MELIFONT ABBEY 2000

Melifont Abbey: February 18-20, 2000

In 1999 I became spiritual director to “Ruah”, a small group of lay evangelizers, and in December of last year I suggested to them that it would be good for us to go to a monastery in order to experience a silence in which we could listen more attentively to God. It’s my constant belief that there is too much talking and not enough silence.

So it was arranged that we would go to Melifont Abbey for this weekend. Six of the group travelled and as Brendan was here I decided to ask him to come along to keep me company. The two of us set off on a dirty Friday evening after what was a very hassled day for me.

We arrived at the Abbey after dark, at 7.00 p.m., and were well received, though the reception was manic and extremely draining in many ways. Fr. William showed us to our rooms, gave us tea and talked to us for a long time. The guesthouse is lovely and old with all sorts of nooks and crannies.

Dan, Pat and Louise were the first to arrive and after a short chat with them Brendan and I decided to go to our rooms. A little later a knock on my door announced the arrival of Charlie, Kevin and Paul. We settled down for the night a short while later.

On Sat I got up at 6.30, intending to go to pray with the Monks but I couldn’t get out of the locked guest house and had to content myself with praying in my room which was grand.

I watched the dawn breaking through my window and got out to it at about 7.30. It’s lovely, having arrived in the dark, to discover what the place is like in the morning. Going out the front door into a beautiful day there is the wonderful sight of rolling green hills, draped with the odd line of trees and an inviting little lake down to the left.

After breakfast Brendan and I took a walk down the avenue lined with trees and we saw a lane to the left which we thought must lead to the lake but it was too mucky for our refined shoes. The sun shone and the birds sang like I’ve never heard before, a least not for a long time. There seemed to be thousands of them and a thousand varieties of sounds, which had the effect on us of raising our minds and hearts to heaven and to the praise of God the Creator. It seemed as if He had put on this display for us so that He might attract us and cause us to fall in love (as Pallotti would say) once more with the beauty of heaven. It worked!

I sense that for the monks these beautiful surroundings of nature are simply the backdrop to what is the centre of their life, the Lord. When I asked Brother Aloysius how to get down to the lake he told me about the lane to the left and then said, without any sadness, “it’s years since I was down there.” And when I think of it there was no sign of any of the Monks walking around admiring creation.

This reminds me of a time when John Fitzpatrick and I were driving through Connemara on our way back from Westport. We stopped by a lake at the foot of a mountain and, as usual, I was taken up in the beauty and the beauty took me up to the Lord. Then it seemed He said to me, “every mountain will be laid low and every valley filled in so that my people may pass through on level ground” (something like this is in Isaiah) and I was very disappointed because I cannot imagine a life or a world without mountains and valleys. Then I was forced to face the question - “is it mountains and valleys I want or is it the Lord. There comes a time when we arrive at the edge of creation which we must leave behind and move forward into God. There is only Christ; He is everything and He is in everything.

We had Mass as a group in the main Church at 11.00 a.m. It’s a very plain church with a disappointingly low ceiling but, in the bright light pouring in through the windows, its white walls gleamed radiantly. The lack of any decoration forces you to look straight ahead to the Tabernacle standing in the distance before a saffron coloured curtain and in gazing, both Tabernacle and curtain seem to become brighter and brighter, going from glory to glory.

Mass was very simple and the singing of so small a group sounded angelic in the good acoustics. I decided that the homily was going to be my only “talk” of the day because I sensed that what we needed, more than talk, was to go out into God’s creation with the Scriptures, to listen, ponder, treasure like Mary, and let it be done to us according to the Word. For Brendan and myself this was not a bother but for some of the group it might have been a bit too much. Some of them, though, experienced great joy at the end of it. I had a ball and felt I could have danced all day. It was a pure gift. It was so easy to pray and also to remember all the people I carried with me.

During my afternoon walk I went into the bookshop and couldn’t resist buying Henri Nouwen’s “Sabbatical Journey” which records the last year of his life. At an early stage of this diary you can recognize the shadows of death moving in on him, though he didn’t know it himself. One of the first books I bought after I joined the Pallottines in 1972 was Nouwen’s “With Open Hands”. Interestingly enough around the same time I bought Jean Vanier’s “Tears of Silence”. Interesting because they became so closely associated in the last number of years. These are two of the spiritual leaders I’ve admired most.

