15: The Honeymoon is Over

Okay. So put yourself in my shiny black shoes for a moment here. You're only 18 years old, and you've made what we can all agree is a monumental decision about the rest of your life, a commitment that means giving up almost everything you knew before in service to the church you love. You've learned about the place you now live and you've met all the men with whom you'll be sharing coffee every day for the rest of your life, you've gotten used to the schedule and accepted the realities of poverty, chastity, and obedience too, at least in so much as you can understand them all at this point in time. And then, very slowly, things start to change.

It's now the fall of 1993, and you've started school at Manhattan College in the Bronx. You and four other young brothers drive up there each day after morning prayer, mass, and breakfast with the community. School runs from roughly 9 AM until after 4, when you all meet at the red caravan in the parking lot for the drive back home to Chaminade High School in Mineola. Getting home after 5 PM with meditation and evening prayer in the chapel starting at 6:20, followed by dinner at 7 and a house class (more on that in a later entry) at 8:30 followed immediately by compline at 9:30 and "the great silence" beginning at 10, you hardly have any time to do the hours of schoolwork before waking up at 5:30 AM in time for morning prayer again at 6 AM.

But the schedule itself, it turns out, isn't anywhere near as challenging as the emotional toll in between all these many hours and minutes. Your family members and friends are now mailed letters away from you. You can call home on the weekend, but you're encouraged not to do so too often, and calling friends? Yeah, that's a hard no. This is your life now, and these are the rules.

As the older brothers get used to you being there in the house, they relax a bit more, and are suddenly not on their best behavior the same way they were in the first few months. While cursing is rare, gossip is not, and arguments spring up now and then too. You hear sexist and even racist comments (from one or two people), and you can't help but think, doesn't this person know we're monks, let alone Christians first and foremost?

In the car ride one day on the way back from college, one of the other young brothers brings up blood type, and you say you're A positive. As they already know you're not as smart as they are, they laugh at you for this, with no followup apology even after they see you blush red.

You whistle as you walk down the stairs in the brothers' house, and your Novice Master stops you right away. "We do not whistle here," he says firmly, looking at you like you've just spit in the holy water, and waiting for your nod that you understand him before moving on. A week later when you hear him whistling, you know you can say nothing. Your voice of opinion on this issue is not welcome.

Private meetings begin in your Novice Master's office in the school, where he asks you how things are going so far, including how you get along with the other brothers. You give him your optimistic outlook, because you certainly are still trying your very best to focus on the positives, but there's something about the way he talks to you that feels less Christian and more old-school Catholic in a completely illogical way.

The honeymoon phase, you are starting to realize, has already ended.

If you want to keep doing this, keep living your life for God as a Roman Catholic brother, you need to start accepting that this beautiful life you dreamed up is not all you hoped it would be.

In a monastery, just as anywhere else in any other building on the planet, life is not perfect, and 34 men living together in one large home will no doubt eat on each other's nerves at times. They will argue. They may even yell. You may not find yourself crying about it all yet, but the emotional slap in the face this new reality brings you after only a few months in the monastery stings with unexpected shock.

You've got this, you tell yourself. I'll adapt. I'll figure it out. I'll make my Novice Master like me instead of constantly judging me with that warped twinkle in his eyes. I'll prove to him and to everyone else that I can handle the judgments and the hazing, the fakeness and the teasing. The honeymoon may be over, but I'm determined to make this marriage work.


Coming Next Week: Holidays with My New Family