MONASTERY NEWS
Priory monks finally practice
the vow of stability!
66
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By Father Matthew Leavy, O.S.B.
T
he monastery should, if possible, be so constructed that within is all necessities are contained. Then there will be no need for the monks to roam outside, because this is not at all good for their souls.” (Rule of St. Benedict 66:6-7) Was the Governor of California thinking of this as he mandated the first in the nation “Shelter In Place” order for the Bay Area? SIP has given new meaning to the Benedictine vow of stability! SIP not only meant that the monks could not go out, but also that no one else could come in. Imagine an empty, totally quiet, Priory campus! No students, no faculty, a skeleton crew of administrators and essential personnel and three monks. Some have asked, what did the monks do all day? Ora et Labora, Prayer and Work, as always. As for the Ora part, we continued living the monastic life as usual, praying the Liturgy of the Hours and Mass five times per day. The major difference being that there was no one in the congregation. Such a never before experience was particularly felt during Holy Week and Easter, the high points of the Church year. On the first Sunday of June, we were able to celebrate Mass publicly, both our Sunday English Mass and also our Hungarian Mass. As for the Labora part, we, like everyone else in the world continued to carry out our responsibilities of administration, teaching, and pastoral care via
Zoom and other such modalities. We’ve discovered that monks, too, can suffer Zoom fatigue! Along with all the other teachers and administrators at Priory, our concern was how to create an atmosphere of support for our students and each other during this uncertain and unprecedented time of change and challenge. We asked ourselves other questions. How could we show hospitality when no guests were allowed on campus? How could we help to support the morale of our campus-dwelling community of 53 faculty, staff and their families during the Covid-19 Shelter In Place? We noticed that though restaurants in the area remained officially closed, take-out was permitted. And so we created a “Benedictine Take-Out” program for our subcommunity of on-campus dwellers, offering a weekly take-out dinner for all. Menu items include pizza, turkey dinner, “Sloppy Isaacs” (named after Br. Isaac at St. Anselm whose recipe I stole), Chili with Cornbread, BBQ chicken with Mac and Cheese, gallettes, and the like. On festal occasions, a hemina of red or white wine is also available. “Hemina” is the measure of wine allotted to each monk by St. Benedict in his Rule. It means “half” of something, as in “hemi”sphere, but scholars disagree about the “something”. Is it half a glass or half a gallon? Most agree that the hemina is equal to a good pint. That is, of course, only for the adults on campus. For the kids, we tried a zoomed pretzel baking session which was judged successful, and a pizza baking session is in the
