Solemnity of the Dedication of New Melleray
The passage from the Book of Ezekiel talks about the glory of the Lord returning to the temple in Jerusalem. In the passage from St. Paul’s 1st Letter to the Corinthians, Paul talks about the temple of God being his holy people. In the passage from John’s Gospel, Jesus tells the Samaritan woman that appropriate worship takes place not in the Jerusalem temple or on a mountain deemed holy by the Samaritans, but in a spirit that transcends even the great religious traditions, wherever and however we experience the uncontrollable, unlimited mystery that is God.
When I was here a couple weeks ago for my first official visit, I had coffee with the monks after Mass. I asked each of them to tell me their vocation story, including why they chose to commit themselves for life to this particular community and to this particular place by the vow of stability. Somewhere in their stories, each of them, in their own way, talked about the specialness of this place.
I like to reflect and talk about the notion of spirituality of place, there is something very holy about New Melleray Abbey. God is present in this chapel, and God is present in these monks and in each one of us. But God is also present in the rest of this building and on the abbey grounds and in the fields and the timber/forest. Those of you on the inside know the specialness of this place very well, and those of us on the outside experience God here each time we visit, because this is a place where we encounter the uncontrollable, unlimited mystery that is God.
Over the past 175 years, the monks have faced many challenges. I’d like to name three of the major early ones, drawing primarily from Brother Kieran Mullany’s firsthand account of the first three decades of the history of New Melleray.
1. When, while seeking a site for a new monastery in North America in the late 1840’s, Abbot Bruno finally settled on six hundred acres of rolling farm and timberland on Iowa’s frontier offered by Bishop Loras, a group of 16 monks set sail from Ireland on September 18, 1849. The arrived in New Orleans on November 6th and the next day they boarded a steamboat and headed up the Mississippi. Six of these founders succumbed to the cholera plague on the journey to St. Louis. Aware of the death of the first five brothers, the last of the cholera victims, Br. Victor, shortly before he died said, “Oh my, oh my, will any of us live to reach Dubuque. Fortunately, the other ten monks escaped the plague and arrived in Dubuque on November 27, 1849, as winter was settling in.
The man who hauled part of their baggage from Dubuque to New Melleray forgot their bed-clothes. So, they slept that night in a heap of straw in a shed. The sheeting sufficed to keep out the snow but let in the frozen breeze. “This was our first night lodging in New Melleray. Had we on our arrival time to burrow into the earth like many of ouor neighbors living in ‘dug-outs’, we would be much more comfortable in our first winter in Iowa. No, the frost set in so severe on the fourth of December as to prevent ay more burrows being made that winter.”
Despite the harsh winters and difficult situations in the early years, the monks miraculously survived and continued to farm the land and eventually build their monastery with limestone they quarried.
2. I’d like to mention two more challenging, but in the reporting of Br. Kieran, colorful situations. Fr. Bernard McCaffery became the Superior in 1849. “Though a more pious man was not and could not be found in the whole order, yet he suffered himself to be duped by (Br. Murphy)” in the ‘Jobbing,” or as come called it, the ‘Traffic,” which involved land speculation and buying and selling pigs and cattle. This caused ‘noise and perpetual bustle even on Sundays of those pigs and cattle, with Br. Murphy shouting louder than all [the livestock he bought]. Br. Murphy’s land and livestock speculation unfortunately almost irretrievably ruined the community. It resulted in a debt of $230,000, which would be close to $5 million today. “This sad state of affairs did not long lie hid. Early in 1878, it was noised far and wide, and the creditors came in crowds. Yes, our monastery resembled a broken savings bank, the only difference being that our doors remained open and all were admitted.”
In 1865, Bishop Clement Smyth (Trappist who became the second bishop of Dubuque) said, Í regret very much having anything to do in raising that monastery to the dignity of an abbey, because the Abbot, instead of making it a religious community, has made it a company of pig-driving jobbers.”
Fortunately, to devise a means of warding off this dire calamity, the leaders of the monastery assembled all the creditors in the guest rooms of the monastery, had bonks issued to each of them for the amounts claimed and finally succeeded in reducing the interest to a uniform 6% on the whole amount of the indebtedness. Harmony and peace were thereby restored, and good will and confidence in the community were soon manifest on all sides.
3. Between 1868 and 1875, the monks built their new building. “However, no stove could heat this new house, partly on account of the bad work done … when putting in the stained-glass windows. The parts could not be fitted together. Some of the windows were so open that a person may pass his finger between sash and frame. The sad result of this bungling was witnessed during the severe winter of 1870 and 1871, when one morning in January, the whole floor of the large room now used as our Church was covered with snow nearly an inch deep. It drifted through the stain glass windows … The windows and other openings all through the building had to be stuffed with rags each of these dreary winters, namely from November 1870 to the end of March, 1875.”
“Moreover, and what was worse than all above stated, the swarms of rats that made their way through the sewers and broken floors, even though the foundation walls five feet thick, were a terror. They even got into the dormitory. Father Bernard had pots full of poison scattered in every direction through the house. The result was frightful. The stench became intolerable that it went well nigh causing a pestilence. This certainly was a deplorable condition for our new Monastery, after the vast amount of money it cost.”
Now, back to the topic at hand … this church is a vivid and continuing symbol of the early monks and of their ability to adapt and renew their monastic traditions here in the New World, and to respond with faith to the challenges of the future.
Hard work, patient endurance and total dedication and trust in the living God helped you establish and maintain your communal way of monastic life through the ups-and-downs of your monastery’s 175 year history. Faithfulness to God in the Cistercian tradition of living the Gospel continue to sustain your community as you continue to live out your humble vocation.
God bless you and this special place where we all encounter the uncontrollable, unlimited mystery that is God.