By the solemn forty days of Lent the Church unites herself each year to the mystery of Jesus in the desert.

(From Article 540 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church)

In this six-part series, Kevin Burns selects a book for each week of Lent. Each book speaks to one of the great traditions within Catholic culture. Each book also shows how its author integrates that tradition. Six different approaches to the same journey through the desert of Lent to the Easter promise of resurrection.

Week Two: Judith Valente explores the Benedictine path.

Atchison blue is a colour found in the work of a German-born American glass maker, Emil Frei. In 1947, he crafted a set of windows for the chapel at the Benedictine Monastery of Mount St. Scholastica in Atchison, Kansas. Frei integrated several shades of blue into his glass windows which, over time, became bleached by the harsh Kansas sunlight, transforming them into a single shade of blue/gray which is now known as “Atchison blue.”

Atchison Blue is also the title of a fascinating exploration of spirituality through lives of a community of Benedictine women who live at Mount St. Scholastica. Their daily lives revolve around that same chapel with its uniquely blue-tinted windows. The book is the work of television journalist, Judith Valente, who covers the religion “beat” for PBS in the United States. Valente has added a subtitle to her book which explains the intent of her work: A Search for Silence, a Spiritual Home, and a Living Faith.

Valente wrote sections of her book while she was on retreat at this monastery. She investigated the different ways the ancient Rule of St Benedict continues to shape every aspect of the life of this thriving and active community today. In her research she made many visits to the monastery often, spending a great deal of time listening, watching, and conversing with the members of the community, Benedictine women, young and old, who live there.  

In the chapter entitled “Night Shift” Judith Valente describes an evening visit to Mount St. Scholastica just as Lent is about to begin. She has entered the infirmary wing of the monastery where the frail and elderly members of the community live and are cared for. She’s had playful conversation with one of the sisters who proudly announces she has just completed a complex jigsaw puzzle of the Virgin Mary. The sister sitting next to Judith Valente “leans toward me conspiratorially and whispers, ‘She gets a lot of help from the nurses.’

Valente continues: 

Everyone is talking and having a grand time, filling one another’s cups with cocoa and peppermint schnapps. I think of the care The Rule takes in assigning certain hours for rest, for reading, for relaxation, and for how the Benedictines view leisure too as holy. Then, at the appointed time the laughter winds down. The room becomes silent. In front of the fireplace lay fronds from last year’s Palm Sunday Mass.

Sister Abertina Hermann lights the hearth, and one by one the sisters cast these palm branches into the flames. They will become the ashes for tomorrow’s service. We say a prayer, promising to give “strength and support to one another on the Lenten journey to the Easter Triduum.” We sing, “All creatures of our God and King, lift up your voice and hear us sing. Alleluia, Alleluia.” It is the last time the alleluia will be uttered until Holy Saturday. For the rest of the evening until the end of Ash Wednesday, the next 

day, there is silence in the monastery. Laughter to silence. Leisure to prayer. Life to death. Death to life.”   

Elsewhere in the book, Valente explains what the experience of researching and writing this book about the Benedictines has done for her:

Ultimately, I would arrive at a deeper understanding of the necessities of prayer, contemplation, and silence. I would rebuild my faith within a Church that seemed increasingly withdrawn from the day-to-day realities of life. And I would grasp the meaning of two words that came to define my struggle for deep personal change: conversio morum, what the Benedictines call conversion of life. Conversio is like the slow steady process that transformed the choir chapel windows into their exceptional blue color.   

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Atchison Blue – A Search for Silence, a Spiritual Home, and a Living Faith by Judith Valente is published by Sorin Books/Ave Maria Press, 2013.

For a 2-minute 48-second virtual tour of the Mount St. Scholastics Monastery in Atchison, Kansas click HERE:

http://vimeo.com/44889266

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Next Week: Dan Horan OFM on the Franciscan path: “One way the Franciscan tradition should shape or influence our lives is to remind us that our relationship with God is not all that different from our other forms of relationship.”