by Albert Holtz
THE WAYMAKER: GRADUATION
It usually takes a lot of patient looking and interpreting to see God at work in your life. On the other hand, every now and then the Waymaker goes public, working such wonders that no one can miss the point: This has to be the work of the Lord’s “mighty hand and outstretched arm.” Take for example the history of Newark Abbey since 1972.
It is Graduation Day, 1994. In the crowded school auditorium several of the graduates suddenly jump to their feet singing and clapping in time to the music, as the school’s Gospel Choir sings what has become our second alma mater:
We’ve come this far by faith,
Leanin’ on the Lord,
Trustin’ in his holy word.
He’s never failed me yet.
That’s why I’m singin’, Oh …
Can’t turn around,
We’ve come this far by faith …
Soon all ninety-five members of the senior class are standing in their places in the front rows. They’re an unlikely mixture: most are African-American, some are European-American, and others are natives of Nigeria, Bolivia, or the Caribbean. A few take some tentative steps into the aisles, and before long the whole senior class has formed a spontaneous parade, clapping and singing their way up onto the stage. One after the other, Abbot Melvin, Fr. Edwin, and the other dignitaries disappear behind a wall of maroon caps and gowns.
The parents and guests, many of whom have been singing along with the choir, catch the spirit and rise to their feet. When the seniors have filled the last inch of space on the stage, the rest spill into the area on the floor in front of it, facing the audience. A soloist’s voice booms out confidently:
Don’t be discouraged when trouble enters your life,
for He will bear all your burdens
and remove all misery and strife.
That’s why …
We’ve come this far by faith,
Leanin’ on the Lord …
Out in the crowd I notice an elderly gentleman waving to someone up on the stage. It’s very possible that this will be the first of his grandchildren to go to college. A Portuguese couple crane their necks to see their son up on the stage. I know that they don’t understand a single word of the song, but their smiles show that they’re catching the enthusiasm just the same.
All of a sudden I’m at another graduation ceremony in this same auditorium twenty-two years ago.…
The young men of the class of 1972, almost all of whom are White, are sitting quietly in the front few rows in their maroon caps and gowns. We are all—graduates, faculty, and parents—somber and subdued, painfully aware that this will be the last class ever to graduate from St. Benedict’s Prep. We are watching the 104-year-old school gasp out its last few breaths. For the past several years the flight to the suburbs and the general dissatisfaction with Catholic education have meant a declining enrollment. This, coupled with the lack of new vocations to the monastery, has caused the school to start losing money. The changing racial make-up of the city has begun bringing a new group of students to our doors, causing some disagreement among the monks as to how to deal with the challenge. This combination of problems has proven too much for the school. A few months ago the headmaster announced that St. Benedict’s Prep would be closing its doors for good as of June.
Now the time has come. As Dean of Studies I am sitting on the stage, numb with shock and grief, presiding at the funeral. When I was a sophomore at St. Benedict’s I decided that I wanted to become a Benedictine and spend my life working here; and now, three years after I started teaching, everything is finished: no dreams, no future. Waves of pain keep washing over me as I call out each senior’s name. During the graduation speeches and a touching presentation from the senior class president of our rival school, Seton Hall Prep, I keep wishing the ceremony would just hurry up and end.
The soloist’s voice snaps me back to the mid-nineties. Behind the rows just emptied by the seniors, the faculty members stand in their academic gowns and hoods: Benedictine monks and lay people, men and women, African-American, White and Latino, old and young, many of them alumni themselves. Some of them, too, are clapping in time to the music. Everyone seems to realize that something very special is happening here this evening. The voice booms from the speakers,
Just the other day I heard a man say
That he didn’t believe in God’s Word.
But I can truly say my God has made a way,
He’s never failed me yet …
As the soloist sings “my God has made a way,” the words send my memory back again across the twenty-two years.…
In that June of 1972, St. Benedict’s Prep did indeed close its doors—presumably forever. Almost half of the monks moved to other monasteries right after graduation, leaving the rest of us wandering in a daze. That summer those of us who were left started having meetings twice a week to discuss everything from the role of an abbot and the kinds of work appropriate for monks, to how we could cut expenses—and what we should do next.
As the meetings continued into the fall, we looked at various possibilities for some sort of a common work, such as a retreat house or Newman chaplaincies. Right from the start, one option stood out above the rest. We had a trained faculty, completely equipped science labs, a fine library and an excellent auditorium, and most important, we had young men in our neighborhood who needed a quality education. So by November we decided to open some sort of small high school for boys. On July 1, 1973, after months of planning and working and worrying, we began a school in the buildings of the former St. Benedict’s Prep, with about ninety students (most of them minority kids from the city), twelve monks, one lay teacher, and not a clue as to how we were going to survive.
Over the following months and years, however, God kept opening a way for us. Somehow, whenever there was a crucial choice to be made we wound up making the right one, whether in selecting a headmaster for a school that didn’t exist yet, or electing a new abbot the day before the first September classes began. Our alumni started to give much-needed support, and, one by one, new benefactors stepped forward, with gifts now totaling millions of dollars. Lay men and women have come to join us on the faculty, some for a year or two, and others for decades of loving service. Today we have well over five hundred students in grades seven through twelve.
In 1972 it was difficult to see how the Lord could possibly bring any good out of the tragic events that were changing our lives so drastically. Unable to see into the murky future, we had to operate on blind faith in God’s goodness. The main lesson we learned over the next decades was probably this: The Waymaker specializes in hopeless situations. Now whenever our little community finds itself faced with a problem and there seems to be no way out, I remember the gloom and grief we shared in June of 1972 and figure, “Compared to what God brought us through back then, this problem’s hardly worth worrying about.”
The song ends in an uproar of cheering and applause. The sense of joy has spilled out into the lobby and probably down onto the sidewalk where even more folks are crowded around the front door hoping to get in. Over the past few years, the graduation ceremony at St. Benedict’s Prep has become, like the school itself, a celebration of pride and hope for the people of our city.
The graduates and choir members file back to their seats. From down on the floor by the piano, where I’ve been helping with the choir, I return to my place on the stage. As I arrive back at my chair, the piano takes up the song again, and we all sing the chorus one last time: “We’ve come this far by faith, leaning on the Lord!” Filled with a sense of pride and thankfulness, I squint into the bright stage lights and pick out the faces of Fr. Boniface and Fr. Theodore, a couple of veteran faculty members. We have met God the Waymaker face-to-face, the One who searched us out in this monastery in the middle of Newark and keeps working wonders for us and through us “with mighty hand and outstretched arm.”
My voice is one of the loudest:
He’s never failed me yet.
Oh! Can’t turn around,
We’ve come this far by faith!
SCRIPTURAL REFLECTION
Exodus 14:10–31 tells the story of the Israelites’ escape from Egypt. It includes this famous scene:
Then the Lord said to Moses, “Stretch out your hand over the sea, so that the water may come back upon the Egyptians, upon their chariots and chariot drivers.” So Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and at dawn the sea returned to its normal depth. As the Egyptians fled before it, the Lord tossed the Egyptians into the sea. The waters returned and covered the chariots and the chariot drivers, the entire army of Pharaoh that had followed them into the sea; not one of them remained. But the Israelites walked on dry ground through the sea, the waters forming a wall for them on their right and on their left. Thus the Lord saved Israel that day from the Egyptians.… (vv. 26–30)
How have you experienced God as Waymaker in your life, whether in the distant past or recently? Did this experience change you? If so, how?
Where are you right now in your own salvation history? In the bondage of Egypt? In a time of wandering in the Wilderness? Perhaps you’re feeling the exhilaration of being delivered from some danger or captivity. Take a moment to bring these reflections to God in prayer.
RULE OF BENEDICT
“And finally, never lose hope in God’s mercy.” (Chapter 4, “The Tools for Good Works,” v. 74)
HOSPITALITY: FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL
“My name is Arthur.1 I live in Newark, New Jersey,” begins a small, quiet youngster. The boy next to him looks to make sure Arthur is finished, and then introduces himself in a confident voice:
“I’m Reggie. I like basketball and girls. I come from East Orange.”
I smile. I lived in East Orange myself when I was a student here.
It’s July 2, 1973. We’re going around the English classroom introducing ourselves on the first day of school.
Educating young people has always been part of the Benedictine monastic tradition of hospitality. For years I used to say to my students on the first day of classes, “I live here. My brother monks and I have invited you into our home. So remember that, and please don’t throw your candy wrappers on the floor.”
I couldn’t say it last year, because our school was closed. We’ve spent the past thirteen months praying, searching our hearts, and finally planning a new, smaller school. Yesterday we had a ceremony in the auditorium to mark the reopening of St. Benedict’s Prep with eighty-seven students. This morning, school is in session once again, as if its pulse had skipped a beat for a year and then kept right on going, just as it’s been since 1868. It feels wonderful!
Since the fourth century, monasteries have been welcoming Christ in the person of the wayfarer, the pilgrim, and the poor. Benedict devotes a whole chapter of his Rule for Monks to “The Reception of Guests.” It begins this way:
All guests who present themselves are to be welcomed as Christ, for he himself will say: I was a stranger and you welcomed me. Proper honor must be shown to all, especially to those who share our faith, and to pilgrims. (Ch. 53)
Teenage boys haven’t really changed much, I say to myself, as I look at the twelve freshmen in front of me and remember the first day of my own freshman year at St. Benedict’s. These kids are probably as excited and scared as I was, wondering what to expect. Suddenly I’m staring at Arthur’s head in surprise, trying to figure out what I’m seeing. Then I realize that he has a ballpoint pen and a newly sharpened pencil poking out of his towering afro, ready for immediate use.
As I look into their faces, a doubt starts to form in my mind: Most of these kids, after all, are African-American and from the city. They don’t speak the way I do; they come from a whole different set of life experiences. I don’t know these kids at all, I decide, and I’m not sure how to deal with them. For example, shouldn’t I tell that student over there to take his hat off? Or is that part of his culture? I don’t want to impose my white cultural values on him, right? I swallow uncomfortably, trying to make up my mind on that one. This, I realize with a jolt, is going to be a new experience for me. For the first time, hospitality has become a challenge, an exercise in risk-taking.
