Living the Liturgy

a creek by its very nature is always a small part of something larger than itself a creek is a humble thing and yet despite its modest size it has the power to change its surrounding landscape to refresh the life with which it comes in contact this is Clear Creek this unremarkable stream of water flows for several miles across northeast Oklahoma in the heartland of America but its scope extends far beyond this rural land on the banks of Clear Creek something extraordinary is happening here a life is being lived that more closely resembles medieval times a life that has never before been cultivated on American soil our lady a cleric monastery is a Benedictine monastery the Order of Saint Benedict which is about 15 centuries old were part of a congregation that began in France in the 19th century after differential evolution this is a life focused on the liturgy I would say that we already enchant being prayer it is the life of the monk in a way we celebrate mass according to the 1962 roman missal which is often referred to as a Tridentine right this is a life purely contemplative when our Lord said in heavenly and the apostles are all looking up and the angels come and go what are you gaping up for go but well the mark stay there in gate a life of prayer and work this is the life of the monks of Clearcreek it is countercultural but what is the purpose of this seemingly insignificant group of religious men why have they settled in the Midwest United States and what is at stake in this hidden life of silence and prayer it's nearly five o'clock in the morning most of the world would still be sleeping at this hour but for the monk his day begins while it is still night he meets with the other monks in community to pray the morning prayer called Matins this first hour of the Divine Office always occurs before daybreak and allows the monk to offer his day to God with this the monk begins the daily routine laid out centuries ago by a man named Benedict st. Benedict of Nursia was born into a noble family in Italy in the late 5th century as a youth Benedict abandoned his studies in Rome and lived as a hermit in a cave for three years once he emerged he drew up a rule of monastic life which outlined in 73 short chapters how to live a life centered on Christ through a balance of prayer and work while the decadent culture of his time was crumbling around him Benedict and his rule would help reform the church and lay the groundwork for the development of Western civilization the benedictine way of life thrived for many centuries monasteries became centers of culture and learning sacred music was developed schools were founded scholasticism was born wherever these foundations took root cities and villages soon sprang up around them however during the tumultuous centuries following the Protestant Reformation and the French Revolution the order was nearly destroyed so while it was in France that the Benedictine tradition was almost lost Providence would have it that in France the order would be restored in 1831 a French diocesan priest named prosper garel je sought to repair the abandoned and defunct Benedict and Priory of Salaam and with the help of his local ordinary purchased the property along with some fellow diocesan priests he took Benedictine vows and dedicated his life to the restoration of the Benedictine Order in France he received his permission from pope gregory xvi who then raised celeb to an abbey and named it the mother house of the Benedictine congregation of france from the congregation of solemn wood flower some of the great Priory's and Abbey's of our time most notably in this case is that of Fong Gamboa Fong gamba is a small town situated on the river cruise in the west of France and 1091 a hermit began living in a cave here eventually others join the hermit and they formed a monastery under the rule of Saint Benedict over the centuries Fong Gamboa became a vibrant and growing monastery particularly during the medieval period but as was the fate of so many monasteries in France the abbey at Fong jambo was nearly destroyed after the Protestant Reformation and never fully recovered eventually an order of Trappist monks purchased the faltering property and occupied its buildings until their expulsion in 1905 when Fong Gamboa fell into private hands and so it remained until 1948 when the celeb congregation once again put the Abbey into Benedict in use today with more than 60 monks Fong gam bow is the largest Abbey in all the celeb congregation only a few decades after the Benedictines moved back to phone Jambo the world entered a period of turbulence cultural revolutions began to dismantle the foundations of society not the least of this upheaval took place in the United States here American culture and American Catholicism suffered in the changing times leaving many people confused in many souls in the dark uninspired by the spirit of the age three professors at the University of Kansas set up a humanities program to help guide students back to reality the Pearson integrated humanities program exposed the students to the liberal arts not only by direct lecturing but also through conversation and experience professors John senior Dennis Quinn and Frank nella k-- focused the program on the search for truth goodness and beauty by their nature these courses led many students to convert to the Catholic Church some students of the program would spend their vacations traveling to Europe to experience the roots of Western civilization this particular group though involves a nucleus of American college students who converted to the Catholic faith in the 70s