Greetings from Racine, Wisconsin! I'm now three weeks into my novitiate with the Augustinians, and so I thought I'd take a few minutes to give an update and provide some insight on what exactly I'm doing out here, and what this novitiate thing is all about.
So far everything is going wonderfully. The people here are really nice, really kind. Our monastery is attached to a parish, St. Rita's, which is neat. The parishioners are just lovely, really generous and compassionate, very salt-of-the-earth. It is a unique experience for a parish to have a novitiate community attached to it, so they get very excited every year as the new novices arrive. At the first Mass when we are introduced, the men, especially the older men, all came over and shook our hands, looking like proud papas. And the women gushed over us, and the look of plotting was alive in their eyes, as they were already considering the many ways they would try to mother us to death and fatten us up for the cold Wisconsin winter. Mostly that has meant a steady supply of baked goods being sent over after Mass each day.
There are many saints in Wisconsin, the kind that no one will ever know about, and that seems to be just how they like it. So many of the people here just give so generously of their time, and they do it all with such love for God and love for neighbor. It is truly inspiring.
So what exactly am I doing? Well, for starters, Catholic canon law requires that any person entering a religious community must spend a period of time in what's called novitiate, and that novitiate must be at least one year, not more than two. It is generally meant to be a year of spiritual growth and formation, better understanding of the Order we have joined, and a time for prayerful discernment of the vows we will take at the end of the year. Specifically, my own Augustinian Order, in a document called Plan of Augustinian Formation, says this about our novitiate:
The novitiate is a privileged moment of formation in Augustinian religious life. Its basic purpose is to make known and to live out the essential requirements of this life through a personal discovery of Christ, interior Master and saving Word. This should be accomplished in such a manner that, through true conversion, the following of Christ, in keeping with Augustine's experience and that of our tradition, becomes in fact the ultimate norm of our religious life.
It then goes on to list several means by which this is effected in the novice. For one, the year is:
a very appropriate period in which to dedicate unhurried time to the life of prayer, to fraternal community, and to the practice of vows, without other tasks getting in the way. It is a time of growth in the concrete, personal experience of faith by means of instruction in prayer, which is seen as a dialogue and friendship with God, as a meditation on the Word, and as a discovery of the love of God in one's own life.
There are several key components to how all of this takes place. As far as instruction goes, every Monday through Friday we meet for two hours with the novice master, where we receive instruction in prayer, in the spiritual life, in the Augustinian tradition and Augustinian spirituality, where we discuss various assigned readings on spirituality, which focus especially on the spiritual classics (St. John of the Cross, St. Teresa of Avila, Imitation of Christ, Life of Antony, Story of a Soul, etc.). Our Novice Master is a very kind man, with a gentle heart and a keen intellect, who has his doctorate in Sacred Scripture from the Biblicum and also is a licensed counselor. He knows the spiritual life inside and out, and we are very lucky to have him. One of the days each week, instead of meeting with the Novice Master, we meet with the Prior of the community, who is also very kind, and he has expertise in the Fathers of the Church, having received his doctorate from the Patristic Institute in Rome, Augustinianum, and is a man of deep prayer. The lessons from both of them are wonderful and very insightful.
As for the fraternal community component of our formation, there are really two main aspects of this. One is our experience of liturgy. Three times each day we pray the Divine Office in community (Morning Prayer, Evening Prayer, and Night Prayer), and after Morning Prayer each day we have Mass. For those unfamiliar, the Divine Office, also known as the Liturgy of the Hours, is a liturgical means of praying in community that is rooted in the traditional monastic praying of the Psalter. In the early monasteries, monks used to pray all 150 Psalms every day as a community. Over time this developed in various ways, and in the current manner, it would look like this. Morning Prayer would consist in an opening hymn, a Psalm (or a portion of a Psalm), an Old Testament Canticle (such as Hannah's song from 1 Samuel), another Psalm, a short Scripture reading, a responsery, the Canticle of Zechariah from Luke, intercessory prayers, and concluding with the Our Father and a closing prayer. Evening Prayer would be much the same, except a New Testament Canticle (such as Philippians 2), and the Canticle of Mary instead of Zechariah. Night Prayer is similar, but slightly different (such as no intercessory prayers), and would conclude with the singing of a Marian antiphon, such as the Salve Regina.
So three times a day we gather for community prayer, one of those times including Eucharist and Mass. We also eat dinner together as a community every night, which is really important. Perhaps here I should explain something about the Augustians. As a religious order we did not formally come into existence until the middle of the 13th century, but informally we have been around since St. Augustine's own time. Augustine established a monastery before he became a priest and later bishop, and continued in the monastery even as bishop. There were really two things that formed a major component of Augustine's idea of the monastery. First was his experience of friendship as essential to his own conversion and his own journey with Christ. He knew that he did not journey alone, and as you read his Confessions you see that friendship is such an important element for Augustine's life and his ideal of a religious community. Second, he was particularly struck by the way of life of the early Church as described in Acts of the Apostles, and used that as a foundation for his own community rule for living. He wrote his rule for his own community, his own monastery, but also wrote adapted versions of it for others who requested that he do so for their own communities. And so for many centuries after he died there were communities all around the world who followed the Rule of St. Augustine, and finally in 1248 the Pope said, "Hey, you all are following the same rule, and we kind of need a religious order to help the Church with a few things, so how about you all form together as a cohesive religious order, instead of a group of individual groups totally unconnected?" And so that started our formal foundation, which was completed in 1256 in what is known as the Grand Union.
