The Waters of Siloe

by Thomas Merton

  It is a long time since these books, once so popular, have been read even by Trappists, and the reason is not far to seek, for they are extremely gloomy. These grim ascetics pass across the scene, one after the other, all looking alike, speaking alike, fasting alike, mourning alike, and dying alike. They are stiff, frozen-faced creatures, and if they have any expression, it is one of earnest and emaciated scrupulosity. They are obsessed by one idea: they have come to the monastery to die, and they must be about their business as quickly as possible. Therefore, they overwork and underfeed themselves, and their abbot permits them to do it; he feels that self-chosen austerities are the very essence of the monastic life and that, if they are inspired to ruin their health, they must be allowed to do so because it will make saints of them.

  The reformer of La Trappe defended his views on this point quite explicitly. He asserted that, in his opinion, the monastic life by its very nature was supposed to be unhealthy, and that extraordinary penances were essential to the monk’s vocation. These are his words:

  This truth [that it is permitted to undertake austerities which attack the health and shorten life] can be remarked in all monastic observances since the holiest and most renowned of them contain in their institution . . . rigors and burdens and penitential practices so severe that it is scarcely possible to observe them for long with exactitude and conserve one’s life and health.6

  Even St. Benedict’s famous discretion does not deter the abbot of La Trappe from trying to prove that the Rule of the patriarch of monks is also ordered to this same end: to sanctify monks by destroying their bodily life.

  He cites as an “assured proof” of his contention such interior exercises as meditation on death and hell; the prohibition of jokes and of words that provoke laughter, and the preservation of silence, which he thought St. Benedict had prescribed as “perpetual.” He sums up all these mortifications with the statement that a Benedictine monk’s time “is so filled with regular occupations and exercises that he does not have a single moment for any recreation or relaxation of mind.”

  This way of life, he tells us, was destined to bring men to an early grave. This is his conclusion:

  No one can fail to agree that a life so painful and laborious can hardly last long and that nature, crushed by this series of interior and exterior mortifications, must be constrained to succumb in a short time.7

  St. Benedict realized he was writing a much easier rule than had been followed by the monks of Greece and Egypt. His constant concern was to temper all things so that the weak would not be discouraged and the strong would be stimulated to do more. Also, he made careful provision for the care of the sick and the aged and the little children. He would have been surprised at the Abbé de Rancé’s interpretation of his aims.

  Another aspect of De Rancé’s emphasis on externals was the great importance he attached to mortifications that seem trivial, at least on paper. Not content with the traditional modesty of the eyes, he describes a trait in one of his monks for which he might well have coined the term “modesty of the feet”:

  He [Brother Dositheus Leroy] made use of his feet with the same restraint and the same reserve as his hands and his eyes; he went nowhere except precisely where he was supposed to go; his gait was neither too slow nor too fast; one could notice in it neither languor nor levity, in such wise that he gave evidence of a modesty that edified all.8

  After the restoration of La Trappe by Dom Augustin, various picayune mortifications were detailed in the Postulants’ guide. Among the terrific vigils and fasts of La Val Sainte we find this:

  You will be very hot in summer without being allowed, at least in public, to wipe the sweat from your brow with a handkerchief; you will only be allowed to turn the drops aside with your finger to keep them from rolling into your eyes and impeding your vision. . . . You will never be allowed to lean against the wall when sitting down, no matter how tired you may be . . .9

  The story is told that Father Benedict, the author of the old Spiritual Directory, and a Trappist of the same stamp, had gone from France to England and was planning to settle down at Mount St. Bernard. While he was standing in choir, he saw one of the monks raise his hand and chase a fly from the top of his shaven crown. Father Benedict realized at once that a monastery where men were so dissolute as to swat flies was no place for him. So he hastened to Gethsemani, then under the iron rule of Dom Benedict Berger and swarming with the most persistent flies in the world.

  However, we must guard against taking the writings of De Rancé and the spirit of his generation too literally. The reformer of La Trappe was never the inhuman creature that his own rhetoric sometimes makes him seem. We must remember that tears and lamentations were already coming to be something of a literary fashion even in the Grand Siècle, and the Relations of La Trappe have a certain affinity with the graveyard literature that was to prepare the way for romanticism in England, Germany, and France. Yet the abbot of La Trappe was not really morose. On the contrary, the famous portrait of him by Hyacinthe Rigaud shows Armand de Rancé to have been a sprightly and vivacious little monk whose face could light up with an expression of happy candor. His monks all had a great affection for their father abbot, and the atmosphere of La Trappe, in spite of the lugubrious competitions in penance that occupied the minds of the religious, still had the warm congeniality of a very happy family. In fact, people who visited the place were often amazed by the cheerfulness of these penitents. It is even said10 that De Rancé once officially urged his monks to be cheerful and to cultivate smiles. And although the Trappists of the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries did not have all the warmth of the devotion to Christ and His Virgin Mother that was so characteristic of the Golden Age, yet it was La Trappe that started the charming custom, which still prevails, allowing every monk and brother to add the name of Mary to the particular name he takes in religion. The Trappist is never merely “Father Moses” or “Brother Macarius,” he is “Father Mary Moses,” or “Brother Mary Macarius.” It is a gesture of ingenuous homage to the Queen of Heaven. The Trappists have never omitted her Little Office, and say a special Mass in her honor every day of the year except Good Friday. The Rosary has become one of the unwritten essentials of Cistercian life.