the 1970s and we're looking for the right type of monastery to pursue their interest in the Catholic faith and found phone combo Abbey in France which was flourishing at that time many vocations and they had a beautiful liturgy beautiful setting they were young converts who had gone to Europe to see a deeper Christian culture Kath more Catholic society really and they heard about filming boat and went to visit and saw it was very wonderful place and got a couple more their friends to come and they stayed all winter and one of them entered and that was the beginning and over the years every year as long as its humanities program lasted four or five boys at least would go spend the winter there and every year one or two whenever a lot of them left because it wasn't so easy to leave your country and cetera not everybody had a vocation farm life course but there ended up seven from kayuu it seems to be a very providential path that led us to phone gumbo in early seventies there was much confusion in various communities after the Second Vatican Council there was a little bit of a questioning as to what religious life was all about and what there's a lot of self self searching soul searching I guess and many communities experienced trouble at from kambou there was always a very great unity and they never really went through a crisis and when the boys entered there he said you're entering you become a monk at for example I can't promise you that we're going to found the United States the Lord may be leading us there we'll see so these boys entered to become monks at for gumbo but I think we always knew that we would be coming back someday we thought it'd be a little bit sooner but we always always remained attached to our own country to America and wanted to come back so there was there was this project to come to America many of us are from Kansas we sort of thought the Midwest might be the place property was considered in Oregon in California a very nice property was offered perhaps in Tennessee but as things were not working out some red tape was delaying all this Bishop of Tulsa positively asked us to come to this diocese in Tulsa I was introduced to the monks soon after I became a bishop in 1994 and I went to foine combo which is a place in France where their monastery is and prayed with them and then I discovered that they were hoping to build a monastery here in the United States and of course I never even dreamed that they would consider Tulsa Oklahoma after the abbot surveyed some of the parts of the United States he decided finally on Tulsa a combination of factors the blessing of the bishop the fact that there are numerous friends around the area who wanted us to come and then having to find a very nice property in Cherokee County about 70 miles east of Tulsa made it happen and so in 1999 these original Americans with some French Canadian brothers also came and established Clearcreek monastery here in Oklahoma with the blessing of the Bishop of Tulsa Bishop Slattery and we began this adventure you at dawn the monk offers praise to God in the office of Lodz as the son ascends the horizon the monk calls to mind the resurrection of Christ through hymns of praise when the monks moved to Oklahoma in 1999 they were returning to their native soil and establishing the monastic life on what was once the western frontier of America affectionately they refer to their new property as their cowboy Bethlehem we won't appear and that's just the reality Oklahoma there's still people our time remember the times when it was kind of the old little West around here it was still very late shootouts and the sheriff coming out and there's been that kind of poetry of the of the Old West around here a little bit of horses and in and so that's just that's part of the American soul we found them very natural and we kind of meet that and understand city joins a whole poetry of our childhood the cowboy and so here were amongst you know in the beginning we were riding horses a little bit we had the cattle you still do but we find it's a little tiresome to saddle the horses we we just go on foot now mostly like the Cowboys of the Old West these monks are pioneers monastic pioneers establishing a life of purely contemplative Benedictine monasticism in a place which is not yet known this way of life in America in the early days of monastic fonda foundations in the nineteenth century there was so much work to be done so much evangelization so many schools to be started that the monks naturally tended to take on apostolic works in addition to their monastic life so they would have a religious life on one in one hand and yet be engaged in parish work and teaching schools on the other but our idea from the beginning was to bring back a more purely contemplative there's the simple monastic ideal which wasn't very much present in America at least for men at least for the Benedictine Order until now Isaac who we have to here to implant the monastic life as we believed in France according to the rule of Saint Benedict as don't get andre gave us you know a tradition quite contemplative not unlike the setting of fung Gamboa Clearcreek is nestled on a quiet piece of land with peaceful surroundings the property includes more than one thousand acres of wooded land in addition to the small creek from which the monastery draws its name the landscape is blessed with prairies hills and Bluffs a little portion of God's creation that provides ample nourishment for the contemplative mind the previous owners had equipped the land with two log cabins several sheds and a horse barn when the monks first arrived at their new