THE BELLS OF SAINT JOSEPH'S

“Seven times a day have I praised you.” These words from Psalm 118, quoted by St. Benedict in Chapter 16 of his Rule, provide the framework for the communal prayer of our monastic day. It is not our wristwatches or the clocks in our cells which ultimately call us to the church for this prayer, but the ringing of the monastery bells, which for each monk is the voice of God. There are three bells in the huge tower above the south transept of the abbey church. The bell’s names are Bernard, Joseph and Maria, and each has its own distinct personality. When rung together they play an A Flat chord. These same bells are also used to signal the beginning of community meetings, to intone the Angelus three times each day, to mark the consecration at Mass, to begin and end each period of grand silence, and most solemnly, to inform the community when there has been a death among the brethren. It’s only fitting that we save the most joyous ringing of these bells for the Gloria at the Easter Vigil when they proclaim with full abandon the ancient cry, “Christ is Risen! He is Truly Risen!”

ABBEY TIME 

At such a large Abbey as ours, you might imagine that it is next to impossible to keep all the clocks synchronized throughout the many buildings that comprise the entire monastic complex. It’s a good thing we don’t rely too heavily on clocks for our timing of events. The monastery bells are our true guide. So, you might be wondering, what keeps the bells on time? The secret to the regularity of the bells, known locally as “Abbey time,” is a lovely grandfather clock tucked away in the northeast corner of the cloister near the sacristy door. This one clock keeps the official “Abbey time” that governs the entire monastery. The Sub-Prior, Br. Robert, is the keeper of “Abbey time” and every Saturday afternoon he resets the hands according to the standard time, and rewinds the clock, which lifts the heavy cylindrical-shaped weights to the top of the base of the clock to begin their gravity-fed journey for another week. “There is an appointed time for everything, and a time for every affair under the heavens... a time to be silent, and a time to speak.” Eccl 3:2,7

BROTHER SIMEON'S
SIMPLE PROFESSION

Brother Simeon makes his simple profession of vows at our Sunday Chapter meeting on April 30. Brother Simeon emigrated to the U.S. from Cuba as a boy during the Communist revolution and comes to us by way of Miami, FL, and, most recently, San Francisco, CA, where he was a professor of Literature and Theology at the University of San Francisco for many years. Monastic life is Brother Simeon’s second vocation in life. He has three adult children and six grandchildren. His favorite extra-curricular activity is watching the moon glow through bare branches in the winter sky. We wish him many fruitful years of earthly pilgrimage to the Father along with us!

WINDOWS OF THE SOUL

As you walk around the main monastic buildings that make up the core of the Abbey, you are constantly confronted by various stained glass windows depicting scenes from scriptural and Cistercian history. These windows range in size from the large 12-foot Madonna and Child overlooking the altar in the Abbey church, all the way down to the 6-inch Christ in Victory shown here, which is located in an obscure window in a hallway we call the “auditorium.” As the seasons change and the angles of daylight slant into nooks and slip under different eaves, certain windows come alive during particular months at special times of the day. If you are sensitive to it, it can seem like a visit from an old friend. As we go about our monastic days with their ordered regularity and hiddeness, these windows of light journey along with us. A window that we have passed a hundred times during a lonely or arid time, may now, with the changing of the light, have a message of consolation or peace that was waiting patiently to be imparted, and often enough, a new season in our soul arrives with the changing of the light...