  It is characteristic of Cistercian monks in all times to be filled with a deep peace, on whose tide they are carried above suffering, even though sickness and trials may bear down tremendously upon their bodies and souls. They achieve a heroism which is not the indifference of a stoic or the insensibility of a yogi, but the fortitude born of supernatural love. It is something infused by the Spirit of God: it is beyond the reach of human nature alone. It brings with it a deep simplicity and humility.

  In the last fifty years there have appeared many scattered biographies of Trappist monks and lay brothers who lived out their vocations with the enthusiastic generosity which makes men saints. In those pages—most of the books are little known and long since out of print—we can see the real effect of De Rancé’s reform without having to make allowances for the exaggerated style of De Rancé’s own writings. Looking at the Trappist life through other eyes than those of the reformer himself, we are able more clearly to discern the true Trappist character.

  The Trappist tree is recognized by its good fruits: these are the monks and brothers who have come to the monastery because they love God and trust Him to lead them—through the Rule of St. Benedict and the guidance of other men—to Himself. They do not insist on any peculiar program of prayers or penances either for themselves or for others. They love the Rule, they accept its hardships, they fast and work and do what they are told, they pray, they read and meditate, according to the grace God gives them, and gradually, imperceptibly, the hidden power of God takes hold upon them. Through the simplicity of the Rule, the harmony of the seasons, the liturgy, the action of the Sacraments, and the graces of prayer and sacrifice, they become true Cistercians. They do not, perhaps, realize it themselves: they have lost all but the last trace
of self-consciousness. They do not regard themselves as great ascetics; they merely “keep the Rule.” They have their work and their prayer and their books to keep their minds occupied; but in and through these things, in the garden and the barns, in the woods and the fields, they are united to God—just as much as they are in church or cloister. They do not lose His presence. It envelops them in a cloud of peace. That presence is the source of an immense and constant, though intangible, strength; it is the source of light, knowledge, understanding, and counsel when they need it most.

  These Trappists are humble in the truest sense: they have forgotten themselves. The secret of their humility and peace is obedience. They have had the courage to give up their own wills and their own way of doing things, and they let the details of their lives be determined by their Rule and their superiors. In return, God has made them free. Their freedom consists not so much in liberty to choose between things as in a deliverance from the necessity of such choice. They are no longer concerned with the innumerable dilemmas of sense and appetite. They are free to taste joy and rest in God, Who is the source of all the good things that appeal to sense and appetite. Instead of dividing its energies among a million reflections of the goodness of God, the soul retains and intensifies all its vitality by concentrating itself in one act of love, which possesses all created goods in their source.

  Yet, these Trappists are busy men. They have much to do. The holiest monks and brothers quite often are those who have the hardest and most responsible positions in the community. The reason is that these posts demand a more complete obedience to the first superior and exact a more uncompromising sacrifice of one’s own will. Then, too, the difficult business of accommodating oneself to the needs of a family of a hundred or more brothers has its humiliations, and it demands more than ordinary patience and kindness and tact. No one can be a good cellarer or a good novice master or a good prior or a good infirmarían unless he really loves the men he has to look after.

  There is, perhaps, no such thing as a typical Trappist, in reality. But it is easy enough to sketch two or three who have come close enough to an imaginary type. Some were more evidently “saints” (in a human sense, at least) than the others. Perhaps one or two were “characters” rather than saints. But all of them represent Trappist life as it is, or as it was in the last century. All of them bear witness to the deep vitality of De Rancé’s reform.

  Dom François d’Assise, one of the early abbots of Port du Salut,11 is much more like a figure in the Fioretti than a character in De Rancé’s Relations. Perhaps this abbot’s patron saint had obtained for him a liberal endowment in the same spirit of simplicity and joy which was his own. At any rate, the semi-legendary stories that have come down to us about the abbot of Port du Salut have a distinctly Franciscan flavor about them. There even exists a long, mock-heroic poem from the hand of some Trappist or Trappistine 12 commemorating the day when Dom François commanded some swallows and was obeyed.

  It seems that there were hundreds of swallows nesting under the eaves of the church and chapter room and all around the cloisters of Port du Salut. Besides the many other inconveniences they caused, the birds used to disturb the meditations of the monks and Dom François’s own addresses to them in chapter, by their incessant twittering. One day the abbot was trying to give his daily explanation of the Rule and was not making much headway against the competition of the swallows. Finally, he turned to the open window and raised his voice and exclaimed:

  “Now listen to me, you swallows! Stop all that noise at once. Get away from here and don’t come back. In future I forbid you to build any nests in this part of the monastery. Keep to the outhouses and barns.”

  It is asserted that, since that day, the swallows have been content to nest in the barns and outhouses of Port du Salut and never come near the cloister or the church. . . .

