A MONASTERY SUDDENLY becomes a beckoning attraction when one faces the fright of the real world and figures that he has been mistakenly deposited upon the wrong planet. That can supply the necessary motivation to go into such a place. That is to say, when one feels alienated from almost everything that is happening around him.

After my first six months there, Brother Nicholas took off. He just decided that he had had enough, and one afternoon, still dressed in his blue denim work habit, with his hood pulled down over his eyes, started walking toward Santa Fe, which was some forty miles away. Brother Eugene, coming back from the milk-run to that town in the truck, picked him up and delivered him to the abbot. The diagnosis was that he had gone a little crazy—we hoped only temporarily—so they gave him a leave of absence and shipped him home with dignity on an airplane. But because of this, I was given Brother Nicholas’ job, which was chargé d’affaires in the cow barn.

That was a boost for my dignity. Six months of shoveling manure in a Trappist monastery—at least, back in those pre-Vatican II days—and a person didn't have much dignity left. If you had stuck it out that long, you were well into Garrigou-LaGrange’s purgative way, which meant that you were getting the body and all its lusts well under control. You had learned to walk with your eyes cast down, and with your hands stuck neatly behind your scapular or in the sleeves of the opposite arm, and you didn't let your mind wander off into the ditch of dirty thoughts. By then you had mastered the sign language, since Trappists can only speak to their superiors according to the chain of command and, in very rare circumstances and then only with permission, with each other. But, as Father Master explained to all the postulants and novices, "If you see a tree about to fall on somebody, SPEAK, BROTHER, SPEAK!"

I never saw Br. Nicholas again but I sure saw a lot of those cows. Big, black-and-white Holsteins that had the lowest bacteria count and the highest butterfat in their milk in the state of New Mexico, according to the reports coming back from the inspector in Santa Fe. Now I was responsible for the well-being of these forty-odd beasties, including two bulls. I learned to feed and care for them and to tell when they were in heat, and to make them come up from drinking at the river by clapping my hands. That summer of ’49 is recalled as Adam must have remembered Paradise.

Monking was still a hard profession then, even for postulants and novices, who were apprentice monks. In fact, it was so hard for someone fresh from the fleshpots that four days after I first entered and before I had even received the habit, I told the abbot that I was leaving. The initial shock of seeing the cadaverous-looking Father Gerard walking down the aisle to say Mass at the main altar in the wee hours of the morning convinced me that I was in the wrong outfit, and I returned to El Paso to rethink my life’s vocation. Mother Amada, superior of the Good Shepherd convent in Ysleta, Texas, let me live for a while as a semi-hermit in an adobe house on their farm (and doubling as their chauffeur), but encouraged me to go to Guadalajara and look over an order of missionaries. Encouraged by her, I flew to Mexico City, and took a train to Guadalajara, where I visited the Fathers of the Holy Ghost.

Although those fathers lived very commendable lives, it seemed to me to be the exact opposite of my ideal, which was that of St. Paul the First Hermit. They had very secular views and were so full of talk, fun, laughter and picnics, that after three weeks of this I felt ashamed of myself and, therefore, came back to New Mexico and the Trappists. Trappists were like an elite corps, men’s men, the French Foreign Legion or the U.S. Marines. With them, at least, you had a fighting chance, and in those days I didn't want to settle for anything less. Who made me? Who is my First Cause? Why am I here? Where do my thoughts come from? Those were the only questions to occupy my mind in those days.

