St. John’s Abbey, Collegeville

I spent most of the week after Easter at the Conference for Benedictine formation directors, held at St. John’s Abbey in Collegeville, MN.

The trip there was only mildly arduous, involving an overnight stay in New York City with one of my oldest friends in OHC, Fr. Carl Sword. Carl has been a psychotherapist practicing in NYC for many years, and like me, for many years a monk not in residence. I was up and out early on Tuesday morning and took the airport shuttle bus from outside Grand Central Terminal to La Guardia. The Northwest (becoming Delta) flight to Minneapolis was uneventful. At the gate for the connecting flight to St. Cloud I found Fr. Aelred Glidden, the Prior and Novice Master from St. Gregory’s in Three Rivers, MI, and Fr. Joel Rippinger, our conference leader. Fr. Joel is a well-known Benedictine scholar whose specialty is the history of the monastic movement in North America. He is the author of the standard history of American Benedictine communities, and is a monk of Marmion Abbey in Aurora, IL. The flight to St. Cloud lasts about 11 minutes, shorter than its attendant preparation and debarkation procedures. The flight steward was humorous throughout in the best self-deprecating Lake Woebegone, MN, fashion. Jokes about the flight to and from Minneapolis and the St. Cloud airport are de rigueur at St. John’s.

We were met by Br. Paul Richards, the Novice Master at St. John’s. Last summer, Br. Paul finished a 20-some year stint as director of the boys’ choir associated with St. John’s schools, and took up his new work at the same time I did. I sat up front in the van and had the opportunity to talk with him at length. He took us the scenic way. I had never been in Minnesota before, but it looked a lot like I remember the area around Lansing from my Michigan State days – flat to low rolling countryside, patches of woods and occasional wet areas. The campus of St. John’s is very large, encompassing farmlands and St. John’s University. The monastery is only a small part of it, forming a bridge between the Church and the University buildings.

The Church is enormous, looming over everything. Designed by Marcel Breuer and built in the 1950's, it is resolutely mid-20th century modern, representing I suppose an ecclesiastical version of brutalism in its style. The famous front is dominated by the campanile wall. I had seen pictures of it, but had no idea of it as a functioning building nor of its relation to its surroundings. After four days of worship in it I found it a liturgical success, both for the Daily Office and for the Eucharist.

The Community at St. John’s could not have been warmer in its welcome. My entire time there was punctuated by kind greetings and the small conversations between monks which indicate good will and benevolent interest, from the retired monks to the newest members and even to the Abbot, who sat down next to me at lunch on Friday. Abbot John Klassen is a listener, and obviously both a kind and a firm father of the community. He, like our Presiding Bishop, is a scientist by training. The atmosphere of the monastery and community was one of respectful, mutual and loving patriarchy in the best Benedictine sense.

We were housed in the monastery, some in the older section, others (including me) in the newer Breuer wing connecting to the Church. These newer rooms are functional, laid out like simple motel rooms: an entrance area with closet on one side and bathroom on the other, then a fair sized room with a big window and sliding door with view of the lake which the monastery property encompasses.

The daily worship schedule begins with morning prayer at 7, then noon prayers, Eucharist at 5, and evening prayer at 7. We were busy in the evenings, but my impression is that Compline is voluntary and private. They generally wear habits but no big fuss is made if some of the monks come in civvies. They use their own books -- well-printed and loose leaf, a seven or eight binder set -- for the daily office, as one would expect at this great liturgical center. The psalms are the Grail translation, the music is to modern modes – two or more simple melodies in a set, much as our Camaldolese friends do, and which Holy Cross uses in Santa Barbara and Grahamstown. The St. John’s usage is distributed with artful variety and care between the two sides of choir and one, sometimes two, cantors, which they call soloists. The organ backs up the melody. The singing is well-modulated and in the somewhat indistinct acoustical environment of the Breuer church it blends well and sounds good. I am not a huge fan of this setting for the Office, but at St. John’s it works and I enjoyed it. I found myself looking forward to the next time of prayer.

The other participants included Aelred and Paul as well as the three-man formation team from St. Meinrad’s, in southern Indiana, and individual “formators” (as the Roman Catholic world now designates those who usher in the new monkly generation) from St. Gregory's Abbey in Shawnee, OK; New Subiaco in Subiaco, AR; from Blue Cloud Abbey in Marvin, SD; from Holy Trinity in St. David, AZ; from Christ the King in Schuyler, NE; and from St. Benedict's in Oxford, MI. It was quite a jolly group.

The conference itself was wonderful. On the first day Fr. Rippinger led us through some strategies for teaching the Rule of St. Benedict, and on the second day ways to approach teaching our individual monastic community history. I found it very useful.

One of the blessings of our time at St. John’s was the funeral of Br. William Borgerding. He was a classic monastic character. His uncle had been a monk there as well, a missionary among the Native Americans who formed part of the monastery’s original ministry in Minnesota. Br. Willie was in charge of cattle until they gave that up, and then was monastic night watchman for both the monastery and the university. He was both loved and legendary among the students, and when the student pub opened, they voted to name it after him – Brother Willie’s Pub. I imagine that his legends include reasons for his name being appropriate to a pub. It was a privilege to share the rites surrounding his burial, which included the reception of the body and vigil on Wednesday evening, and the office of the dead, funeral and burial on Thursday. The monastic community, including all of us attending the conference, processed chanting in double file, leading a large gathering of family and friends, to the cemetery overlooking the lake, where Br. Willie was laid to rest, the latest in lines of hundreds all buried in their new order of precedence, that of their entrance into the Larger Life of the Risen Christ.