'24 Hours: 4 to 5 a.m. at The Abbey
Utter quiet, gentle darkness, reverent intonations.
This is the start of Liturgy of the Hours, a pre-dawn time known as Vigils: 45 minutes of connection to the Almighty, where spirit and ritual truly blend, also known as Divine Office.
Ten monks quietly enter the chapel at Our Lady of Guadalupe Trappist Abbey and retreat center west of Lafayette, and begin a timeless practice: worshiping God before the sun rises on a new day.
The monks, who earn their living making fruitcake and through sustainable forestry, silently gather each morning at 4:15 a.m., one at a time. Minimal artificial light is provided, but a single candle in the window behind the altar guides their way, and the space is illuminated from light of the full moon. The brothers kneel and make the sign of the cross in the direction of the altar. In prayer and song, together they are the choir.
Father Richard Layton, a 55-year resident, is leader for the morning, a task that rotates among all 13 monks in residence, leading the choir in reading from the Book of Psalms, a recitation known as the Invitatory.
Such as from Psalm 25:
“He leads the humble in what is right, and teaches the humble his way. All the paths of the Lord are steadfast love and faithfulness, for those who keep his covenant and his testimonies.”
On this morning, the reading of Psalms 17-35.
“We try to cover the 150 Psalms in two weeks,” Father Richard says in a conversation at 5 a.m. “The rule used to be in one week, if not one day — when they were a little stricter.
“I can close my eyes and … it’s the kind of memory, once I hear the Our Father I don’t need the book, but if someone stopped me and said, ‘recite Psalm 33,’ well, we don’t have it perfectly memorized,” said Father Richard. “It depends on the person next to you, we carry each other. Then you think you know it. And someone will say, ‘go ahead and do it.’ We do it in unison and get used to it.”
The Psalms and other readings and prayers are said quietly from the front of the 60-by-60-foot chapel, the monks standing or seated in sectioned chairs, those on the left alternating in readings with brothers on the right.
“We take turns,” in the formal assignment of readings,” Father Richard said. “The Hebdomadary opens the office, and then Cantor intones the hymn at the beginning and the Invitator does the reading, and Invitator from last week does the second reading. It’s all kind of mechanical, a list of jobs for each day of the week.
“The intonations are manufactured, if you will, some of it is adaptation in English so certain song tones we do,” Father Layton said. “We’ll sing the songs at Lauds, but somewhere along the line we decided it’s so early it’s hard to sing the psalms.
“They’re all kind of manufactured from years of use and adapted to English, and you just get used to those things.”
Brothers turn on lamps at their seats, and congregants can turn on low-light lamps on the backs of each pew to aid in reading.
“I think it’s special,” Darcey McAllister said of Vigils. She manages the nine retreat rooms and retreatant services with her husband, Joel. “The early hour makes it so; you get up, you’re really tired, and there is something magical about getting done with it, you’re like ‘this is great,’ and you start your day.”
“We try and sing these songs before dawn,” Father Richard said. “We are greeting the sun, and the Christ’s resurrection, so we do it before the sun rises. During the summer it gets lighter earlier, we might need to modify.”
Milwaukie resident Jim Foglio is the sole retreatant present, on the last morning of a week-long retreat: “My annual time to get away from the hubbub of the world where there are no demands on anyone.”
McAllister notes that the Vigils starting time “is awfully early,” and some retreatants attend and some don’t. “Some who come are not Christian and may not attend the services, but most of them attend something.” There are morning and mid-day sessions, and Vespers service in the evening and Compline, the nighttime closing prayer. Notes the website trappist.org: “we gather seven times a day to chant prayers and listen prayerfully to the word of God … “Liturgy of the Hours generally begins in the dark early morning hours and concludes in the evening before we retire to our cells.”
The life of quiet, work and prayer practiced at the Abbey is guided by the Rule of Saint Benedict, named for the Trappist order’s founder. In Vigils this morning, the portion of the Rule the brothers recite pertains to those with servants or underlings:
“Let him study to be loved rather than feared, let him not be excitable and worried, nor exacting and headstrong, or jealous and over-suspicious, for then he is never at rest … remember the words of Jacob: ‘discretion is the mother of virtues’: let us temper all things, that the strong might have something to strive after and the weak may not fall back in dismay.”
Between readings are five-minute periods of silence, effectively designed to foster the Trappists’ belief in “stepping outside of time when praying the Divine Office,” according to trappist.org.
At 5 a.m. the monks turn off their lights in unison. In his concluding prayer, Father Richard says, “May the peace of God stay in our hearts and minds.” Chimes sound, and the service is ended. The monks quickly exit.
Foglio said of the speaking and chanting of the choir that “the 150 psalms express all the human emotions that we experience. … So you just kind of go through life by listening or studying the Psalms. You get to reflect on feelings rather than, in our society, it’s what have you accomplished, how much have you prepared for the future, do you have a 401K, on ‘do, do, do, do, do’. The Psalms are not focused on how much power or prestige you have. It’s that you are a human being, we are all equal, we are all in this together, and once we’ve received, it’s maybe I can give back. How do I give back?”
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