandemic, the Abbey has been in lockdown since mid-March and was not able to open the Mass to the public. However, we did film it and have made it available for you to see. Please click below to be forwarded to YouTube.com where it can be viewed. Please know that you remain in our thoughts and prayers in these uncertain times.

Mass of Remembrance

Resuming the News

The celebration of the feast of the founders of Citeaux, (Robert, Alberic, and Stephen) is an appropriate date to resume the publication of news from New Melleray.  There has been a long hiatus in reports, due both to the uneventful course of monastic life and to the failure to designate a responsible person to enter any items.  The latter negligence was easier to correct than it is to produce headline events.

Coping with the omnipresent pandemic remains a current concern.  Through a combination of grace, medical precaution, and luck we have not had any cases of Covid 19 in the community.  The church, guest house, and gift shop remain closed to visitors.  Some monks make unavoidable trips into town for medical purposes.  We also have some staff come into the infirmary to help care for its residents.  We try to observe recommended procedures to avoid the introduction of the virus into the community.  It can spread quickly in enclosed environments such as ours.  We have been promised the vaccine and perhaps we will receive it in February.  That is the promise, anyway.  We qualify as a long-term nursing unit, to say nothing of our being an endangered species.  We just heard that the aunt (72) of Br. Juan Diego has died of the virus after almost a month of hospitalization. We pray for her and all those impacted by the virus, whether physically, emotionally, or financially.

We do regret not being able to welcome guests and visitors.  The empty guest section of the church underlines how important to us is the presence of God’s people praying with us.  Being able to offer hospitality is an expression of our own monastic spirituality and we look forward to better days ahead.

The shadow of modernization and automation has made further reaches into monastic living.  Before each liturgical office, there is a five-minute warning signaled by a chime.  From time immemorial, the bell ringer would press the buzzer for the chimes and wait five minutes before ringing the bells.  To relieve some of the pressure on the bell ringer, an automated system was introduced to sound the chime before the office and for rising in the morning at 3:15.  This seemed to be working for a week or so.  

But on the night of December 23rd, the wires of this new system seemed to overheat and caused a fire in our computer room.  The fire was confined to a ceiling area, but it also damaged wiring servicing the computers.  The room was filled with smoke and soot.  Fr. Stephen was able to disconnect the wiring and there was no need to call the fire department.  But it left the room and computers unusable and effectively silenced the chime system for the next two weeks.  It took a while to adjust to the missing warning and resume a level of self-responsibility in keeping an eye on a watch.

A Different Kind of Cell

We have just completed (February 4th) reading A Different Kind of Cell: The Story of a Murderer Who Became a Monk.  While the title didn’t seem  to offer anything more than a potential script for a James Cagney or Edward G. Robinson  1950’s film, it proved to be a very challenging biography. It is the story of Clayton Fountain, a man convicted to prison for the murder of five people.  Written by Rev. W. Paul Jones, a family brother at Assumption Abbey in Missouri, it describes the transformation Clayton experienced while in solitary confinement.  The drama portrays not only his conversion, but the incredulity and disbelief his conversion  continually encountered.  Even Jones, who began an acquaintance with him in 1995, entitled one chapter: From Skepticism to Friendship.  He had established relationships with the monks of Assumption Abbey and was accepted as a family brother there, although he was never able to see the monastery. The book raises questions about a penal system which seems to thwart any attempts at rehabilitation and denies the very possibility of someone not deemed worthy of continued existence experiencing a transforming conversion through God’s grace.

Corporation Meeting

On the morning of Tuesday, February 9, the members of the community met for the annual board meeting of Trappist Caskets.  All the monks are members of the board since we form a 501(d) corporation which owns Trappist Caskets.  Under the federal tax code, communal groups which share a common fund (to which they individually not have access) are allowed to divide the income among the members for taxing purposes.  This provision was initially made for communal groups such as the Hutterites and Amish.  Some years ago (1970’s and 1980’s), Fr. Pachal Philipps of Guadalupe Abbey investigated its applicability to monastic communities.  If all the proper conditions are met, it can greatly reduced the amount of taxes that have to be returned to the government.  A few years ago, we reorganized to meet the requirements of this provision.  The monastery itself remains a 501 (c3), but the ownership of Trappist Caskets is a separate corporation.

Each year, an official board meeting must convened which means that all the monks should be present.  The meeting is chaired by our lawyer, Davin Curtiss of the O’Connor law firm which has been assisting the monastery since Noah got off the Ark. Also present were David Schueller, our community’s financial advisor and Sam Mulgrew, manager of Trappist Caskets. Minutes are kept, officers are elected, motions are seconded  and Robert’s Rules of Order strictly followed.  With the adjournment of the meeting, we returned to our unruly ways.

 

 

 

 

Covid 19 vaccinations

On Thursday morning, February 11th, two nurses and a pharmacist from our local hospital pharmacy came out to the abbey to administer Covid 19 vaccines.  As a long-term care facility with an infirmary, we are  particularly vulnerable to the spread of the virus if it should invade our environment. Five lay personnel who also attend to the needs of those in the infirmary were included in those receiving the inoculations.  Two members of the community chose not to be vaccinated, and their wishes were respected.  Some necessary paper-work was completed beforehand, and this facilitated the process of registering all those involved.  The inoculations were efficiently completed in less than half an hour.

There is an interim of twenty-eight days before the second vaccination can be given.  We greatly appreciate the generosity of the staff that came out to the monastery and are grateful for the protection against the virus that the vaccine offers.

Valentine Surprise

The monks were surprised by the gift of baskets of fruit, found at their places in the refectory. Each monk found a basket of oranges, a banana, and an apple together with a personal valentine wish from one of the students at LaSalle Catholic Elementary School in Holy Cross, Iowa.  It was  probably the only valentine greeting some monks will receive this year.  It was a very thoughtful and touching gesture by these young students.  Their handwritten and signed notes were very precious and some monks kept them tucked under their napkins.  They were rays of warmth and light in some dark and Covid covered days of February.