ranch they had to adjust their lifestyle to the new setting our first monastery really the chapel was in a barn and the first monastic cells we built were these stalls of horses had been there we just put you know walls around them a little bit and fixed them up and the abbot of phone combos said you know about that is kind of French aphorism so well the cheveux Sivan they they won yen the horses are leaving and the monks are coming in that was kind of the way it was at 8:00 in the morning a few hours after Lodz the monks meet again in community to recite the office of prime this office keeps the monk on task for his studies and work during the morning after settling into their new monastery the monks quickly found that rural Oklahoma was an ideal setting for the monastic life particularly this form of monastic life with its focus on contemplation originally mastic life was all contemplative it was the only type of monastic life there was really the rule of Saint Benedict which is the most important monastic rule in the Western world which really was you might say a key factor in the emergence of the European civilization is a contemplative rule it's it's for monks and insane men who live apart from society pray for the world around them but live apart from the world devoting most their time to prayer mastic ideal is it's just the gospel be therefore perfect as your heavenly father father is perfect trying to pursue that in an organized manner every Christian is called to that perfection amongst try to organize life so that it's easier to attain that perfection but the central core the nucleus of religious life really is always this contemplative dimension and the world needs this witness the people that just live all for God and fine Incan are content that he can suffice that's a very important witness in fact for our world it's just really a life dedicated to the glory of God alone without any kind of a practical goal the real battles of spiritual battle and the monks and nuns tickling where the contemporaries are on the front line it's a very aware of every act we do we have no distraction we're very aware of what measure were doing our acts purely if they're for God if there's egoism we've become very aware very quickly and it's a real every actor I'm very spiritual for us finally really we're very aware and so with the monks do in a radical way is what we should all be doing but we need them to us how one concrete condition of it all as silence being out here in the in the countryside of Oklahoma it's really very quiet at night and during the day too and that's very hopeful The Silence of the monastery preserves the atmosphere of the contemplative life the monastery itself creates an enclosed courtyard called the cloister where the public is not allowed there are parts of the cloister where the monk is prohibited from speaking all the meals are taken in silence while a Lecter chants from a book or spiritual reading all these things create for the monk an environment of contemplation you are able to concentrate on the content of life on the prayer life which you pray in the church continues in your mind and your in your heart the rest of the day as you work and do other activities so silence is a concrete aspect of that Taurus is the third hour of the office after dawn the monks meet in community to pray this office directly before the convention high-mass to help facilitate the monastic prayer life the rule of Saint Benedict places special emphasis on the Opus Dei or work of God that is the liturgy the public worship of the church so our particular for monistic life is really centered on the liturgy we celebrate the hours of the Divine Office according to really the cosmic rhythm of the Sun the first hour the third hour the ninth hour following the the day that we're in tune with nature you might say following the rule of Saint Benedict the monk prays seven times a day and once at night this is known as the Divine Office or the Liturgy of the hours in which certain prayers and readings are recited during fixed hours of the day the office primarily consists of the Psalms and also includes other scripture readings hymns and ecclesiastical readings at Clear Creek the monks sing the Divine Office and Gregorian chant in Latin I would say that we've already in chant being a prayer it is the life as a monk a monk being a man that is having a body in his soul is not pure spirit needs to express himself outwardly and the chant is an outward expression of Prayer it which incorporates not only the the single human person but the whole community the whole community comes together and expresses his faith and worships God together the liturgy in general is not only about the human person before God it's finally Christ before his father Christ in his mission of redemption and he experienced all the the sentiments of prayer of the ordered human soul such as it finds itself before God and this is really what the liturgy and the chant is trying to capture historically speaking it was monks who saw the birth and development of Gregorian chant and so in the Western world the two have always been tied together after the monastic life was wiped out in France it was natural that chant would play a key role in its restoration Dom BOJ the restorer Benedict in life in France after it was completely extinguished in the French Revolution realized that that chant was very important for his idea his project of Benedictine life the monk enters say twelve twenty years of age he spends his whole life in an enclosed community and his life is essentially one of prayer and in order to to be able to