The group visiting Vitorchiano Trappist Monastery, a Trappistine house attracting vocations in Italy

Anyone who came to Mass or the Divine Office in the Church between March 10 and June 9 of this year may have noticed that one of the monks was missing. This was because I spent most of those three months in Italy, participating in the Monastic Formators’ Programme (MFP). The “programme” is run by the Benedictine Confederation and gives the opportunity for monks and nuns from communities that follow the Rule of St. Benedict to explore topics important to their development as formators for their communities. Participants also visit important Benedictine sites while interacting and studying with other formators. There were fourteen monks and twelve nuns in our group, from monasteries in sixteen different countries, in addition to the three monks who organized the program. While it is difficult to analyze and summarize a 3-month program in such a short article, I offer a quick summary of the three key elements in the program: the courses, the organized trips, and the interaction with other formators. 

 

Walking through Assisi, with flags for the celebration of Calendimaggio, an annual medieval festival

Courses. On a typical day, we had three 50-minute class periods in the morning, and an additional two sessions in the afternoon. These featured a rotation of experts from throughout the Benedictine world, each joining us for about a week to cover a topic relevant to formation. These topics ran the full gamut of issues that are faced by formators: formation for community life and the theory behind living successfully in a community; intellectual formation related to the rule, its commentaries and monastic history; human formation especially with regards to celibacy; spiritual formation, especially focused on the practice of lectio divina. As the schedule indicates, this classroom aspect of the program was substantial, allowing for extensive reflection on these critical topics.

 

The group offered a Mass here near the summit of Monte Subasio outside Assisi

Organized Trips. The advantage of conducting this program in Italy is that participants are able to visit the places where much of the monastic history discussed actually took place. For the first two months of the course, we were based in Rome, which allowed us to visit the catacombs, and the tombs of St. Peter and St. Paul located in the major Basilicas bearing their names. We also had Mass at the small Church San Benedetto in Piscinula, on the site where St. Benedict may have stayed when he decided to flee the city and become a hermit near the small town of Subiaco. The last five weeks of MFP are based in Assisi, which gave us the opportunity to walk to several key sites in the life of St. Francis: the small chapel built in a stable where tradition states he was born, the church where his parents’ house was, the church that would have likely been his parish church growing up, the church he rebuilt after it had been allowed to fall into ruin due to neglect, and the basilica where he is buried. We also made trips outside the cities to visit key places in the life of St. Benedict. We went to Norcia, where St. Benedict was born, visiting the community nearby whose Prior, Fr. Benedict Nivakoff, is a graduate of Portsmouth Abbey School. We traveled to Subiaco and had Mass at the Sacro Speco, the small monastery built on top of the cave where St. Benedict began his monastic life. We visited Monte Cassino, where St. Benedict established his most important monastery and where he wrote his rule. Going to these places helped establish a sense of the geography, and deepened our sense of the reality to the stories we have all heard about these great figures. It is one thing to hear a story about St. Benedict living as a hermit and being brought food that was lowered down to him in a bucket by a local priest. It is another thing to take a bus up the steep mountain pass, walk through a beautifully decorated chapel and down into a small cave, and realize that this was where St. Benedict spent several years of his life, dedicated to prayer and a highly ascetical way of life. 

 

At Monte Cassino, where Sts. Benedict and Scholastica are buried

Interaction with other Formators. In addition to the formation we were given through courses and organized trips, there was also a great deal that I learned directly from the other people involved in the program. As a group together for prayer, classes and trips over a period of three months, we got to know each other fairly well. This gave us opportunities to talk with each other about how each community handles formation, and the positives and negatives associated with the different choices that have to be made. It was interesting to see many similar questions come up from radically different monasteries with very diverse circumstances: what to do about information technology within the novitiate, what kind of work to ask novices to do and how to ask them to do it, and how to handle relationships between novices and other members of the community. These were all universal questions, answered in a variety of different ways which reflect the circumstances and traditions of the community in question and its cultural context. I also found the experience of being part of this unique temporary community to be highly formative in itself. We were 29 individuals who lived and worked alongside each other for three months, each with different personalities, each trying to grow in holiness and develop our ability to share that with others. While it is hard to say exactly how it works, that experience in itself gave me much to reflect on with regards to monastic life in general, as well as how I live my own monastic life. Beyond specific policies and courses for the novitiate, it became clear that it is only through the presence of holiness that individual novices, and even a community, can be adequately formed.

 

San Masseo, 11th-century church rebuilt by the Bose community after the 1997 earthquake

And so much more. There is much that I have left unsaid above! I could expand on the ample and helpful material in each of the classes, on the reflections around returning to Sant’Anselmo five years after completing studies, on the two weeks when half the members of the program were in isolation due to COVID, on climbing the scala sancta on my knees, on climbing a mountain near Assisi to say Mass at a cliff near the summit. There was also a visit to the Basilica of San Clemente in Rome for the Easter Vigil and then again for a tour of its excavations, guided by an Irish Dominican who was an expert in archaeology. There was pizza at a restaurant near the Colosseum after that visit with many members of our group, including some who had never eaten pizza before! And there was so much more.  
 

I particularly benefited from interaction with many individuals who showed me the value of a different aspects of monastic life from what I have typically valued, opening my eyes to more ways of experiencing monastic life and the varied modes to grow in holiness that it offers. These were always centered on the same basics built into the monastic tradition: the liturgy, lectio, prayer, and the community life, the ora et labora of a Benedictine life. These basics can be engaged in through different modes. There is an intellectual mode, which I have tended to value most highly, that remains a necessary component for a successful community. Yet monastic life is also engaged in through personal relationships that expand the community outwards and strengthen it within. It is also experienced through active, physical work, putting in the effort required to maintain a functioning monastery. Ultimately, a healthy community requires the presence of all three: developing the intellect, developing relationships and physical work, as well as a mutual respect between individuals who specialize in different aspects. As we approached the conclusion of our time there, one of the monks, with whom I had regularly spoken throughout the three months, said that of everyone there, he thought I had undergone the most change from the start to the end of the program. I hope this indicates I have become a holier monk, and a better formator. Time will tell.