The cows needed me and I needed them. I needed them, in fact, a whole lot more than they needed me. Regularity of life is highly prized in the religious life for various reasons, and cows helped to provide this regularity, at least for me. Every day the buzzer that woke us up went off at two A.M., except Sundays and feast days, when it more often went off at one or one-thirty, depending on the length of the Divine Office, which on those days was of longer duration. We slept in our clothes, removing only our shoes, according to the Holy Rule of St. Benedict. Within ten minutes after the sound of the buzzer, the church bell was ringing and the monks were in their stalls, ready to perform their main function in life—singing the praises of God: Matins, Lauds, Prime, Terce, Sext, None, Vespers, and Compline, plus Mass. Eight times everyday, three hundred and sixty-five days a year, and there is no excuse, except in extreme circumstances, that will excuse a monk from his office, whether he is in the monastery or out. That is regularity! The cows provided the same. Twice daily they had to be fed, watered, and milked. It was this same regularity that allowed for a tranquil mind, which is the fertile soil that promotes the growth of contemplation. In the monasteries, then, the monks were divided into two classes: choir monks and conversi. The choir was composed of those destined to take Holy Orders (i.e., enter the priesthood), and the conversi, or lay brethren, those who would never become priests, but who performed the material work. In the early days of monasticism, during the time of St. Benedict, only a handful of monks were ordained to the priesthood, the idea being that many priests in a monastery were superfluous; only a few were needed to say Mass, hear confessions, and to administer the other sacraments. Later, this changed to reflect the social structure of pre-Reformation Europe. There was no social mobility, and a person died in the same social caste to which he had been born. Peasants, mostly illiterate, were allowed to enter monasteries and convents and to partake of all its benefits, except that they could never move up into Holy Orders, nor were they required to chant the official Divine Office, which was sung in Latin. Lay brothers had their own office. The Catholic Church moves slowly when it comes to social issues, and such anachronistic thinking prevailed until 1964–1965, after Vatican Council II, when the Church shed many of its outdated structures and entered the modern world. At the same time, Trappist monasteries became more democratic and laybrothers were accepted on equal footing with those in the choir. In fact, this was not so much a move into modernity as it was an effort to return to the basic simplicity of the early monasteries as established by Saint Benedict. In the United States, in 1949, it was sometimes difficult to distinguish between the peasants and the aristocrats, and so a rather arbitrary criterion was often applied to decide who would become a priest and who would become a brother. In my case it was simple. I was asked if I had studied Latin. The answer being negative, I was assigned to the novitiate of the brothers, which suited me fine, since it meant that I would work with my hands, which is more conducive to contemplation, anyway. I never regretted the decision because, while lay brothers spend a large amount of time in study, there are not nearly so many formal classes which, as far as I am concerned, tend more to distract than instruct. It is hardly necessary to point out that a knowledge of Latin is not a prerequisite for landing on the other side of the Pearly Gates but, in any case, enough of it was sung, spoken, and read around the monastery so that a brother of even borderline intelligence could pick it up in much the same manner that he might pick up French after a few years hanging around the Champs Élysées. It might not be perfect, but it would pass. In the same manner—and whether or not he picked up another book in his life—he would be systematically exposed to philosophy, theology, ethics, patristics, and Scripture that were preached, expostulated and read to him an average of three times daily. Newspapers, radios, magazines and all secular reading matter were thoroughly banned from the monastery, so the only source of ungodly material for the mind was likely to be from his own imagination and memory, which, if he applied himself at all to the ascetical life, was soon brought under control. A devout heart, a Bible, and The Imitation of Christ are really the only things necessary in order to find God, who tends to provide what is lacking to those who truly seek Him. The heart must be so inclined.

Matins having been sung, followed immediately by Lauds, the brothers would repair to an upstairs room adjoining the kitchen to assist Brother Cook in peeling, slicing, chopping, or shelling the potatoes, fruit, vegetables and beans that would make up the noon meal. Meat or fish were never included, though Thomas Merton of Gethsemani Abbey wrote of receiving sardines for his lunch while in the infirmary. After helping the cook, it being then about four-thirty A.M., we went out to feed and milk the cows and then hose down the dairy, which we kept spotless. All this was done on an empty stomach in what seemed to be the middle of the night, which to me was the most difficult time of the day. It was hard to keep the imagination quiet and temptations and depressing thoughts were difficult to shake off. Also, these were the hours of the Greater Silence when even communication by official Trappist sign language was forbidden by the Rule, much less any verbal communication with Brother Submaster. Everybody knew his job and proceeded with it quickly and quietly.