realize that the monk has to be able to have something of quality to to defeat on and to to keep him focused on God chant has always held a high place in the celeb tradition in 1904 Pope st. Pius the tenth charged the celeb congregation with a task of researching Gregorian chant throughout history and preparing an official Vatican edition of the church's chant continuing today the French congregation remains the authority on Gregorian chant in the church Ligurian chat is at the source of all Western music and to the extent that we want to renew our music of today especially the music of the church it's too goo Borean chat which we ought to look for inspiration there was a lapse of time from the time I was ordained until just recently when I encountered the monks that I realized there was something missing there was something missing in our worship and I think a good deal of it was was a Gregorian chant the monks spent a great deal of time learning and practicing chant but it is not in vain the chant enhances the liturgy it aids in the sacrifice of praise offered to God fulfilling the rule prefer nothing to the work of God so it's our whole life really the liturgy is the thing we do and some days it's kind of a routine you almost feel like you know in a rut you just we're just there reciting the hours and then sometimes it all comes alive all of a sudden that the grace of the moment of the liturgy takes ahold of the monk and his soul has lifted up and really participates all this to the fullest it's something that you have to live to really understand you know we have to loved it for a few years to see certain depths of prayer that just are not accessible as someone hasn't experienced that usually at least the rule of Saint Benedict places an importance on accepting guests as one would accept Christ the monks at Clear Creek fulfill this commandment with joy guests and visitors are welcome to lodge at several of the facilities on the grounds and although the monks generally do not lead retreats all are invited to take part in their prayer life this is something anyone any layman can come and experience this an extent in our monastery because we open up widely our doors to guests they can come for stay for a few days and live the liturgy with us and it's really a treasure for the whole church but someone has to sort of be doing it X professo is the the ones whose specialty it is and it's kind of our our vocations me living the liturgy while the monks arrange their day around the eight canonical hours of the Divine Office their most important work is the offering of the Holy Sacrifice of the mass the Holy Eucharist is that is the very center of it all the rest is a kind of Court Asia sort of surrounds the sacrifice of mass the hold and energy at Clear Creek mass is offered twice daily in the early morning low masses are offered on the many side altars of the Crypt church each priests offering a private low mass at the high altar another priest offers a low mass for the public later in the morning following tourists conventional high mass is offered on the high altar we're extremely happy that we have been able to retain this extraordinary form of the Roman Rite it just seems to fit with our life very well but what we want to celebrate really is the Catholic liturgy we have as monks particular affinity to the Latin liturgy the Council of Vatican 2 asked that the Latin be retained as the liturgical language of the church Pope Paul the sixth specifically asked to Benedict ins to keep the Latin and so we always did we are not totally opposed to to change we we see some good elements in the liturgical reform we use some of the new prophecies with permission from Rome we have a few of the elements of the new missile it's just the old missile I suppose was really kind of Benedict an in spirit really it has a very austere but very great beauty it seems good that some place is preserved this kind of integral Latin liturgy and we're just the right people to do that we just have always felt that there was something there that shouldn't be lost and many wise persons agreed with us and we sort of held that line against sometimes against an awful lot of opposition and now we're happy to see it being widely accepted and we feel that without being intransigent we can hold on to something there that's just part of the life of the Roman Catholic Church you at the noon hour the monks meet again for prayer this time for the office of sexed this hour is placed in the middle of the day between periods of work and study prayer and work this is the Benedictine motto aura at libera the work component of the motto is a necessity in the life of the monk well one reason for the success of the rule of Saint Benedict was its balanced nature that it really lays out a daily routine that is good conforming with human nature the early monks in Egypt found that if they tried to pray all day long they would go crazy it's impossible for human nature but if they would do a little manual labor during the day alternate with prayer then their prayer life would be better and they would have a better balance and the rule of Saint Benedict takes this into consideration one of the keys to our monastic life as all of monastic history has shown is the necessity to to moderation of keeping a balance and that's what basically or on labora is about not only do we pray we need to work with our hands and it's only with a certain balance of work with our hands other work with our minds also a reading to to nourish our prayer this has always been important for Benenden monasticism and as part of our heritage generally they're about