  The story is not presented as an article of theological faith. It makes no difference whether you believe it or not. The thing that matters is that such a story exists—and is a definite contrast to anything found in De Rancé’s Relations.

  Another and even stranger tale is told of Dom François d’Assise. He is supposed to have carried on a long correspondence with a Protestant lady in America whom he converted to the Catholic faith. There is nothing so strange about that. What is peculiar is the way the letters are supposed to have been delivered. The postal service was too slow for the zeal of this fervent abbot. So, when his letters were written and sealed, he placed them inside the Tabernacle of the high altar in the abbey church. When he went back a few days later, he would find a reply from his penitent across the Atlantic. . . . Even the credulity of his most devoted clients seems to have hesitated at this tale, however. In the manuscript in which it is recorded we find a marginal note in a firm Trappistine hand: Il faut passer toute cette histoire des lettres (“Skip all this business about the letters”).

  Feeling that these words were left as a directive for readers in convent refectories, we have been bold enough to disobey them, and once again it is in order to draw attention to the fact that such a story could exist.

  Dom François passed out of the world and went to his reward with all the humility and compunction of a true Trappist—but also not without a certain sardonic humor. He left detailed instructions as to what was to be done with him. He insisted on being buried in the habit of a lay brother, in the part of the cemetery allotted to the lay brothers, and not in the manner prescribed for priests. He asked that there be no mound on his grave: he wanted people to be able to walk over it without inconvenience. His epitaph was to be the sentence: Domine miserere super peccatore qui pertransiit male-faciendo (“Lord, have mercy on this sinner who went around doing evil”). He thanked all the monks and brothers for having put up with him for so long and assured them that they had thereby earned a huge reward for themselves in heaven.

  In the middle of the last century there was a brother blacksmith at the abbey of Bricquebec in Normandy. He was called Brother Abel. A powerful, bearded man, he was one of the best blacksmiths in the district. But above all, he was a real Trappist. The novices who were sent to him to be trained at shoeing horses had to be content with absolute silence. Ordinarily, in a case like that, permission to talk was allowed, but Brother Abel believed in the rule of silence, and the novices had to do their best to pick up his system of signs.

  He worked with a rosary in one hand and a hammer in the other. When the iron was in the fire, the beads would run through his blackened fingers as he prayed to the Mother of God.

  He was a man of deep prayer, this blacksmith. Vocal prayer was only a stopgap. He was happiest when the bell for the end of work called him back from the smithy to the monastery. There, he would wash up and swing his brown cloak over his shoulders and go to kneel down in the quiet church. He would turn his swarthy, bearded face toward the tabernacle and sink into a deep absorption that held him there, motionless, during practically all of his free time. This muscular and practical man, skilled in his craft and one of the best workers in the monastery, had the gift of deep contemplation. His abbot knew it and appreciated it and even allowed him to take three quarters of an hour from his work each day and devote the time to prayer.

  When Brother Abel grew old and fell sick and had to lay down his hammer, he was sent to the infirmary. He would get up about four o’clock each morning and pray by his bed before going to hear Mass in the infirmary chapel. One day, one of the brothers noticed that he did not come to the chapel, and he went to see what was wrong. Brother Abel was kneeling by his bed as usual. But he was dead. He had died in the middle of his prayer. It was November 13, 1879, the feast of all the saints of the Order.

  About that time there were two old monks in the infirmary at Bricquebec whose devoted companionship was typical of Cistercian simplicity. One of them, Father Stephen Hurel, had gone stone blind from getting lime in his eyes while mixing fertilizer in the fields. He was completely helpless. He depended for practically everything upon F
ather Paul Enée, who was crippled and could get around only with the aid of a couple of walking sticks. The two monks spent their days together, taking care of each other in every way. They teamed up for all the usual spiritual exercises, and their spiritual reading was also a communal affair. Father Paul read aloud for both of them. During the War of 1870 they said many extra rosaries together for peace.

  Occasionally they could be seen together in the monastery, coming slowly along the cloister on their way to the community chapter or to their father abbot’s room. Father Paid would lead the way, shuffling along gravely with his two canes. His companion would be in tow, clinging to the ample sleeve of Father Paul’s cowl.

  For all De Rancé’s truculent insistence that the Rule opened the way to an early death, one of the most familiar and characteristic Trappist “types” is that of the ancient priest or lay brother who has long since celebrated the jubilee of his entrance into the novitiate. He is far too weak to follow the community in its various functions, but he refuses to be confined entirely to the infirmary. With pathetic insistence, he pleads for permission to struggle down to choir and stand in his old stall, at least for the conventual Mass. Or if he can no longer make the bows and go down on his knees, and if it wears him out just to stand there trying to sing, he can at least sit in the choir of the infirm. Perhaps he is so far gone that he comes down in a wheel chair, and then only on the very great feasts. When the monks file out into the cloister behind the acolytes and the torchbearers and the deacon with the cross and the thurifer with his fuming censer, all singing the first responsory for a solemn procession, there will be the old father, hiding around a corner in his wheel chair, blinking at the young monks and realizing that there are faces among them which he has never before seen.