At three or four o’clock, depending on the season, it was time for Mass de Beata, followed by the singing of Prime and then, at last, we went to mixt, as breakfast was called. This was taken at one’s leisure rather than in community, and consisted of two slices of brown home-baked bread and a large cup of tea, or last evening’s chocolate. On Sundays and feast days, Mass and Prime were followed by a session in the Chapter room with a sermon by one of the priests and an expostulation by the abbot before the inner man could be satisfied with the two slices of bread. After mixt, thirty or forty-five minutes were allowed for spiritual reading or private prayer in Church. This was about sunrise when the birds awoke in the grove of aspen down by the Pecos River, and I usually took my reading down there so that I could hear them sing. There is no sweeter sound in all the world than the chirping of birds. By then, night thoughts had been driven away and enough strength summoned to see you through another day.

Some secular people and even some religious ones have suggested to me that Trappists are escapists—cowards who are running away from the realities of the world. I cannot deny this, but I would challenge anyone who says it or thinks it to try the life of a Trappist monk for one month to see if they are not faced with a harsher reality than they will ever meet in the world, outside of dying. For dying to oneself—dying to every natural desire that flesh is heir to—is what life in the monastery is all about: "Unless the grain of wheat falling into the ground die, itself remaineth alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit." Everyday, every monk dies to himself; it is a life of mortification, of turning away from all that is easy and natural. While life in the monastery is always hard, that is not to say that the life does not have its lighter moments, in spite of the Rule, or that an abundance of joy does not prevail among the brotherhood.

After mixt and spiritual reading, work clothes would be donned and work assignments handed out for the day by the President, who was in charge of coordinating all manual work, and by his assistant, who was the novices’ Brother Submaster. A monastery supports perhaps fifty or more people, and like any large farm, has an almost infinite variety of tasks that must be performed besides the regular work of the laundry, dairy, bookbindery, carpenter shop, and planting and harvesting. Everybody had his own particular responsibility, but here there was an enormous amount of communal work and endless chores that had to be taken care of. I can recall countless days of chopping wood, clearing forest land, dynamiting mountains to obtain rock for our stone bridge, painting walls, boiling oats for the livestock, clearing and burning brush in three feet of snow, unloading bales of alfalfa from a flatbed trailer into our hayloft, laying cinderblock, shucking corn, grading eggs, and one summer in which I shelled so many Aztec beans that I almost filled a fifty-five gallon drum all by myself. That was a lot of beans, but it was the main staple of the monastery, and such a quantity probably didn't last two weeks.

At nine o’clock, the Office of Terce was recited in common wherever one happened to be and could find one or more brothers to assist; then, at about eleven, work was halted and everybody changed back into monastery clothes and went upstairs to the common room for thirty minutes of spiritual reading. At noon, Sext was sung in church, following which we lined up single file by seniority and walked into the refectory for the main meal of the day. Whether monks are marching to church, to chapter, to work, or to the refectory, it is always done single file by seniority—choir monks first, followed by the lay brethren. When two monks meet, the youngest in seniority bows to the elder, who returns the bow. Since practically all things are done in common, the strict formality of the Rule guards against any familiarity, solitude is maintained, and tranquility reigns.

St. Benedict, in his Rule, defines the different kinds of monks in his very first chapter: The first are the cenobites, who live in monasteries and serve under a rule and an abbot. The second are the anchorites, or hermits, who after long probation in a monastery, go out well-armed from the ranks of the cenobites and are, after many years of training, able to live without the help of others, and by their own strength and God’s assistance, to fight against the temptations of mind and body. The third kind are the detestable sarabites, who live together by twos and threes and conform to the standards of the world, and according to their own desires. The fourth kind are the gyrovagues, of whom there are a plethora, and who wander about from monastery to monastery, ever roaming and never stable and given up to following their own whims in all things.

The rest of the Rule is devoted to the governance of a monastery, with a special chapter on "What Kind of a Man the Abbot Should Be." St. Benedict was a wise man and a superb administrator who was keenly aware of the failings of human nature, and his Rule is observed, more-or-less, by Benedictines and Cistercians of the Strict Observance, commonly known as Trappists, so named for their motherhouse of La Grande Trappe in France.

