From the Genesee, NY with love

(first published October 3, 2009 on Cebu Daily News Life!)

Far away in cold, upstate New York, there is a silent, splendid, sacred land: a land of monks, monks’ bread, and monks’ guests; a land of wild deer, black swans, and clear, unsullied lakes; a land of thick forests and fertile plains, where the solemn symphony of organs, church bells, and Gregorian chants hallow the passing of the hours. West of the great, winding river of the Genesee—a name which means Beautiful Valley—this land belongs to New York’s Trappist monks.

The 2,400 acres of land is the Abbey of the Genesee. An abbey is a church territory overseen by an abbot. The word abbot comes from the Hebrew “abba” which means father. The family of monks at the Genesee belongs to the Roman Catholic, religious Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance (OCSO).

OCSO monks are called Cistercians in honor of Citeaux, the site of a monastery in France. They observe strictly the sixth-century monastic Rule of Saint Benedict of Norcia and the Constitutions of the Order of Cistercians. The monks go by the nickname “Trappists” because they were founded in the monastery of La Trappe, Normandy, France as a reform of the older Order of Cistercians, which is an 11th-century French reform of the Order of Saint Benedict.

Genesee’s Trappists, as they say on their website, “seek God and follow Christ under a rule and an abbot in a stable community that is a school of brotherly love.”

Through e-mail with Genesee’s prior, Fr. Jerome Machar, and after two months in Houston, Texas with a relative recovering from cancer, I made arrangements for a retreat at the abbey last March 14-19.

My journey to the Genesee began with a four-hour bus ride from Houston to Longview, Texas. This was followed by a 20-hour Amtrak train ride from Longview to Chicago, Illinois. After 10 hours of roaming around Chicago, I boarded another train for the 12-hour connecting trip to Rochester, New York.

At the Rochester train station, I spotted the monastery’s designated driver wearing a signal “Monks’ Bread” cap (Genesee’s Trappists bake upstate New York’s famous Monks’ Bread). After introductions, I followed him to his old, silver-colored Buick. As I buckled up and he got ready to drive, the elderly, Scottish-born, Protestant former farmer named Ian gave me an apple to eat. He then spoke in his fierce accent about Rochester, himself, the monastery, and the monks in the hour that he brought me to the Genesee:

Rochester’s traffic was light that sunny Lenten morn because townsfolk were gearing up for an advanced Saint Patrick’s Day (March 17) parade. Ian had been working with the monks since he sold his farm some years ago, being too old to supervise it. Ian was mourning the death of one of his best friends, a monk called Brother John the Baptist. Yet Ian became my first retreat master. He firmly believed that Brother John “went away to behold the face of the Lord.”

I noticed out loud how winter had blackened and plucked all leaves from the trees that lined our route to the abbey. Ian said the trees will be green again in a couple of months. He later bid me “leave something for the crows,” that is throw the bit left of my apple out the car window and onto Genesee’s fields.

Different crops grew on the fields, Ian told me. Spring was near. The ground sprouted wheat. On other seasons, the monks grew corn, soybeans, black beans, red beans, string beans, and sunflowers too.

We arrived at the Genesee’s Bethlehem Retreat House in time for lunch. Ian placed my luggage before my room’s door (my room was Room 1 on Bethlehem’s ground floor) and then in the dining hall introduced me to the weekend cook: a plump, rosy-cheeked nun wearing not a religious habit. She was Rosie, who delighted guests that day with a luncheon of boiled spinach, potatoes with salmon, and vegetable and macaroni salads.

After Rosie, I met Fr. Jerome, the monastery’s guest master and second-in-command after the abbot. The monk was as jovial as I imagined Santa Claus himself to be. He bantered with Rosie about her cooking. Introduced by the nun, the priest-monk embraced me like someone he had known for ages.

At our first private conference Fr. Jerome inquired about the purpose of my retreat: to prepare an Easter talk on Jesus’ incarnation. As an opening reflection on that theme, Fr. Jerome said “there are things that make us hard to live with but these do not make us unlovable.” This, he said, is why God approaches us.

Approach me God did in my six days in the Genesee: in Ian, in Fr. Jerome, in Brother Christian of the bookshop who asked me about the Philippines; in Brother James, a monk for 30 years who indulged my request to have a picture with him; in Rosie who, apart from preparing my first Genesee lunch, drove me from Bethlehem to the abbey church and back on many a wet or frosty, sunset or moonset hour to join the monks in prayer; in Cathe, the weekday cook who one morning also gave me a lift to church for Mass.

God was incarnate anew in the fellow guest who whispered at breakfast one morning that I should check out the day breaking into the world from the east behind Bethlehem.

In the Genesee the Lord sought, and captured my attention, through four yearlings that dashed across my path from church, and a group of grown-up deer that I watched vanish from their pastures into the forest. He kept me close to him through the rainbow glitter of sun-struck, frostbitten grass, and the praying pine trees and blooming stars in midnight's garden.

He drew me nearer to him through a flight of birds in V-formation saluting the image of Our Lady of Tender Compassion – a smiling Virgin Mary cradling in her arms the Christ-child.