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A Tool for the Work of God
A Tool for the
Work of God the abbey pipe organ
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by Br. Karel Soukup
The Second Vatican Council maintained that “in the Latin Church the pipe organ is to be held in high esteem, for it is the traditional musical instrument which adds a wonderful splendor to the Church’s ceremonies and powerfully lifts up man’s mind to God and to higher things” (Sacrosanctum Concilium ¶120). Our monastic community is blessed to have an instrument that does just that. The Abbey’s pipe organ is truly a special and unique instrument, one that always receives high praise from visiting organists. I’ve occasionally heard well-intentioned, but misinformed tour guides say that it is the largest organ west of the Mississippi River. I do not know where that notion came from, but it’s not true. And it misses why the Abbey’s pipe organ is so special.
Fr. Blaine Schultz (below, at left), who accompanied our liturgies on the organ for more than half a century, always said that the specialness of our organ isn’t because of its size, but because of its relation to the space it occupies. Fr. Anselm Llewellyn met organist Ernest White in the 1940s while studying at the Juilliard School of Music in New York City. White acted as an adviser to the M.P. Moeller Company in Hagerstown, Maryland. He advised Fr. Anselm that, when it came time for the monastic community to build its church, the community would save itself a lot of time, money, and headache if the organ and church were designed together, instead of building a church and then trying to fit an organ in as an afterthought.
When St. Benedict’s Abbey built its current church in 1957, White designed and the Moeller Company built the organ which still serves us today. Because of a lack of funding, the entirety of the organ as designed could not be installed during the church’s construction. Altogether, the original organ consisted of 1,945 pipes on three manuals (keyboards) and a pedal board. An expansion completed in 2002 by the Mid-States Organ Company brought the total to 2,507 pipes. Unlike most organs which are housed as a self-contained unit, the Abbey’s organ is situated in five locations throughout the church so that it truly fills the entire space with sound (Nave pipes shown at right).
Monks support each other in prayer, not just by praying for one another, but especially by praying with each other. The common prayer provides basic accountability for the monk to ensure his fidelity to a life of prayer. Many of our elderly confrères could not pray the psalmody without the assistance of their juniors who set up their books. And, as we alternate between sides of the choir in the recitation of the psalms, we proclaim the word of God to each other. Not a day goes by—except for Good Friday—when the organ doesn’t support our prayer. More important than the beauty of the sound the organ makes is the prayer it enlivens. By sustaining the pitch and tempo, the organist frees the other monks to concentrate on the text, on the spirit of the prayer, without having to be excessively concerned with the technicalities of musical execution.
St. Benedict frequently refers to our common prayer as the opus Dei, the work of God. It is a sacred duty for us to pray for ourselves and for the world. Fr. Blaine often said that we prayed for those who could not or would not pray for themselves. We are truly blessed to have such a fine tool for our work.
STREAM MONK MUSIC Hear Fr. Blaine play the organ & the monks sing on Spotify and other platforms: kansasmonks.org/music
The Monk and Holy Saturday The Meaning of the Monastic Choir by Father Jay Kythe
“And behold, the LORD passed by, and a great and strong wind tore the mountains, and broke in pieces the rocks before the LORD, but the
LORD was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the LORD was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire; and after the fire a still small voice.” - 1 kings 19:11-12
Just as Elijah had stood at the entrance of the cave and listened carefully to that still small voice of the Lord, another man would stand at the entrance of a different cave and listen. St. Benedict escaped from the noise of the world “to seek God” in a cave at Subiaco in the mountains of Italy. After his experience in the cave, he founded monasteries that eventually spread (and continues to spread) throughout the world, teaching his monks to seek God in silence.
When you walk through the front doors of our Abbey Church, passing from the small narthex to the massive expanse of the nave, it is here that the essence of the Christian life is lived. In this grand space the faithful participate in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. Confessionals flank the walls where sins are forgiven in the Sacrament of Reconciliation. Here people receive the Eucharist and are strengthened to go back out into the world. But an important lesson is learned while one sits and gazes at the altar and then looks past the altar. When one looks at the altar and then desires to see the grand fresco more clearly, there’s something in the way: a double-sided crucifix. The side that faces the lay Christian is the side of Christ alive but still in His Passion. Here is our Lord uniting Himself to the still-suffering Christian in this “valley of tears.” The world is never a pleasant place when one has his heart set on the kingdom of heaven! He must peer beyond the scene of the crucifixion to the Resurrection, keeping his eyes fixed on that glorious Hope seen in the colorful fresco of the Risen Christ. But in between the altar and the fresco is another world, the world of the monastery.
The side of the crucifix the monk beholds is that of Christ who has died. It serves as a reminder of the day each one of us laid down our lives before the altar and were covered with the funeral pall. Having professed solemn vows and prayed the
Suscipe three times before the altar, the newly professed monk lies prostrate before it and is buried under the heavy garment that will ultimately shroud his casket – the next time he will be covered with it will be at his actual
funeral. He has died to the world and rises again in Christ. In fact, the ancient chant from St. Paul’s letter to the Ephesians is echoed when the pall is lifted, “Awake, O sleeper, and rise from the dead, and Christ will give you life!” It makes sense that the side of the crucifix that faces the monastic choir is that of Christ who has finished His act of self-offering to the Father, who uttered those words, “it is finished,” who has surrendered His Spirit, whose body lies dead on the Cross. The monk must do the same, forever united to Christ.
Victory is manifested on the Third Day, when death is overcome. Christ rises in splendor, draped by a radiant white garment of light. In order to glimpse this image, the monk in choir must simply turn his head to the fresco to behold the victorious One and realize that he too shall share in that victory, along with all the faithful.
When we sit and pray in that choir stall, in that place that feels in between, with Christ on the Cross on one side and the Resurrected Christ on the other – between Good Friday and Easter Sunday – the monk lives in the silence of the tomb of Holy Saturday.
Holy Saturday always seems kind of forgotten. It is where Christ is most active, yet we don’t see Him. His body is buried, but He descends to the abode of the dead to free the faithful. For this has He come. “The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the LORD has anointed me to bring good tidings to the afflicted; he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound” (Isaiah 61:1). Here the monk must learn a very important truth the hard way: God is most active when we think He is not. See Jesus asleep on the boat; in His tired humanity He sleeps but the God who created the Universe is still active and is master even of the storm that threatens the boat. When monastic life gets dull and boring—the monastic author Michael Casey calls it, “The Unexciting Life” — the monk must keep this truth before his eyes. In silence God meets the soul, and in silence He does His most important work in the soul, the work of healing and of salvation.
So the monk sits there, in the silence of the choir stalls, and listens for that still, small, whispering voice of God, and covers his head with his mantle before the Presence that he encounters.
THE DAWN FROM ON HIGH an advent experience
Though these pages come to you after the start of Advent, we invite each of you to take part in our ongoing Advent Retreat and receive our monastic retreat guide. From where does our hope come? This is the question which confronts us today from every point of entry: our relationships, work, civic life, you name it. What a gift and opportunity we are given in Advent, the Church’s New Year, to take up this question and rediscover what makes us new. The monks invite you to join us in taking these steps into the holy days of Advent, days given to awaken us to that great event proclaimed by Zechariah and carried by our Lady: “In the tender compassion of our God, the dawn from on high shall break upon us, to shine on those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death, and to guide our feet into the way of peace. Our in-depth guide to Advent and resource for making a monastic retreat-in-place, Remain in Me, are available online or you can request a hard copy free of charge at Kansasmonks.org/advent2020 – Retreat conferences are available at our youtube channel: youtube.com/kansasmonks