So because friendship is such an important aspect of Augustinian life, it can't be stressed enough how important this meal time together is, as well as various other things we do together throughout the day. For instance, each day for an hour and a half we have a work period, just light manual labor more designed to give us a change of pace, but that time also becomes a time of strong communal bonding, and is so important. Same with weekends, where we will often gather together and do something just for fun, for bonding sake.
The other aspect, relating to Augustine's impression of the early Church, is our communal living, our "having all things in common," and so forth. Augustine begins his rule by stating that the purpose of our having come together as a religious community is so that we might be "one mind and heart, intent upon our God." And so everything we do we do communally, traveling together towards a deeper relationship with Christ and greater service to the Church and God's people.
One thing that people seem always to be very curious about is the discipline factor of this year. Prior to coming I wasn't able to give any answers because I just didn't know. What I can say is that by and large discipline is very self-imposed. There are some restrictions: we have four hours of assigned quiet time per day, and that time is to be used for prayer or for spiritual reading. But outside of that quiet time, if I wanted to be on the Internet or watch television, it technically would not be restricted. I think the idea behind this, as opposed to former times when really strict, militant discipline would be enforced in a situation like this, is really a reflection of the changing nature of religious vocations. We are not men coming here right out of high school, or even earlier. Two of our novices are in their forties, one is already an ordained priest. I am thirty-three, and the other novice is twenty-three. There is an expectation of maturity, and I think we are expected to assert our own discipline and use our time wisely. And so far that seems to work out wonderfully. Now, if it were obvious that things were getting out of hand, that someone was on the internet too much or watching too much television, that would be addressed by the novice master, first in a private session, then in some sort of imposition of discipline. But I don't imagine that being a problem.
To give you an idea, here is what my day looks like: I arise each day at 4:30. I put on the coffee (because there's no praying that early in the morning without coffee!), and then get a shower. After the shower I spend some time in prayer, and then read a chapter of Augustine's Rule. Then I pray the Office of the Readings (another of the hours of the Divine Office, consisting of three Psalms, a good sized Scripture reading, and a non-Scripture spiritual reading, commonly from the Church Fathers). Then I go into our meditation room and spend an hour or an hour and a half in silent contemplation. I then eat breakfast, and walk over to the church. If I get there early enough I pray the Rosary before Morning Prayer. Morning Prayer begins at 7:30, and then Mass at 8. After Mass I spend another half an hour in silent prayer, and then I walk back to the monastery and spend an hour reading Scripture. We then have class for two hours, then lunch, then work period, and then free time, which I use to exercise and do some more "recreational" reading, usually poetry, or to write letters, write in my journal, or something like that. Evening Prayer is at 5:15, followed by dinner and good conversation. Then silent time from 7-9, at which time I go back to the meditation room and spend an hour and a half again in silent contemplation, and then read Scripture again until 9, when we have Night Prayer. After Night Prayer I go to bed. So as you can see, even though discipline is not enforced, it is still practiced. And it's really better this way, I think, because it allows me the opportunity live as a free man under grace, choosing to devote myself to Christ in this way, rather than as one obligated by the Law. It seems to me to be very healthy.
It's rather early in the year for any real "discoveries" to have come about. I will say this, though. The dedication to silence, and especially those two periods of silent contemplation each day, are bound to have an effect on anyone. The real effect of silence is the manner in which is works on the human psyche. All sorts of things that are buried in the subconscious come to the surface, and that has certainly already been true. Sometimes they are good and beautiful things; often they are pains and scars from past hurts and past sins. The experience so far, as well as what we've been taught and what I've read, is that usually these things arise in prayer because we have reached a point when we are prepared to deal with them and prepared to allow them to be healed. So far this seems true, though it does create a certain degree of tumult. One other things I've noticed about spending this much time in silence and in prayer, and by dedicating time to Scripture, is that my own creative energies are working better. I've been writing a lot, and poetry does seem to be coming more naturally. While my poetry has never been very good, I think it's gotten a bit better now, though still not very good. If it's better, I think it's merely because I am becoming more aware, in a general sense, which seems to me to be the essence of poetry.
So this concludes my "very short" reflection on life in the novitiate so far. We are still very much in the "honeymoon period," and Wisconsin winters are notoriously long. The real spiritual excavation has not yet begun, I know. Finally, I just want to say that everyone who has submitted prayer requests, I have been praying for each and every one of you every day, and will continue to do so. And I definitely encourage anyone else to submit their requests at my journal. The entry is post-dated so that it will always remain first on my page, and all prayer requests will remain screened so that they are seen by no one but me. May God bless you all!!
One last thing, as for the internet, in general I am only coming online on Saturdays, though there might be a brief exception here and there. But if you comment, I may not get back to you until next week. Please don't be offended if I don't get back at all. It doesn't mean I haven't read, it just means I'm trying to be cautious with my internet time.
Peace,
Michael
