J M J T

 

The Carmelite Novitiate

OUTLOOK

 

Published Monthly by the Discalced Carmelite Fathers, Our Lady’s Hill, Waverly, New York

Volume II, No. 4                                                                                                          March 1963

 

Dear Friends of Carmel,

 

            I bet you can’t identify this noise:  “Clackety-clack-clack, clackety-clack-clack, clackety-clack-clack, gr-oa-oa-oa-n!”  Give up?  Why, it is the sound of getting up time at the Carmelite Novitiate here on Our Lady’s Hill.

 

            For the benefit of any curiosity that might have been awakened, let me explain what this is all about.

 

            March, you see, is designated ‘Vocation Month’ in all the dioceses in the United States.  At this time of year, Vocation Rallies are being held in most of the large cities throughout the land.  Priestly and religious vocations are explained; their dignity is extolled.  Religious Orders and Congregations of men and of women are given the opportunity to publicize their aims and their ideals, and to acquaint the Catholic populace with the kind and extent of apostolic labors they are engaged in both at home and on foreign soil.  From the adults they seek to solicit material and spiritual support.  Most of all, they endeavor to arouse the interest of youth and make a play for their generous young hearts, hoping thereby to attract recruits from among their ranks.  It is not rarely that a young man or woman first becomes aware of a priestly or religious vocation at such a rally.  Should a youngster already be conscious of a call to follow Christ in one of these states of life, but as yet have not discovered the specific path in which to come after Him, very often, the ideal that perfectly satisfies the desires of his or her heart becomes known to them during vocation month.

 

            We thought it opportune, therefore, to make this our Vocation Issue.  Won’t you come along with us via these pages as we follow the community through a typical day on Our Lady’s Hill?  I will try to be brief, for I wish to conclude by telling you something of the Spirit of the Discalced Carmelite Order.

 

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            For the Fathers and Cleric Novices the day begins at 12:45 A.M; The Bell-ringer for the week (the Novices take turns being unpopular) awakens us by clacking his wooden clappers and saying in a loud voice:  “Praised be Jesus Christ and His Virgin Mother!  Rise, Brothers, to pray and praise the Lord!”  This statement stifles our groans and conquers our resistance, so we get up and, in varying degrees of stupefacation, get dressed and manage to find our way to the Chapel, where at 1:00 A.M. we begin the daily recitation of the Divine Office.  The term ‘office’ here means ‘task’ or ‘duty’.  The Divine Office is the public, official prayer of the Mystical Body, that is, of the Church united to her Divine Head and Spouse.  What makes it ‘official and public’ is that the Holy See commissions Clerics in Major Orders (Sub-deacons, Deacons, Priests) and others (Cloistered Nuns, Novices and Students in Clerical Religious Orders and certain Congregations) to offer it on behalf of the entire Church.  There are seven parts, called Hours, to his prayer, not because each part takes that long to recite, but because originally they were said at seven specific hours during the day.

 

            Anyways, at this time we say Matins and Lauds, which rarely exceed 40 minutes.   Then the Fathers trundle back off to bed (now wide awake, darn it!) leaving the Novice Master and his charges to pray privately for another 15 minutes.  Before leaving they say vocal prayers for all the intentions recommended to us, for those recommending them, for the souls in Purgatory, for the conversion of sinners, for relatives, friends, benefactors and all for whom we are bound to pray.  By two A.M., everyone is again in bed and the monastery lapses back into deep, dark silence.

