Next week Belmont Abbey College will celebrate not only our Founders’ Day but also the beginning of our 150th Anniversary year! Those of us on campus are preparing for a day of joyful community: with Solemn Vespers and a festive gathering of monks, faculty, staff, and students, complete with beer and pretzels in honor of our founders’ German heritage!
There’s a profound comfort in thinking about those first monks and tracing the unbroken continuity of prayer and work over the past century and a half – a continuity which also participates in the 1500 year Benedictine tradition. I don’t mean that the idea itself is “comfortable” in the way we usually use the word. But it goes straight to the root sense of “comfort” from the Latin “fortis,” meaning “strong.” The joyful reality of these faithful lives strengthens us when we bring it to mind. It is a galvanizing call.
I’m grateful for the witness of this monastic community, its life continuing in quiet trust and stewardship. But I have to be careful, in acknowledging this truth, not to obscure something else, just as wonderful and necessary…
Among a host of documents, photographs, paintings, and other artifacts, I recently learned that the Abbey archives contain the handwritten vows of every monk of Belmont Abbey, going back to its very beginning. Each man who came here to vow stability, fidelity to the monastic life, and obedience under the Rule of St. Benedict, has left the personal record of these commitments in the particular character of his hand.
Sometimes there’s a temptation, when I think about the Church’s continuity, or monastic communities’ ongoing lives as institutions, to diffuse a sense of the personal or individual. And in a way, this is appropriate. It reflects a part of the paradox of our human vocation: that we are called to die to self in order to live, giving up our own self-regard and pouring ourselves into the love of God and the good of others before we can become fully and authentically ourselves.
But the other side of this unity is the symphonic variety of our lives within it, a variety by which we encounter and access tradition, community, and eternal truth. The Way, the Truth, and the Life is a person, after all, and it is always through some particular person or persons that we come to know and love what is true, good, and beautiful. In a way, Truth always has a face.
This is why I’m grateful to know that the rooms holding Belmont Abbey’s collective memory include not only the reminders of those unchanging and faithful vows in which each new monk participates – but also the distinctive character of each hand, as an expression of the way these men committed their particular gifts, histories, and personalities to loving and serving God.
From across our history, we remember Br. Gilbert, the boatwright who designed the basilica ceiling; Fr. Hintemeyer, with his genius for lifting up others and promoting the Abbey; Fr. Pascal, the historian, playwright, and archivist; Fr. John Oetgen, Director of the Abbey Players and cherished mentor to so many students; Fr. Pilz, artist; Fr. McInerny, architect. And among the monks of today, we recognize our beloved brothers, teachers, spiritual directors, and friends. Through their faithful individuality, all express a shared trust that God will bring their lives – laid down for His sake – to a profound and unrepeatable splendor.
Someday we will see this, too: on the day when we “know fully, as [we are] fully known” (1 Cor 13:12). In the meantime, I invite you to join me in celebrating the visible and invisible ways that God brings our particularity to fruition, always by teaching us to dedicate ourselves to the Good that is more than ourselves. By His grace, we make this Good real to others in a joyful echo of the Incarnation.
The monks of Belmont Abbey still hand write their vows, signing them on the altar during their Solemn Profession. And God knows the specific form of every letter, the slant of every line. He knows and loves the signature of our lives.
Thank you for being part of the Belmont Abbey College family. May God bless you. Happy Founders’ Day, and happy 150th!
