Weekend at the Monastery

I spent the weekend, along with my wife and 14-year-old son, at a monastery of Romanian (and American) Orthodox nuns in Michigan. This is our third such weekend retreat in February of the last three years.

While at the monastery one may participate in the common hours of prayer as observed in the chapel with the nuns to the extent one wishes and is able to. The services taken together are not brief, and to embrace any portion of the prayer life ample enough to make such a retreat worthwhile, I think, means losing consciousness of time.

When I am there I am without contraints of schedule, the usual anxieties of having only so many hours to write such and such, so many minutes before this project has to be finished. I suppose this many not be the case always with the nuns, given the great labors they must maintain to keep the guest house running, the kitchen going, the provisions for pilgrims made, inquiries responded to, and all that must go on behind the scenes. Though if there is anxiety, it doesn't show. I doubt that there is much if any, for the primary sense I get from being there is the spirit of worship, prayer, and humble work.

We arrived a little earlier than usual this year, mid-Friday afternoon, and were able to participate in vespers before supper. Also, as before, late evening reading did not deter me from waking early for matins, the early Hours, and Divine Liturgy on Saturday morning. Coming from Chicago in the Central time zone, waking at 6 a.m. was really 5 a.m., but several times during the night I woke up wondering if it was time, looking forward to it.

I look forward each year to the experience, especially noticeable in the winter hours because of the timing, of walking out of the guest house on Saturday morning and crossing the courtyard to the dark chapel under starlight. Inside the chapel candles provide enough light, while the nuns begin the chanting of the service of matins, standing against windows that face the night, soon to begin its slow transformation into day.

I remember this experience first in February 2003, when we began in total darkness, and greeted the slow dawn, the morning sun, celebrated Liturgy, over the space of more than four hours. The time did not drag but seemed to pass along a different track of time, as if in another dimension. An ample lunch followed Liturgy and afterwards in the bright sun there was time for walks in the winter woods with my son and wife, some reading, perhaps a short nap before supper.

We returned to the chapel for vespers, sun still shining, but low, and it slowly grew dark as we passed from the evening Psalm of Vespers 104, the “The Lord I Call” (Psalm 141), the Phos Hilaron (“O Gladsome Light”), the Nunc Dimittis (“Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace”), into Compline, then the Matins Service of the Resurrection, perhaps my favorite service of all. In the dark of Saturday evening, which is the beginning of the First Day (“the evening and the morning were the first day”), one of the Resurrection Gospels is read by the priest. I returned to the guest house after maybe three hours, to read some and retire for the evening.

This is how Saturdays are spent, for me, at least. This weekend I got a little closer to the ideal of ora et labore (prayer and work). After lunch, I shoveled snow and ice, then took over one of the sister’s job of sweeping and moping the rectory floor, which took longer than I expected. After we went to the nearby house of the Romanian priest, Fr. Roman Braga, to transfer an outside woodpile into the basement, where there is a large wood-burning furnace.

Fr. Roman is another story in himself. He spent 13 years in prison under the Communists in Romania, including several in solitary confinement, and is a living example of bearing the Cross for the Savior. It is always an honor to do anything for him, to listen to his Gospel wisdom, and especially on Sunday morning before Divine Liturgy hear him chant a lenghty Orthodox Hymn (an “Akathist”) to Jesus Christ, of which this is a small portion:

Jesus, Sweetness of the heart! Jesus, Strength of the body! Jesus, Purity of the soul! Jesus, Brightness of the mind! Jesus, Gladness of the conscience! Jesus, Sure Hope! Jesus, Memory Eternal! Jesus, High Praise! Jesus, my most exalted Glory! Jesus, my Desire, reject me not! Jesus, my Shepherd, recover me! Jesus, my Saviour, save me! Jesus, Son of God, have mercy on me!

When Fr. Roman sings this, I remember that he learned the spirit of the hymn, if not the very words, in the solitude of the Romanian prison, suffering for Christ. He is a true martyr, a witness, as are the nuns of the monastery. I count it a grace that they are there for us.

I always seem to return from a weekend at the monastery feeling like I have been a way for a week, in the presence of a great cloud of witnesses, who all point the way to Christ. If only now, I can continue in the spirit of prayer I encounter there, throughout each day, as encouraged by the Apostle Paul: “Pray without ceasing.”