Volume 31 • Number 1 Advent 2004 Cover photo: With Thomas Shaw, SSJE and Geoffrey Tristram, SSJE, we celebrated very significant milestones this past autumn. Br. Geoffrey, formerly an educator and parish priest in the Church of England, made his Profession in Life Vows on September 19th. Br. Thomas, formerly our Superior and now the Bishop of Massachusetts, marked his tenth anniversary of Consecration as Bishop on September 24th. It costs SSJE $20.00 annually per subscription to produce and mail four issues of Cowley. We would welcome a tax-deductible contribution to our community’s ministry, which would help defray this expense and ensure continued delivery of our newsletter. Checks should be made payable to “SSJE” and sent to the monastery at 980 Memorial Drive, Cambridge, MA 02138 USA. ©2004 by The Society of Saint John the Evangelist, North America A Letter from the Superior Dear Members of the Fellowship of Saint John and Other Friends, Curtis Almquist, SSJE his is a season of thanksgiving for Tour community. On September 19th our brother Geoffrey Tristram made his Profession in Life Vows in the monastery chapel, full of friends and the SSJE brothers. In our Rule of Life we say that a life profession inspires us with awe as well as joy. The awe comes from our awareness that years and years of formation have gone on in a brother’s life to bring him this point of desire and freedom to make a life commitment. A brother’s family and Brs. Curtis Almquist and Geoffrey Tristram. Photo credit: Doug DeMark friends, teachers and pastors, and various life experiences will have been ber 24th. Our brother Tom served as the agents of God’s direction and conver- Superior of our community from 1983 sion in his life, oftentimes recognized to 1992. During his tenure as Superior most clearly in retrospect. Our joy the community underwent a resurrec- comes through the enlargement of our tion experience where both our life and love through the gift of a numbers and the impact of our ministry brother’s self-offering. This is very true grew considerably. In the year immedi- with Geoffrey. He brings to us and ately following his final term, he was others his years of training and experi- approached by individuals, asking ence as a pastor, teacher, and linguist, whether his name could be presented as his cross-cultural heritage, his keenness a candidate for Bishop in the forthcom- of mind and contagious zeal for life. Br. ing diocesan election. This prompted Geoffrey has just been appointed as earnest, sometimes difficult, conversa- Novice Guardian, succeeding our tion within the community, and much brother David Vryhof who served so prayer for God’s guidance. We antici- faithfully and effectively in this role for pated the extraordinary opportunities the past five years. We now have four and challenges that this would bring to brothers in our novitiate, and by Tom and to our brotherhood, and yet February, three new men as postulants. this seemed an occasion for us to be Our life together is a very rich fare. “men in the moment,” as our founder We also give thanks this season for envisioned. Tom’s subsequent election our brother Thomas Shaw, Bishop of and tenure as Bishop has drawn on his Massachusetts, whose tenth consecra- deep well of disciplined prayer, his tion anniversary we celebrated Septem- courage to make the Gospel of Jesus The Society of Saint John the Evangelist 3 Brs. Kevin Hackett and Thomas Shaw, Bishop of Massachusetts, at a festival on the Boston Common. Photo credit: Beverly Hall Christ accessible to the widest diversity this season, we are reminded how the of people, his wisdom to draw out of the Messiah comes “to bring good news to treasury things new and things old, his the oppressed, to bind up the broken- charisma, his love of life, and his hearted, to proclaim liberty to the mischievous humor. Not long ago captives, and release to the prison- someone asked me how it could be that ers….” For so many in our world, those the Bishop lives under a vow of near to us and those far off, we know obedience to his Superior, and that the that these words of promise come with Superior and the other ordained an urgency this season. We pray that brothers live under a vow of obedience through our presence and our work, we to their Bishop. Without a moment’s may offer the sanctuary of Christ’s pause I said, “Because we’re friends, and peace and his words of help and hope we work at it and pray for it every day.” and deliverance. We cherish our ties Quite true. We are very proud of our with you who are companions with us brother Tom, and we join with so many along the way, and we depend on your others in giving thanks for his ministry support. We give special thanks to God as Bishop. for you this season. The name of this Church season, “Advent,” is derived from a Latin root Faithfully yours, which means ‘coming’ or ‘arrival,’ anticipating the coming of Christ in his birth as a child of Bethlehem, and then, in his coming to us again from the Curtis G. Almquist, SSJE future. In the scriptures appointed for Superior 4 SSJE Christ is My Life and My Joy Professional Life Vows Geoffrey Tristram, SSJE hrist is my life and my joy! These made to be a monk. But I could never Cwords spoken as I placed a ring on have imagined that God would lead me my finger were for me the climax of my “to a city where I might dwell” thou- ‘Profession in Life Vows’, which took sands of miles from home, in the New place in the monastery chapel on World! Sunday September 19. Since my late It took a very long time though teens, I have known that my deepest before I was to discover the Society of source of joy would always be found in St. John the Evangelist. For most of my my relationship with Christ, and since life I worked as a parish priest in the age of twenty, when I first experi- England, and would often deliberately enced the monastic life-a community of try to put thoughts of monasticism out Carmelite monks in the Sologne region of my mind. The whole idea often of France- I have known that I was seemed hopelessly romantic and idealistic. And yet the longing did not entirely go away. Thomas Merton describes it wonderfully; how coming across a book on monasticism by chance opens up this longing within him: “In an instant the desire of those solitudes was wide open within me like a wound. The thought of those monas- teries, the men who had become nothing, shattered my heart. I went out of the library, trying to stamp out the embers that had broken into flame, there, for an instant, within me.” