Posted: September 12

Benedictine hospitality

(Engleberg, Switzerland) The Benedictine monks here at Engleberg Monastery have put on quite a display of hospitality during the last week, not enough to tempt me to change religious orders, but more than enough to impress me. I came here to make my annual retreat and grab a few days of vacation after a busy summer staying put in Rome. (Well, with one little side trip to Africa.) Another member of my community at the Curia has come here before and thought I would like being in the mountains. He deserves an award for under-statement: this place is tremendous. I love to walk a lot when I make a retreat, and Switzerland has to be the capital of walking. Everybody is out on the mountain trails, including the elderly. Today I walked out the front door of the monastery, crossed the river and two and a half hours later was sitting in a high meadow above timberline looking at a dramatic panorama of Mt. Titlis. Spirituality doesn`t get any better than this.

Engleberg is a small town surrounded by snow-capped mountains that rise 6,000 feet above the valley. The view is spectacular even if I just stay in my room or sit on a bench outside. The monastery has been here since the 12th century and dominates one end of the valley. The 34 monks staff a school and take care of the pastoral needs of the area. And they open their home to guests like myself.

Paradoxically, staying with members of another religious community that has a verz different approach to prayer has sharpened my sense of my Jesuit identity. The monks here sing everything, most of it in Gregorian chant. They have a common activity with a steady daily rhythm. With the travel I do that kind of prayer would be impossible for me. And I like our Jesu9t approach to prayer.

It occurred to me that the fact that we don´t have the strong external markers for identity, like the Benedictines do, makes communication all the more important for us. It is by communicating with each other and with people we meet that we reinforce our internaliyed identity. In a way, the many new initiatives Jesuits have created for helping pray through the internet is a very good and very typical Jesuit way of expressing our identity. But I am gateful the Benedictines have preserved their character and opened their community to a wandering Jesuit.