 

            After what seems to have been a few brief moments, it is 5:40 A.M. and the clackety-clack routine is repeated.  This time the entire community arises.  Having made our morning ablutions we gather in the Chapel at 6:00 A.M. for the praying of the Angelus and the recitation of the next two ‘Hours’ of the Divine Office, Prime and Terce.  At about 6:15 the Conventual Mass, so called because it is the official mass of the Monastery (Conventus is the Latin word for Monastery), is offered.  The Novices participate in this mass to the fullest extent allowed.  They not only give the usual responses made by the servers, but also say aloud with the celebrant the Introit, Gloria, Gradual, Alleluia Verse (or Tract), the Credo, Offertory, Sanctus, Pater Noster, Agnus Dei, the ‘Domine non sum dignus’ before Communion and the Communion Verse.  As part of our daily Mass we also say, in virtue of an Apostolic Indult, the Salve Regina in honor of Our Blessed Mother.  This prayer is received after the last blessing and before the last gospel.  During Pascal time, the Regina Coeli is said in its stead.

 

            One hour of Mental Prayer immediately follows the Conventual Mass.  During this time also, the other priests say their own private daily masses.

 

            Our early morning Spiritual Exercises end at about 7:45, at which time the concluding prayers are said and the community withdraws from the Chapel reciting the Psalm ‘Deus Misereatur Nostri’.  Then the Fathers go to the kitchen and the Novices to the refectory for breakfast.

 

            Breakfast!  What a misnomer!  We don’t break our fast; we just bend it a little.  According to our Rule, we must “…fast every day except Sundays from the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross until Easter Sunday, unless infirmity of feebleness of body should require otherwise, for necessity knows no law”.  So from September 14 until Easter we take two slices of bread (or its equivalent) and coffee or milk.  Come to think of it, on these days the Novices don’t break their fast either, they simply bury it.

 

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            Breakfast is over by 8:00 o’clock and all return to their cells (rooms).  These are nine by fifteen feet in dimension and plainly furnished.  For a bed we have a thin cotton mattress laid over a 3 by 7 foot board resting on wooden horses.  There is also a desk, a straight-backed chair, a clothes cabinet, and for the Fathers, a bookcase.  In each cell, too, is a wash sink, one modern convenience we treasure highly.  A picture of the Blessed Virgin – usually as Our Lady of Mount Carmel – a plaque bearing a spiritual saying and a plain wooden cross complete the interior of the cell.  The cross is without a corpus to remind us we should be able to say with St. Paul; “With Christ I am nailed to the cross.” And “…what is lacking in the sufferings of Christ I fill up in my flesh for his Body, which is the Church…” It falls upon each of us to keep his own cell clean and in order.

 

            This is also the time set aside for daily spiritual reading.  A close supervision is maintained over the reading of the Novices.  While in training they must read a certain basic few of the great Carmelite Spiritual writings and some few works from the traditional Christian classics.  Other than that they are free to read any doctrinally sound, approved spiritual writers, especially the contemporary ones.  But every Carmelite is strongly urged to read something from sacred Scripture every day without fail.

 

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            Then at 8:45 A.M., the Novice Master begins conducting classes.  On one or two days a week he holds as many as three separate classes, one for each of the three categories of Novices; the Clerics, the second-year Brothers and the first-year Brothers.  Only the Clerics, those who will go on to the Priesthood, have classes every day of the week.  The Brothers get most of their training on-the-job.  Every Sunday at this time, all of them are given a conference (a cross between a sermon and a lecture).

 

            Classes for the clerics end at 9:30, at which time they change and get ready to work.  The Brothers begin working right after Spiritual Reading.  The Fathers are free to budget their time between community exercises in accordance with the demands of their particular duties.

 

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            All the Brothers must learn to cook and make habits and sandals.  They also take turns doing the laundry and fulfilling the duties of Sacristan.  If one of the Brother’s ability warrants, he will also be taught something about barbering, plumbing, carpentry, electrical wiring, bookbinding and others, depending upon circumstances.  In recent months, for example, some of them have acquired no little skill at masonry work.  To others, minor clerical work is entrusted.

 

            Ordinarily, the Clerics handle the lighter domestic duties.  These household tasks exhaust neither their time nor their energy, however, and so they pitch right in and help the lay brothers with the major projects.  Nearly half of the credit for the progress made in the 16 months we have been here belong to the clerics.

 

            Working periods for the clerics are necessarily short.  Mornings they begin work at a little past 9:30 and end at 11:20.  Afternoons they work from about 3:00 until 4:30.  Once in a while, when we have to get a lot of work done in a hurry, we declare a ‘work day’.  One these rare occasions we manage to free about eight or nine hours in which to work uninterruptedly (except for a hasty meal) by bunching our spiritual exercising into morning and evenings and by canceling classes.

 

            At 11:20, then, the bell-ringer redeems himself somewhat by signaling the end of the work period.  Putting away their tasks, the clerics change and get ready for the next two ‘Little Hours’ of the Divine Office, Sext and None, which begins at 11:40.  These end about 11:50, at which time the Brothers, who had continued working until 11:30, join us for Examination of Conscience.  At noon the Angelus is said.  Then the community goes in procession to the refectory, reciting the while the psalm “De profundis” and the customary prayers for the deceased.  Whenever the Brethren withdraw from a place in which a community act has just terminated, we always leave reciting a psalm and its accompanying Versicles and prayer.

 

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            At noon we have our principal meal.  It consists of soup, a main dish of fish (since our rule prescribes perpetual abstinence from meat except when it is necessary for us to be away from the monastery, and then so as not to be troublesome to our hosts), potato, vegetable, dessert (a ‘piece’ of considerable ‘resistance’ - - that’s French, by the way), coffee or milk.  Ordinarily, our meals are taken in silence.  (That is, we don’t talk).  In the meantime we nourish our minds and souls by listening to the reading.  First about a chapter of the Bible is read and then a lighter spiritual book, usually a biography of a Saint.  At present we are reading the book “TOO SMALL A WORLD, the life of Mother Cabrini.  This same lighter book is also used for the reading during the evening meal.  On big Feasts we dispense with the reading, except to hear the Gospel or Epistle of the Mass of the Feast, and have ‘colloquium’ (talking) instead.

 

            By 12:30 dinner is over and our hour of recreation begins.  Weather permitting, the Novices exercise by playing volleyball or softball, or else just walk around outside on the grounds.  In inclement weather they go to their recreation room where they sit around relaxing and talking and listening to phonograph records (or perhaps trying to collapse a lung playing ping-pong).  Television is forbidden, though the priests are permitted a radio.  During their period of training the Novices are not allowed to look at newspapers or magazines.  News items of interest are reported to them by the Novice Master.

 

            We priests take our recreation sitting in our wooden rockers chatting and joking.  We seldom go out walking.  (Apparently we belong to that category of person who, whenever he gets the feeling he should get some exercise, lies down till the feeling passes.)  At the same time we listen to the music of the ‘Afternoon Flight’ on Northeast Radio.  On hand also are the local newspapers and a few of the better weekly news and feature magazines.

 

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            Recreation having ended, the Novices go to the Chapel where they make a visit to the Blessed Sacrament.  It is at this time, too, from the 17th and 25th of every month inclusive, that they make a Novena in honor of the Divine Infant of Prague.  Then begins a very special time of day, ‘quies’ (rest).  During quies all noise and commotion is strictly interdicted.  For those of us who get up for the 12:00 A.M. Office, this hour is eagerly awaited.  Most of us are so anxious not to cause any disturbance that we take a nap.  Others say, as recreation comes to an end, “Now let’s all close our eyes to the things of this world!”  The Brothers take quies on Sunday and other big feast days only.

 

            Ye gads, I had better stop here and begin saying something about the Spirit of Carmel.  I’ll finish giving you a rundown (better that one of us runs it down) on our daily routine in the April issue.

 

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            The Spirit of Carmel is the spirit of personal encounter with God.  As to its discipline, austerity and prayer have always been synonymous with Carmel.  This has to be, for these two essential elements of its way of life are logical consequences of the two apparently antithetical convictions, which inspire the Carmelite ideal.  On the one hand, we have the utter transcendence of God, on the other, the fact of His unquenchable desire to dwell within the soul to communicate Himself on terms of most intimate friendship.

