The Oblates of Mount Saviour Monastery

When I was at the monastery over the Triduum, I reflected at one point on how appropriate—and how remarkable—it was that I should be celebrating the Paschal Mystery at the place that had changed my life. Something in me died when I came to Mt. Saviour; and something in me came to life, something new, something I couldn’t have asked for, something I couldn’t entirely explain. And as I met other people who had come there to enter the silence and solemnity of those holy days, I realized how gloriously un-unique my story was: everyone had a story; everyone had somehow been changed by Mt. Saviour. In my own case, I knew it pretty much from the first moment I arrived there on a summer day several years ago. Sitting beneath a tree, waiting for the bell for Sext, one brief but transcendent moment in the August sun whispered to me that I would never be the same again…

The silence of the holy name
should catch us unaware,
should shift the light
to the grayish bright
of eclipse.

The lips of God
should brush our ear
with the heat bug’s buzz
through the August noon;
the pen should freeze
on the whiting page,
and a black ant dance
(in glory)
in the corner.

And we should get up
or stay;
pray
or check our phone;
scream the mystery
into the heat
or never say another word
again.

– Jeffrey Essmann