The Desert will Flower

When people think about a vocation they are often struck by the array of different kinds of religious life that are to be found in the Church. It is not always easy to explain this great wealth of religious families and where the Redemptorists take their place. What makes a Redemptorist monastery? Where does it come from? What would I do there?  What do the members of a Redemptorist monastery aspire after?

There are basically two kinds of monasteries. To be simple, we could call them the ‘singing monastery’ and the ‘desert monastery.’ The singing monastery as is here implied,  places an emphasis on singing the Divine Office in the choir of their church. The desert monastery places its accent on the call to the desert and solitude for prayer alone with God. Technically the ancient religious life is divided into the cenobitical and eremitical life. The cenobitical is what we are calling the singing monastery. The eremitical is what we are calling the desert monastery.

The Singing Monastery

When most people think of a monastery they think of the singing monastery. Their idea is based on the most popular form of monastic life. It is also what they may have read of in books or visited,  where the Office is sung in Gregorian chant by the monks in the choir stalls. It would be fair to say that this is the common and classical idea of a monastery. In the East it goes back to St Basil the Great. In the West it goes back to St Benedict who told his monks to prefer nothing to the Divine Office. Thus the monks chant each of the seven Offices during the course of the day. Also, in the morning after the private Masses have been said there is a public Mass called the conventual Mass, which is usually sung, that is attended by all the members of the monastery too.  All these Offices, sung in beautiful chant, mean that the monks do spend a lot of time in the choir and preparing for choir. (The Cistercians never had cells at all and did everything together including sleeping in a dormitory; they were great monks and great saints but they never had any of the solitude of the desert monastery.) The singing monasteries are without doubt the Church’s greater monasteries. They have produced the greater portion of the white-robed army of martyrs, confessors, virgins and saints. As St Alphonsus has it, the Benedictine Order alone can claim 75 kings, queens and emperors in its ranks. It is the form of monastic life where the life in choir is preferred to the life in the cell.

The Desert Monastery

	Venerable Fr Paul Cafaro, C.SS.R.

The desert monastery is less known or understood. It cannot be compared to the glory of the singing monastery that has been the backbone of the Church for over 1500 years. The desert monastery occupies a smaller place in the religious life of the Church although it is in fact an older type of monastic life. Its origins go back to St Antony and the Desert Fathers of Egypt and Syria - the very first beginnings of religious life. The Church has always had desert monasteries. And while they are less well known, God still calls some souls to the desert: Camaldolese, Carthusians, Minims, Capuchins and Carmelites. The Redemptorists render humble thanks to God that, to some small degree, they are to be numbered among those desert souls.

A New Rule

Thus it was that in 1731 when God willed to found the Redemptorists, Our Lord personally intervened to provide the Redemptorists with the Rule they needed to fulfill their special vocation. This Rule, taking into account the labours of the Missions, assured that when the missionaries returned to their monastery they found true solitude. In this they imitated the Most Holy Redeemer of Whom it is said: “And having dismissed the multitudes He went up into a mountain alone to pray” [St Matthew XIV, 23]. The Rule established the Redemptorist monastery in the spirit of the Desert Fathers, just as in the Redemptorist himself according to St Alphonsus, there lies the Carthusian and the Apostle. This is seen in the way St Alphonsus described the virtues of his ideal Redemptorist, dearest son and Spiritual Director, the Venerable Father Paul Cafaro.

The Redemptorist Ideal in Venerable Paul Cafaro

Fr Paul’s “love for meditation caused him to love silence and solitude which are its inseparable companions. Even whilst he was a priest (before he entered the Redemptorists), he used to retire to remote and lonely places from time to time, to hold converse with God in meditation and penitential exercises. It was this which caused Don Paul to have such a predilection for our house at Iliceto, which is situated on one of the mountains of la Pouille. He used often to retire into a little grotto below the monastery, called the grotto of Bl. Felix, to meditate, or else he would plunge into the adjacent wood, where he felt as if he had met with a solitude like that of the first hermits. He thus expressed himself regarding it in a letter to a priest who was his great friend: ‘When I am in our new house of our Lady of Consolation at Iliceto,’ said he, ‘I feel as if I were enjoying the solitude possessed by the solitaries of Egypt. We retire here after the Missions which we give in winter and spring, and enjoy such tranquillity and solitude, and are so removed from the tumult of the world, that we never hear anything about what takes place in it. We live apart from all converse with men in the midst of a wood, where the air is pure and the view agreeable, so that it may really rival the cave of St Peter of Alcantara.’ This love of solitude caused him to take delight in studying the Lives of the Hermit Saints.”

St Alphonsus adds that Fr Paul set apart several hours a day to mental prayer and that he wished to prolong his meditations through the night but that the superiors would not permit him to do so. He remarks that besides these hours of mental prayer Fr Paul added more mental prayer whenever it was possible. “Besides this we used to often find him kneeling in his room engaged in meditation through the day, and it was also noticed that when he went out to walk in the wood, as he sometimes did, he retreated behind a tree and knelt down in prayer.”

In truth, this ideal Redemptorist, so loved and exalted by St Alphonsus, could be called both a missionary and a Father of the Desert.

