September 15, 2010

Prayer and work: The Abbey of St. Walburga

By Roxanne King

This story continues the Denver Catholic Register's series on monasteries.

VIRGINIA DALE, Colo.—On windswept ranchland just a few miles from the Wyoming border, the Abbey of St. Walburga sits in a green valley protected by boulder-strewn hills. There, in a copper-domed gray stucco monastery, 23 nuns live out the Benedictine charism to “pray and work” (ora et labora).

“’Ora et labora’ is the balance of the normal working life but penetrating it with prayer,” the abbess, Mother Maria Michael Newe, O.S.B., told the Denver Catholic Register, which visited the monastery Aug. 18.
The phrase sums up the sixth-century Rule of St. Benedict, the primary guide for Western monasticism, which the nuns, who belong to the Order of St. Benedict, follow.

The Divine Office
The main work of the nuns is chanting the Divine Office (also called the Liturgy of the Hours), the official formal prayer of the Church, seven times a day.

The first Christians, the abbess explained, adopted the Jewish practice of praying at the third, sixth and ninth hours, and of saying morning and evening prayers. Scripture and tradition led to the seven hours observed in “the Office.”

“You pray and you go to work and you keep returning to prayer,” Mother Maria Michael said. “Your whole day is constantly returning to prayer.”

Work
The nuns, who range in age from 24-95, support their work of prayer by ranching—they raise natural beef cattle and grow hay, both of which they sell—package and distribute altar breads, craft wood coffins, operate a small publishing press, make cards and rosaries they sell in their gift shop, do calligraphy, editing and writing, keep bees and harvest honey. They also welcome retreat guests.

“Hospitality is very much a part of our charism,” Mother Maria Michael emphasized. “In every guest we try to see Christ and to serve Christ.”

Retreat guests stay in modular buildings a short distance from the main abbey. The rugged beauty of the wide landscape and the silence permeating the thick-walled monastery convey tranquility.

“We try to provide a place where people can meet Christ and have time to reflect on him, and where they can experience different types of prayer, like singing the psalms and having times of meditation and walking in nature,” Mother Maria Michael said. “The area provides a timeless way of life. Monastic life has been around for centuries.

“I suppose that what we do in community you could have been doing in any century,” she added. “We want to share what we have with our guests and to provide them with a place of peace.”
Guests and visitors, she said, are always invited to join the nuns for their liturgies and Mass (see information box on next page for phone and website). Hearing the nuns sweet voices chant the hours lifts the heart and enkindles one’s own desire to praise and to know God.

The singing of the Divine Office is one of the best parts of monastic life, the abbess said.

“Regardless of what happens, that goes on,” she said. “There’s a real stability in that. You sing it in unity.”

Expansion
To make the monastery even more comfortable for guests, the nuns are overseeing a $2 million addition to the main abbey that will include a larger entrance hall and lobby, a dining room and meeting space for retreat guests, an expanded gift shop, a commercial kitchen that will service both the nuns and guests, and a new refectory for the nuns.

Paid for by an anonymous donor, the abbess hopes the expansion will be done this fall, when Archbishop Charles Chaput, O.F.M. Cap., is scheduled to preside at the solemn profession of two nuns.
“It’s very exciting,” the abbess said. “I hope it will be nice for the guests and visitors.”

History
The archbishop dedicated the current facilities in 1999. The nuns had the present monastery built after relocating to Virginia Dale from Boulder in 1997, where they had been since 1935 when three nuns from the Abtei St. Walburg in Eichstatt, Germany, established the community due to booming vocations and as a potential refuge should the nuns need to escape Hitler’s Germany. Made autonomous in 1986, the Boulder community was raised to the status of an abbey in 1989.

The nuns still maintain close ties to the Eichstatt abbey, which houses the relics of their patroness. The eighth-century St. Walburga was a Benedictine missionary to Germany from England known for her gentleness, humility and charity, as well as her power to heal the sick through prayer. Oil, believed to have healing properties, still flows from her relics.

Two of the nuns, former abbess Mother Maria Thomas Beil and Sister Augustina Hochbauer, are from the Eichstatt abbey, where monastic life has continued without interruption since 1035. Sister Angelika Fackler, who died last month at 91, was also from the motherhouse.

“Once in a while I try to send one of our sisters (to Eichstatt abbey) who haven’t seen it so they can experience the history of the life,” Mother Maria Michael said, adding that one of the sisters will be visiting there later this month.

Daily life
While in chapel, the nuns wear black habits and veils with tight-fitting white headpieces called coifs that cover their neck and the top, back and sides of their head. While working around the ranch they wear light blue habits.

“When they’re working on machinery or in the barnyard they wear jeans and a workshirt,” the abbess said. “I don’t want them to get their habits caught in machinery and get hurt.”

Rising at 4:20 a.m., the nun’s day includes the full Divine Office, with time for work, meals, recreation and rest scheduled around it. Although not required to be silent, the sisters don’t engage in long conversation during the day. Strict silence is observed from night prayer, said at 7:30 p.m., until breakfast.

The nuns are committed to “constitutional enclosure,” which permits them to receive guests, go to the doctor and dentist, shop for necessities, and leave the property for formation or school. But for the most part, they stay on the monastery’s expansive property.

“You’re basically supposed to be home unless there’s a necessity for you being out,” the abbess explained.

They answer the telephone, read newspapers and prudently use the Internet. They don’t watch TV or listen to the radio.

They stay aware of the needs of the world for which they pray and take prayer requests by phone, e-mail and mail.

Monastic joy
Whether milking a goat—“We make yogurt and goat cheese,”  noted cheerful postulant Chandra Hanson—cutting vegetables in the kitchen or patiently lassoing a llama—“They’re mostly used to guard the calves,” explained a smiling Sister Ancilla Armijo, “they keep the mountain lions and coyotes away”—the sisters radiate happiness.

“I see the graces, the fruits of this life,” Hanson, 42, who hails from Vermont, said about the nuns. “It’s written on their faces.”

Originally from southern California, Mother Maria Michael said she wasn’t looking for a particular order when she first visited the monastery.

“I was looking for a community that lived authentically the rule they professed to live,” she recalled. “I heard about the abbey and came out to see it. I fell in love with it. I knew it was where God wanted me. You could read the rule and see it in the sisters’ lives.”

She was 17. Now 51, she said the monastic life has been fulfilling.

“There is deep joy in this life,” she said. “It has its sufferings, but nothing can match the joy one gets from living life in this atmosphere.”

Abbey of St. Walburga
What: Benedictine monastery
Where: 1029 Benedictine Way, Virginia Dale, Colo. (mile marker 381 on US Hwy 287, 4 miles south of the Wyoming border)
Monastery: 970-472-0612
Retreat House: 970-484-1887
Online: www.walburga.org/