eight hours of work eight hours of prayer and study and in hours of rest our work is meant to be a kind of extension of the pair our ideal is to pray at all times really we pray seven times during the day and once at night and manual Labor's is a way of kind of peacefully continuing the prayer but letting the body human nature the physical nature have its realm to exercise in the monks have taken advantage of the variety of landscapes on the property and continue to use the land as a ranch our work is developed we have a woodshop that's very active or building furniture we also make cheese and in certain products with milk from our dairy cattle along with chickens and cattle the monks at Clear Creek also raise sheep the shepherd monks use traditions they learned from their French roots to raise and pasture the Sheep the monks have developed their wood shop using timber from the vast amounts of wooded area on the property they also have a metal shop where the monks sometimes receive assistance from local neighbors there is an orchard and a garden we benefit from a lot of benefactors when it comes to the buildings and these expenses that are beyond our means but for daily day-to-day needs we can pretty much provide for them by our manual labor and it's a healthy situation in that sense in an effort to keep the balance of work and prayer and for the monastery to run effectively it is necessary to have two different categories of monks all the monks are amongst their first duty is prayer the spiritual life but within the monastic community there is quite a diversity there are basically two groups that make the choir monks so-called are monks who devote a little more time to prayer than the brothers converse brothers have a little more time for manual labor the choir monks generally study for the priesthood it become priests but not not always but generally and the brothers receive a complete formation of monastic life but do not engage in any specifically clerical studies philosophy or theology there are many different types of officers in monastery there's someone in charge of economic questions the bursar there is a monk in charge of the linen room monks in charge of the kitchen supplies many rules are played really and all the talents are necessary in order to make the monastery run correctly between the prayer and work the monks also allow some time each day for healthy recreation recreation we have together we walk and talk that's our style the recreation is a little bit prolonged on on feast days and on Thursdays we have a long walk which lasts about three hours we just it helps us to unwind you the ninth hour of the day known the monks meet for mid-afternoon office to commemorate the death of Christ and to ward off the temptation of laziness amidst their work as they have done throughout the day the monks meet for this office in the choir stalls of the church contemplative monks require a certain setting in order for their life to thrive when the monks came to Oklahoma they knew their ranch was only temporary well the old barn when we moved in was a kind of our cowboy Bethlehem it was just the way it wasn't we got there and we adapted to it it was very nice but it didn't meet the needs of a contemplative community of monks the first principal of the buildings really is the spiritual reality at the heart of it all the prayer life which is led in common those so with a community of men not Hermits by community and that requires a certain peace a certain separation from the world from the busyness of the world and you have to have quite a few number of room quite a few rooms which we call cells for the monks you have to have the conventional places the chapter ruined the refectory and for that all to fit into the harmony of a real Benedictine abbey such as existed in the Middle Ages it takes quite a bit of space we were living in a ranch you know and you need a place appropriate for your life particularly on a stick life we're a little too open now we're not quite in church yet we're in the crypt to the Future Church but it's it's well proportioned and you can sing in there well it's a bigger so just the whole atmosphere it's very important it's like your habit really you know um you're not have it doesn't make them out but it certainly helps and so do monastic buildings so the Franciscan idea of poverty is sort of to have nothing on earth which is a very beautiful thing of a heretical choice the Benedictine idea is more to have everything but to consecrate it to God to have orchards that have fields that have buildings but for God not for us each monk is totally poor doesn't own anything but we have this sort of elaborate spaces really though just to favor eyes a contemplative life and the peace and harmony our life the goal of the monks is to build a monastery that will last a thousand years in order to achieve this goal the monks hired architect Thomas Gordon Smith to design the monastery in a classical style the 24 million dollar project will include a large ab a shil jerk and a cloistered residence a fair portion of this project has already been realized in 2003 groundwork was laid for the crypt of the church the monks have been using this crypt for their liturgical functions in the few years following significant progress was made on the residence building in January 2008 after 9 years of living in sheds and barns on their ranch the monks were finally able to move in to their new residence so we're kind of attached it was a little bit sad to leave the first monastery because it was our first time here but it really was too small and lacking in that that type of