It is probably needless to point out that Trappists are cenobites, who eat, sleep, work and pray in community and whose lives are polished and upgraded by the abrasive effect of rarely being out of sight or hearing of another human being. Yet, a strict solitude is maintained and one can live there for years without ever knowing the background or the secular name of the brother who stands next to you in line.

Dinner was begun by the chanting of grace, followed by a rap on the table by the abbot, at which time all were seated and a chapter of Scripture having been read, all were served. A typical meal consisted of a bowl full of leeks, parsnips and Aztec beans—an oversized member of the lima bean family—a tin cup of tea mixed with milk and sugar, and four or five slices of brown, monastery-baked bread. On major feasts, such as Christmas or Easter, two or three pieces of hard candy were put by your place for dessert, and sometimes we got bread pudding, but that was rare. All the time we were eating, a book, usually a biography or a history, was read to us until the abbot gave another rap, at which time the invocation was sung and the monks filed out. In summer, a twenty minute siesta was taken, or in the winter, the same amount of time was given for spiritual reading. For the brothers, this was followed by "Repetition," which was a thirty-minute class on Christian doctrine delivered by the Father Master. None, or the ninth hour, was chanted, and then every able-bodied monk in the monastery marched out for a continuation of the morning’s work. For the choir monks this was frequently, during the proper season, the planting or harvesting of vegetables.

About three in the afternoon, I had to round up the cows, and they again being milked, fed, and the dairy scrubbed, it was time for Vespers, for which the main bell was rung. A quick shower, back into the brown habit, and we arrived upstairs just as the choir, if it was Monday, intoned the Psalm In exitu Israel de Aegyptu, which was one of my favorites. The cantor was Father Dismas, a handsome ascetic monk who reminded me of Basil Rathbone, and who had the voice of an angel. He was probably five or six years older than I, but had been in the monastery for a long time. I considered him the perfect monk and, there is little doubt about it, he set a fine example for the novices. Whenever there was hard, disagreeable work to be done, such as unloading a semi-truck stacked high with bales of alfalfa in blistering hot weather, Fr. Dismas would drop what he was doing to pitch in to help. That was charity.

Vespers was soon followed by supper, if it were during the summer schedule, which began on Easter Day and ended about September 14th. Supper was filled with the same hearty vegetables and spiritual reading that we got at the noon meal. During the winter schedule, instead of supper, we received only a collation of bread and monastery cheese, and a cup of cocoa, with no reading. There were a few minutes after supper for spiritual reading or private prayer, and then we went to the big chapter room for a short public reading or, perhaps, a discourse by some priest.

Then it was time for the last Office of the day—the singing of Compline. The Psalms of this hour were unchanging and chosen to purify the mind before sleep and to protect one from evil. In the Latin Vulgate, these were Psalms 4, 90, and 133, plus the brief lesson from the 1st Epistle of Peter, chapter 5, verses 8-9, and the Canticle of Simeon from Luke. Afterwards, the brothers would leave their stalls and file between the stalls of the choir monks, joining them in singing the Salve Regina and reciting the final prayer to Our Lady of Guadalupe, to whom our monastery was dedicated. Then we would file out silently, bow goodnight to the abbot, who would sprinkle each monk with holy water in a last blessing of the day, and go directly to bed, it being 7:00 or 8.00 P.M., depending on the season.

All kinds of monks have cells, I suppose, but unlike other monks whose cells are used for living, reading, meditating, and often working, the Trappist cell is used for one purpose only and that is sleeping. Here, the cell was merely a plywood cubicle within a large common dormitory, with a small curtain across the doorway. The only item of furniture within was four wooden planks over which was thrown a four-inch thick straw-filled mattress and a woolen blanket. The pillow was as hard as the mattress and on these the monks slept fully clothed, removing only their shoes and fifteenth-century socks. From the snores and heavy breathing, it was plain that every monk hit the sack dead tired and anxious to recuperate as much strength as possible before the beginning of another arduous day. Generally sleep would come quickly, unless it were too hot or too cold.

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