Recently I’ve discovered Henri to be a very complex and intense man. Maybe I find his honesty frightening. I certainly find his approach to friendship very tiresome. There seem to be so many friends and he seems to be forever talking of “deepening friendships”. I prefer few friends and have little patience for working on them in the way he describes. They either work or they don’t; they’re either deep or they’re not.

That’s not to say that the friendships that I have don’t demand effort and for genuine friendships I’m more than willing to make the effort to keep them going. I’m blessed with some very good friends.

Having said all this I still admire Henri for his openness as well as his complete devotion to Jesus, the Eucharist, the Church and its mission to the world. A point, which Johnny Sweeney made, is that some of the most inspiring people of this era (Henri, Jean and Mother Theresa) are all very ecumenical. When I bought this book I didn’t notice that the cover is a photo of a field of sunflowers. The sunflower has become for me a symbol of God’s favour.

Maybe the time has come to let go of MY prayer, MY effort to be close to God, MY way of being in communion with the Divine, and to allow the Spirit of God to blow freely in me. (Henri Nouwen, “Sabbatical Journey”, p.7).

Brendan and I heard confessions from 5.00 p.m. until supper after which we had a prayer meeting with the group. Brendan and I prayed with each one. As an experience it was indifferent but the reality was, no doubt, the blessing of the Lord.

Went to bed around 10.00 p.m., reading Henri for a while, and managed to sleep fairly quickly. At midnight I was wakened by the laughter of the group next door and that was the end of sleep for the night. I didn’t mind too much. I alternated between trying to sleep, smoking, reading, smoking again and praying.

By 3.30 I’d decided that I’d get up to join the monks at prayer and got to the church through the passage in the cloister. From four to five they prayed the Office of Readings. Most of them are old - they are 22 in all - and lean and strong looking, even those who are bent with age. They have no trace of vanity like the Benedictines and they do not look obviously holy in the pious kind of way but you sense the holiness of God in them.

It strikes me as odd that such a community would need to bring in a Mercy Sister and our own Paddy Murray to teach them the art of contemplation (whatever about anything else). To me, these men have the reality of contemplation even if they don’t have the art. Maybe they’ve lost confidence or maybe it’s simply openness to outside influences.

After the Office I planned to say some of my other prayers from the Office and other books I have but didn’t they turn off all the lights except for one, so I couldn’t read.

The quiet that descended on the place was lovely and some of the monks remained behind to meditate. So, without props I meditated too and entered into that “dialogue of love and adoration” in the presence of the Blessed Trinity.

A blazing red dawn was breaking over the white frost, so I called Brendan and we put on wellies for our walk to the lake through the trees. Instead of taking the muddy lane Brendan thought it’d be nicer to go through the trees where the ground was soft and sodden.

Here the difference between us was clear. He strode confidently through it, leaping over drains like a stag (he has long legs anyway!) while I was very delicate about the whole thing and he told me I looked like prince Charles. It was marvelous getting to the little lake that was still as glass, broken only by the swim or flight of ducks, the quiet still air echoing their cry - or their quack or whatever you call it.

As we walked up the hill through the fields, the orange sunlight flowed through the trees and coloured the frost. There had been a warning sign about a bull. Half way up Brendan said, “If the bull appears it’s every man for himself.” and I had this image in my mind of him successfully running away while I’d flounder and stumble. So I said, “if he does, just give me absolution and I’ll lay down and let what happens happen.”

We concelebrated with the monks at 11.00 Mass and by then the tiredness was really kicking in. The words of the Lord in Isaiah struck me; “It is I, I it is who must blot out your sins” and I sense the frustration of God in the face of my own failure to overcome my sins. But during the homily I became aware that “I can’t” and felt the need to cry over my sins - to cry, not for myself, but for the offence to God who loves me with such a love.

This has been an experience of the intense light of heaven breaking into the ordinary and when we got home it was impossible to express to the others what it was like. It was difficult for anyone who had not experienced it to enter into it and the question most frequently asked was “what was the food like?”!!!

“That’s the loneliness of the mystic. Having seen and experienced what cannot be expressed in words and still must be communicated. The astronauts and cosmonauts gave words to my own experience of priesthood. It is a grace, it allows me to see a vision, and it is a call to let others know what I have seen; it is a long loneliness and an inexpressible joy.” (Henri Nouwen, “Sabbatical Journey”, p.23).