 

            Because God is so infinitely above all of creation, neither creatures nor anything within the range of human perception can give us an adequate notion of Him.  The most fanciful imagination cannot elaborate an image that will convey what He is like, nor can the most profound intellect form an idea, thought or concept that comprehends Him.  For this reason theologians tell us that we can say more about God by way of negation, telling what He is not, than by affirmation, telling what He is.

 

            Carmel, therefore, is dedicated to the proposition that to possess God, it is necessary to get beyond the boundaries of the human modes of comprehension.  This is done, of course, by Faith, which is a supernatural (above the natural) way of knowing.  But by its austerity, Carmel also strives to void the soul of any desire to know God in terms of forms and figures proper to sense and human understanding.  For it is the experience of Carmel that the least inordinate (underscore ‘inordinate’) desire to experience and enjoy creatures prevents God altogether from communicating Himself in pure Faith and Love.

 

            When we speak of the prayer of Carmel we mean the practice of placing oneself in the presence of God as a foil for His perfections.  Carmel’s genius lies in its insight into the Nature of God, namely, that since He is Love, it is within our power to let Him be Himself, to let Him be Love, in other words, to let Him communicate Himself and His perfections to us.  Carmel recognizes further, that the less we have and the less we are the better opportunity we have to please Him and give Him honor and glory.  Thus, to take up one’s position before God as an empty vessel awaiting the outpouring of the divine largesse (having, to be sure, first emptied oneself by austerity and humility) is to pray in typical Carmelite fashion.

 

            The Spirit of Carmel is particularly well suited to us ordinary Christians who see ourselves to be so niggardly in our aspirations, so wanting in Charity, so incapable of doing good.  All we need do is to make an avowal of it in all humility and place ourselves before God to obtain the remedy.  Actually, that man is already a Carmelite who savors the truth of St. Paul’s consoling words (I Cor. 1,27), “But the foolish things of the world has God chosen to put to shame the wise; and the weak things of the world has God chosen to put to shame the strong…”

 

            The call to Carmel is also termed a “Prophetic” Vocation.  In St. Elias, the fiery, austere prophet of the Old Testament, Carmel recognizes the embodiment of her ideal.  It is worth noting that the prophets of old were not sent primarily to foretell the future.  They were first of all sent to recall the straying Israelites to God, to the terms of the Covenant (agreement) by which the Lord became their God and they his well-beloved People.  Carmel is in the world as a perpetual reminder to the faithful that they, too, must stop disregarding the terms of the New Covenant (Testament), by which the Trinity dwells within us to be our all in all.  By her very existence, Carmel reminds the world to stop pursuing vanities and return to the Divine Bridegroom dwelling within.

 

            Carmelite priests exercise this “prophetic” vocation in their work of preaching and spiritual direction.  In these endeavors their principal concern is to introduce souls to the practice of prayer as we have described it.  The centuries old experience of Carmel in the mysteries of God’s personal dealings with the human soul stand them in good stead, because for every step we take in His direction, He will take several toward us.  It is necessary to know how to discern His action in our souls, the ways and means He ordinarily uses to draw closer to us.

 

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            Why don’t you become a Carmelite?  We have just the Order for you, a First, a Second, and a Third.  God bless you all.  Pray for us.  We pray for all of you.

 

Cordially yours in Our Lady,

Father Bruno, OCD, Prior

                                                                                                [With permission of Religious]

                                                                                                [and Ecclesiastical Superiors   ]

 

 

Note to Readers:  The Novitiate at Waverly no longer exists, however the Carmelites are still in need of your support.  If you would like to make a donation, please send “In appreciation of Fr. Bruno’s Works”, The Mission Procurator, P.O. Box 270136, Hartford, WI 53027.