Fifty Years in the Life of a Church

Gregory's Priory celebrated the dedication of a new monastery church. This ceremony marked the third time in six years that the community's place of worship had changed since the move to Three Rivers in 1946. Both of the first two chapels were extraordinarily humble. The first was a converted bedroom in the farm house the monks had bought to be the monastery. The second was a Quonset hut manufactured for the military during World War II. As far as I can recall, I have never seen any pictures of the bedroom-as-chapel, but we have a good picture of the Quonset chapel that shows that the monks did what they could to make it a place conducive to prayer with an attractive altar and crucifix. Dom Francis put his artistic talent to work in carving a pair of choir gates that are now between the abbot's and prior's stalls in the present church.
    The leap in 1951 from this Quonset Church to a church with its roof in the shape of an inverted Noah's ark must have been a dramatic one, perhaps something like our recent move from the old monastic dormitory into the new one we built three years ago. The pictures from the dedication ceremony show a large crucifix over the high altar overlooking a crowded sanctuary and an even more crowded church.
    Especially touching is the photograph that shows Dom Gregory Dix at the edge of the sanctuary. As one of the premiere liturgists of his time and the person who raised the money to pay for the church, he ought to have been the Master of Ceremonies, in the thick of the action. But he was too ill to participate to the full in that day's liturgy. When he was going on the speaking tour that raised the money, he noticed symptoms that could indicate cancer. He decided to go on the tour anyway and seek medical attention later. This delay did not help his chances of recovery; he was died on May 12 of the following year. We credit Dom Gregory with giving his life for the monastic church.
During the early sixties, the monks decided to enlarge the church for the better accommodation of the numerous guests who were coming to share in the community's worship. All of the bricked-walled area of the church dates from this period as do the slab glass windows that contribute much to the atmosphere of the church. The side chapels built at the time must have been a much-needed convenience to priests (both monks and ordained guests) who each celebrated Mass every morning. However, as an example of what happens to the best laid plans of mice and men, this practice of individual masses came to an end a couple of years later in the wake of Vatican II. It then became clear that God's long-range plan was that we should have these chapels for private prayer.
    The previous high altar and its imposing crucifix and the gold dossal curtain are gone; we began using a free-standing altar around which we could gather during the eucharistic prayer. Instead of worshiping in Latin, we switched to English.
    When Prior Aelred and I realized soon after the turn of the new year that we really should have a party on the coming May 9, we were faced with the daunting task of organizing the event with rather little time and few people to work at it. We worried about how we could manage to think of everybody who should be invited in time to invite them, and then we just did as well as we could. Under the circumstances, I am amazed that everything turned out as well as it did on the day of celebration. One indication of how good the turnout was is the fact that we aren't sure just how many people were present in a very full church. (Good thing it had been enlarged!) Our guess is that we had about sixty people. We were blessed by the presence of six monks from other Benedictine houses, three bishops, and many other friends.
    Our episcopal visitor, the Rt. Rev. Arthur Williams, was the celebrant at the anniversary Mass, and Brother Benet Tvedten from Blue Cloud Abbey in Marvin, South Dakota, preached the homily. The combination of Brother Benet's humor (quoting a medieval visitation report complaining that the monks stored hay in the church) and serious remarks (reminding us that Benedict said that the church should be used for no other purpose save for prayer) helped to make the Eucharist both joyful and inspiring.
    With all of the history weighing on me as we celebrated the anniversary Eucharist, I was under the impression that nobody who had attended the dedication in 1951 was around to join us fifty years later. I was wrong. During the luncheon, one of our neighbors came to tell me that she had been there, nine years old at the time!
---Abbot Andrew