It’s easy enough to welcome familiar people who look like me and who see the world the way I do. Knowing pretty much how they think and feel, I have always been able to greet guests with open arms. Now, however, I’m being challenged to be open and receptive to young men who are unfamiliar, foreign. All of a sudden I feel the deep inner meaning of hospitality, and it’s starting to stretch me.
“My name is Michael. I like the New York Knicks. Oh—and food!” Everybody cracks up at this afterthought since Michael must weigh 240 pounds.
You don’t get to pick and choose when and how and where you will meet God. You have to be ready to greet the Lord in everything and everyone, especially the new, the unexpected, the unsettling, and the alien. Benedict tells us to receive the stranger as we would Christ himself. He knows that hospitality as openness of heart and mind is essential to the Christian spiritual life: You have to be ready to receive Christ into your life even when he shows up in the unfamiliar, the foreigner, or the stranger. To put it another way, you can never hope to really meet God face to face if you deal only with the safe, consoling, familiar circle of your previous experience.
“My name Robert, and I’m what’s happenin’!” He’s the one wearing a hat.
“Robert,” I say softly, “Please take your hat off in the classroom.”
“Oh!” He immediately whips off the blue Mets cap and puts it in front of him on the desk. No problem. Maybe this won’t be quite as bad as I think.
Christians are called to leave ourselves open to the working of the Spirit with no restrictions. In fact, both sacred scripture and human experience show that it is precisely in the new, the unsettling, and the spiritually challenging that we are most likely to find the God we seek.
I confess that I’m not one who thrives on newness, spontaneity, or excitement. If it were up to me, I’d rather meet the Divine inside the narrow, predictable realm of what I can control and understand. The monastic life would be a stable, reassuring routine, where God would be a familiar guest whose presence I could just take for granted. To be honest, after thirteen months of shattered dreams, sleepless nights, and blind leaps into the future, I could do without all this stretching stuff this morning, thank you!
The room is suddenly quiet. The students are all staring at me expectantly. It takes a moment before it registers: They’re waiting for me to introduce myself. Here goes.…
“Well, I guess you know I’m Father Albert. I went to St. Benedict’s myself back in the Middle Ages. I live here. My brother monks and I have invited you into our home. So remember that, and please don’t throw your candy wrappers on the floor.”
SCRIPTURAL REFLECTION
In Genesis 18:1–8, Abram welcomes the strange divine visitors into his tent. The story begins:
The Lord appeared to Abraham by the oaks of Mamre, as he sat at the entrance of his tent in the heat of the day. He looked up and saw three men standing near him. When he saw them, he ran from the tent entrance to meet them, and bowed down to the ground. He said, “My Lord, if I find favor with you, do not pass by your servant. Let a little water be brought, and wash your feet, and rest yourselves under the tree. Let me bring a little bread, that you may refresh yourselves, and after that you may pass on—since you have come to your servant.” So they said, “Do as you have said.” (vv. 1–5)
Is there a situation in your life right now that is challenging you to “stretch,” to welcome a situation or person that is new, alien, or perhaps threatening? What makes it hard for you to stretch? Can you think of some possible benefits to yourself that God may have in mind by asking you to welcome this new experience?
Consider the practical ways in which God may be calling you to offer hospitality to those around you. Perhaps there are ways you could make your home available as a place of re
freshment. Or maybe there are other ways you could offer a welcome to “strangers.”
RULE OF BENEDICT
“All guests who present themselves are to be welcomed as Christ.” (Chapter 53, “The Reception of Guests,” v. 1)
1. The students and neighbors portrayed in this book are real people, but their names have been changed.
GETTING IT RIGHT: BROTHER DENIS
Today is the anniversary of the death of Br. Denis Robertson who died on this date in 1990 at the age of 80.
Br. Gereon, the table reader for the week, has just finished the day’s chapter from the Rule of St. Benedict, and as I start eating my salad, he begins a commemoration from our community’s necrology for today, December 20. He continues,
He was born in 1910, the youngest of eleven children. A fellow worker’s faith so impressed him that he took instructions and became a Catholic in 1932. He entered the Abbey in September, 1934. Abbot Ernest’s assessment of the lay brother candidate was: “He’s too skinny—he’ll never make it!”—which became more and more amusing with the passage of the decades.
I picture Br. Denis carrying a pile of test papers he has just mimeographed for someone, smiling his warm smile and greeting me with a cheerful “Hi!”
Punctuality, fidelity to monastic routine, and joyful service to others were his outstanding traits.
These were more than just his outstanding traits—they were the reason he could live such a joyful and peaceful life for eighty years.
An early riser, he would have coffee ready by 5:00 a.m. Then, after watering his plants, which were everywhere, he would sit in church before morning prayer, presenting to the Lord the long list of people he had promised to pray for. If something was lost, he would promise prayers to St. Anthony and would smile with delight upon learning that the Saint had come through once again.