structure that makes our our kind of separation from the world more tangible and we don't leave the world in a sense of leaving everyone behind we take everyone with us in our heart but we need to be a little bit separated from the busyness of the world in order to be contemplatives and that's what we have here when the Bishop of Tulsa came for the official blessing ceremony in April 2008 it was an emotional day for all involved this marked a milestone in the life of the monks at Clear Creek an event which would establish their stability in Oklahoma for years to come it was a joyful event it was a and it was an event that was looked forward to for a long long time and in the fact that the monks were able to raise the money to build this beautiful monastery is is amazing and it shows how much people really want to to make sure that they succeed the monastery is being built in a multi-phase process currently the Crypt of the future Church is complete as well as one wing of the residence which includes the kitchen refectory chapter room and parlors the next phase is to build the large of a shil Church the key feature of any Abbey or monastery is the church which serves as the central point of the community the final stage will complete the remaining portions of the residence we already need we're already packed we're going to start putting sheds out for some of the monks very soon probably so we really need another building living quarters building but we want to build the church first it's just that's the center of the life here as the Sun begins to set on the horizon the monks meet before dinner for Vespers after working and studying all afternoon the monks closed the day with this evening office the monks have made significant progress since they arrived on the banks of Clear Creek in 1999 their numbers have increased from nine monks to more than thirty-five they have moved from their modest ranch to the foundation of their monastery residence they continue to cultivate the spiritual soil on which they have set foot and as they look toward the future they are very hopeful the most important thing is to construct the community the living edifice the living stones - we hope to attain perhaps the number of 60 or 70 monks here I think the community will grow about 60 months you see it is so good the good balance for a community that's a good number we can have a you know a good choir and fully developed our little works whatever they are I mean everything we do carpenter shop metal works and everything but not too big we're still family you know everybody you can see father superior easily so and the idea being we'd 60 and we get to 70 we start another monastery it's a difficult life it's a life of great sacrifice it's the life of total commitment to prayer and work and and God only calls certain people to this way of life but it seems as though he's calling quite a few and they're listening and they're responding and when they visit the monastery and they see the monks who are there they see something they've never seen before they see a peace and a joy despite the difficult life of hard work silence and prayer they're filled with joy not what the world would expect but their lives are based on faith they're going to have an effect and influence on this country and on this diocese they already have and that that influence will continue I know here it is is quite new but we have to take his position from France and for our tradition but it's God's secret exactly what's going to happen the real story is the story of grace the vocations each human being each vocation is a little world in itself there's no telling what could happen we don't know but we know that if we follow the rule of Saint Benedict which is just a kind of monastic echo of the gospel well then good things will happen and that will be blessed you know we'll have the cross we expect the cross we've been perhaps too blessed so for I'm expecting expecting something it seems too easy in a way but we have worked very hard and we have had our crosses and expect that too and that's just part of the program you know so we're just ready for whatever God wants to send us you know as best we can what what's needed in America now is men and women are committed to prayer and it's not just for monks it's for all of us but we need monks to remind us that that's primary we feel that all Christians should be a little bit monk every every Catholic particular you know as a sense of the fullness of the doctrine should try to live a little bit like the monks and then the monks should do it completely it's just their their duty to to pray without ceasing complan is the final office of the day with this hour the monks bring their day to completion they offer Thanksgiving for the day and pray that they will be safeguarded through the night it was the monastic life that helped build Western civilization and so this monastic life is a necessary component of the restoration of Christian culture the life of the monks a clear Creek will have an impact on society the grace of God is at work in this life and it is this grace that will gradually change the world so that minds and hearts may be lifted so that fetters may be broken so that order may be restored so that in all things God may be glorified you Oh you you

Channel: EWTN

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Keywords: Living, Liturgy, Clear, Creek, Divine, Office, Gregorian, Chant, Latin, Mass, Traditional, Benedictine, Monks, Solesmes, Fontgombault, OSB, Catholic

Id: 0Rii92S_5Og

Length: 52min 30sec (3150 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 23 2010