This is the painting of the dead body of Alexander the Great which St Alphonsus had painted for the monastery refectory. Like the Desert Fathers, the Redemptorists are called to meditate on the Eternal Truths in their monasteries in order to preach them in their Missions. Of Venerable Fr Cafaro St Alphonsus writes: “‘O Death! O Eternity!’ were words which were continually on the lips of this Servant of God, whether he were alone or with others. He often spoke saying, ‘Earthly things will soon be at an end but eternity will never end. Let us remember that it is better for us to be one of God’s meanest servants, than to possess the most exalted worldly dignity. Think what on your death-bed you would wish to have done during life.’”

The Desert Monastery of the Redemptorist

In the Redemptorist’s desert monastery the life is such that for most of the morning, after Meditation, Mass and Thanksgiving until a few minutes before dinner the Redemptorist is in his cell. Twenty minutes before dinner he assembles with his brethren for the Particular Examen and the recitation of Our Lady’s Litany; then dinner is taken in silence while a spiritual book is read from the pulpit. Common recreation follows for an hour, when all may talk. He then retires to his cell again at which time begins the Little Silence in memory of the three hours that Our Lord hung upon the Cross. Whereas the morning found him alone in his cell mostly at work among his books, the afternoon finds him mostly engaged in spiritual exercises: the spiritual reading, Mental Prayer and the Divine Office. At some time in the afternoon he slips out of his cell to visit Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament in the church before regaining his solitude again. The next time he leaves his room is for the meditation on Our Lord’s Passion which is made in the church  for half an hour before supper, which is again taken in silence. The evening recreation by the Rule is for spiritual conversation which is usually based on the spiritual reading that has been done that day. At the close of recreation Night Prayers are said in the church which are followed by the Great Silence during which no one may speak until after the Mental Prayer on the following day.

This is the form of the desert monastery as laid down in the Rule of the Most Holy Redeemer. From the above description it can be seen how greatly the cell predominates over the choir: there is no mid-morning assembly of the community for the sung conventual Mass. Usually, the Divine Office is recited in the solitude of the cell or alone in the church unless there are more than six priests present in the monastery. When these six priests come together for the Choir Office, the Rule forbids them to chant, except on the 16 greatest feast of the year; and even more, the recited Offices are grouped together so that the time in the cell is not interrupted. Each month, the day of retreat is kept in total silence and every year the annual retreat is not preached but is made in solitude with a book.

Our bishops often retained their Redemptorist habit after their consecration. St Alphonsus, with his plain dress and his rosary hanging from his cincture had nothing in common with the large number of prelates who, in his day, drew attention by their rich and elegant style of dress. “By continuing to wear the habit of your Congregation,” a high dignitary remarked to the saint one day, “you give an example which edifies the whole of Rome.”

Prayer, Vocal Prayer and Ejaculatory Prayer

The Redemptorist monastery is a desert monastery that places its emphasis on prayer, vocal prayer and ejaculatory prayer. Perhaps Redemtorists have the only Rule in the Church that directs its members to the use of ejaculatory prayer, the prayer so favoured by and associated with the Fathers of the Desert. Redemptorists practise this form of prayer with great earnestness, often using their rosary beads to help them make the short invocations. St Alphonsus has sometimes been called the ‘apostle of ejaculatory prayer.’ Venerable Fr Ceasar Sportelli, one of the first companions of St Alphonsus, was so habituated to ejaculatory prayer that he was heard to make these prayers even when he was asleep; and Venerable Father Passerat in his old age could be heart to repeat his ejaculatory prayers even in the course of his conversations. He had the permanent impression of a rosary bead in his thumb as a result of the millions of ejaculatory prayers he made during the course of his life.

Venerable Fr Caesar Sportelli

The Redemptorists, following the Fathers of the Desert, are great lovers of ejaculatory prayer. Perhaps this does not seem to some to be a very high form of prayer. The aforementioned Father Caesar Sportelli, the zealous Mission preacher and active apostle, attained a very high degree of holiness with his ejaculatory prayers. Although he tried to hide the favours God bestowed upon him he was not always successful. On one occasion he was going to preach at Caposele, where the Mission was being given, and when the serving brother went to his cell to call him, he found him suspended several inches in the air, and the whole room was filled with a dazzling brightness. It is said that his sermon that day produced extraordinary fruit. This venerable son of St Alphonsus died at the early age of 49 years. Three years and seven months after his death his body was exhumed before the witnesses of a bishop and an abbot. “How great was the astonishment of all when we saw that although all his garments were decayed and almost consumed, yet his body was as entire, flexible, and beautiful, as on the day of his death, and that it also exhaled a sweet fragrance. Our surprise was greatly increased when we saw that his intestines had not become corrupt, and that his stomach had preserved its elasticity. He was bled, and for the further glory of His servant, God permitted bright blood to gush forth after the incision,” says the eyewitness, Fr Lande.

Papa Stronsay

The monastery that is being built on Papa Stronsay has its ideal in the monastery so loved by St Alphonsus at Ciorani or by Venerable Fr Cafaro at Iliceto. Of course it has not yet attained this goal. As a foundation  monastery there are still many disruptions to be expected and the workload is heavier than would normally be the case. We are grateful that our Rule gives us every Thursday and certain feast days as days of recreation when talking is permitted during the course of the day. These maintain the close knit union that has always characterised the Redemptorists. However it is necessary to point out to the many people who think that they may have a Redemptorist vocation, that the Redemptorist monastery is a desert monastery. For those whom God calls to save souls and live away from the world, this vocation is such a grace that you will never find enough time on earth to sufficiently thank God for having given it to you. †