Father Edward

This changed while I was in college. During the summer after my senior year and before I started at university, one of my friends had begun regularly attending Vespers, the evening prayer sung by the monks. When I was a freshman in college, since I was in St. Louis, I started to join him, eventually expanding to the Mass that went immediately before it. For about a year, I regularly attended, sometimes also staying for Compline, as well as taking a few retreats at the monastery. During this period, my faith grew enormously and Catholicism became a much more integral part of my identity than it had been before that. However, I still did not feel called to the monastic life, but just to a strongly Catholic lay life.
 
After about a year, I stopped going to Vespers regularly because I didn’t have regular access to a car. It was during this time that I felt the start of a call to the Monastic life. I missed going to Vespers. Eventually, I was able to get access to a car for an evening and drove out to St. Louis Abbey, not realizing that, since it was March 20, the First Vespers of the solemnity of St. Benedict would be sung. At that time, First Vespers for all solemnities was the only time the Vespers from the Antiphonale Monasticum, which uses Gregorian tones and Latin, was used. I had particularly grown to love this way of singing Vespers during my year coming to Vespers regularly. During that Vespers, I had an intense feeling of God’s presence, experiencing true contemplation for the first time. The coincidences that lead to this experience of contemplation: the solemnity of St. Benedict and Latin Vespers on the only day that year I had come to Vespers, led me to start considering that I may be called to join St. Louis Abbey, although it was only a background consideration at the time.
 
During the next year, I eventually worked up towards requesting an extended visit to the Monastery as a vocations guest. The main turning point, where I went from considering the possibility that I might be called to join St. Louis Abbey to asking about the process for joining was a trip to Rome for a week with a few friends. One of these friends who helped organize the trip was the same one who had gone to Vespers with me my freshman year of college. He was still considering a Vocation and contacted Br. Sixtus Roslevich, a St. Louis monk who was in Rome for Theological studies, who was able to get all of us guest rooms at Sant’Anselmo, the Benedictine house in Rome for Benedictines working and studying in Rome.


Fr. Edward and Companions in Rome with Br. Sixtus in March 2008

While I was there, I usually attended Vespers and Compline, as well as going to Lauds and Mass a few times, often as the only member of our group who made it. Vespers and Compline were both sung from the Antiphonale Monasticum, while Lauds and Mass were in Italian. Towards the end of my time there, Br. Sixtus told me that he, and other monks at Sant’Anselmo, had noticed that I was coming regularly to these prayers and asked if I thought I had a vocation. I avoided a direct answer in the immediate moment, but being asked the question prompted me to think directly about it, concluding that I thought I might. The night before we left to come back to St. Louis, I asked Br. Sixtus that I thought I might, and asked how to go about it. He told me to approach the Abbot and tell him that I thought I might have a vocation when I got back to St. Louis. I did this, and the Abbot invited me to stay at the monastery during the summer, which I accepted.
 
That summer, I stayed at the monastery, participating fully in the Monastic life, taking some classes about the monastic life and spiritual life with monks in the community. I concluded that I likely had a vocation and got the material about what I would need to do to enter the community from Fr. Ralph Wright, the vocations director. I completed the year and graduated from Washington University in the spring. I then procrastinated and had doubts for a couple months before finally taking the plunge and going through the application process. I was accepted, and moved in, starting my postulancy on October 10, 2009.
 
During my time in the monastery, I have become a cantor and member of the schola in St. Louis, and now at Portsmouth. In addition, I have recently been named Junior Master at Portsmouth. I am working on a degree in Mathematics for teaching through the Harvard Extension School, and am a math teacher in Portsmouth Abbey School.
 
As I have grown as a monk, I have started to learn to open myself to the grace that God is giving me in each moment, whether through unexpected blessings or unexpected challenges, both of which, it seems, are constant in Monastic life. The ancient tradition of 1500 years of Benedictine Monasticism, and the countless saints it has produced, have been the greatest source of spiritual nourishment to help me recognize the blessings and overcome the challenges thus far. The things that bring me closer to that tradition, in particular Gregorian chant, a simple but deeply contemplative way of singing during the Liturgy that is closely tied to the monastic tradition, but has been encouraged for general use by several recent popes, have probably been the easiest parts of the Benedictine life for me to get spiritual nourishment from.
However, as I have started to grow in prayer, there have also been times when the silence of being able to sit alone with God for a few minutes has produced spiritual consolations that have helped me to grow in holiness. I have a long way to go, but my hope is that, by living in a school for the Lord’s service, whether in St. Louis, or in Portsmouth, I will fulfill my vocation for holiness by becoming a saint.