Silent nights, busy days at St. Joseph Abbey

“Benedictines have been practicing social distancing for 1,500 years,” quipped Benedictine Abbot Justin Brown, observing that the very nature of monastic life calls for a certain amount of withdrawal and isolation from the mainstream.
    

“Not because monks don’t like people or don’t want to be around people, but to follow the way of life St. Benedict calls us to requires our lives to be centered in the monastery, so that we can pray throughout the day and we can do the work we do here to help support ourselves and do our mission,” he said.
 

A tight-knit community
    

Of the 31 monks in the Archdiocese of New Orleans’ Benedictine community, 27 reside at the abbey, located in St. Benedict. Living with them on campus are four other priests who serve on the faculty and staff of St. Joseph Seminary College – a Jesuit, a Franciscan and two diocesan priests.
    

“We were hoping by now to welcome two new postulants, but they haven’t been able to come because of quarantine issues,” Abbot Justin said, noting that he and his Benedictine brothers continue to cling to the daily “anchors” of monastic life: praying the divine office and celebrating Mass.
    

“(Prayer and Mass) have kept us even more anchored, I think, during this time, because we’re not going out for anything,” he said. “Everybody’s present, and like everybody else, we’re spending more time together. Our life has slowed down, even for us, because we don’t have as much of the busyness of life now that the campus is closed. We are finding more time for prayer and quiet reflection.”
    

Also in residence on the abbey’s 1,200-acre grounds are 27 seminarians – roughly one-quarter of the 113 who were in formation on campus this semester. The majority of the seminarians were either called home by their respective dioceses or opted to shelter in place with their families, Abbot Justin said. Although seminary buildings remain closed, classrooms have been fully cleaned in hopeful anticipation of their reopening.
  

 “The seminarians are doing online learning, and the ones living here continue to follow the full seminary schedule that we had before, meeting with their advisors and spiritual directors,” he said.
 

No time for boredom
    

Keeping the Benedictines mentally, spiritually and physically fit are the hobbies they had cultivated as part of their monastic training as people set apart from the everyday buzz of the world. Those pastimes include a lot of reading, art, music, cooking and welding.
    

“I can lose myself for hours in the garden,” said Abbot Justin, who also keeps goats and chickens.
    

“The chickens provide eggs for our table,” he said. “There’s one breed that lays a beautiful blue-green egg. Every year for Easter, I boil those to give at Easter. You don’t have to dye them!”
    

Those monks who are involved in bee-keeping are preparing for their next harvest of honey, which will be sold at the abbey’s gift shop when it reopens.
    

Pennies for Bread, the abbey’s baking ministry, is focusing its attention on making weekly deliveries of fresh loaves to the Covington Food Bank and Rouquette Lodge, a Christopher Homes residence in Covington that provides affordable housing for seniors and the disabled.
    

Also humming along is St. Joseph Woodworks, which provides an important stream of income for the abbey through the monks’ handcrafting of simple yet beautiful cypress caskets.
    

“We haven’t really seen an uptick in demand because of the coronavirus, but the woodworks have been kept pretty busy,” Abbot Justin said, adding that the Benedictines continue to conduct their usual number of burials at the abbey cemetery, which is available to those beyond the abbey community.
 

Feeling a void
    

Abbot Justin said the biggest change brought by COVID-19 is the monks’ inability to practice one of the “cornerstones” of Benedictine life, which is to offer hospitality to all visitors.
    

“No one is able to come to the abbey. We really miss that,” he said. “It’s really important to Benedictines to offer hospitality, both through our Masses, our group retreats at the Christian Life Center and the private retreats that we give. The Masses are empty and the church is empty, which is really sad. That’s a really big change for us.” 
    

The Benedictines also miss working alongside their dedicated group of volunteers, who assist at the gift shop, the bakery, the woodworks and at various events.
    

“We have well over 50 volunteers,” Abbot Justin said. “It’s a real loss because the monks really appreciate their presence and help.”
Self-sufficient monks
    

Meanwhile, the Benedictines are taking care of themselves. Brother Leo Franca, the abbey’s resident infirmarian, takes the temperature of every abbey resident each morning and picks up any needed medications from the drug store.
    

“Everybody’s been very well, thank God. We leave a place in between us in prayer and at table, so we spread out,” Abbot Justin said, noting that he and his brother monks are blessed to be able to grow some of their own food and to have a catering company that continues to prepare meals for the monks and seminarians to eat in their respective dining rooms.
    

“We’re blessed because we live in community; monasteries may be socially distant, but monks are not isolated,” Abbot Justin said.
    

Rare times off campus in the era of social distancing include trips by abbey priests to celebrate daily Mass at the Covington homes of the Christian Brothers and Carmelite Sisters. 
    

Back at the abbey, where Masses are celebrated privately for now, the Benedictines pray for those struck by the pandemic and their caregivers.
    

“When I look out into the empty church (as the celebrant at Masses), I imagine faces of the people who are usually present,” he said.
    

Abbot Justin was struck by how the triduum and Easter liturgies were especially “prayerful and meaningful” this year. The following line, from the Book of Lamentations, launched Holy Week: “How deserted she sits, the city once thronged with people!”
    

The Easter season has shifted our focus to the Book of Revelation, noted the abbot.
    

“That (book) takes us from a vision of trials and tribulations to a vision of life and Christ bringing us into a new heaven and a new earth,” Abbot Justin said. “The Book of Revelation, read as it was intended, is really a book of hope – hope that God will make all things well and good.”
 

St. Benedict knows best
    

A native of Galliano, Louisiana, Abbot Justin, 62, entered the monastery at age 25 and became its abbot in 2001. He said the pandemic has amplified wisdom found in The Rule of St. Benedict: “They should each try to be the first to show respect to the other, supporting with the greatest patience one another’s weaknesses of body or behavior, and earnestly competing in obedience to one another. No one is to pursue what he judges better for himself, but instead what he judges better for someone else.”
    

“St. Benedict was a realist – he knew that when you get a group of people living together in close quarters, there will be tension and there will be periods where life will get intense,” Abbot Justin said.
    

“I really think that what St. Benedict is telling us is that the way to live in community, the way to live with others, is to always be thinking of the other; to be patient with others; to be understanding, especially in putting other people before ourselves,” he said.
    

“The more we think of others, the more peace we’re going to find in all of this.”
    

For more information, please visit the website at www.saintjosephabbey.com. 

Beth Donze can be reached at [email protected].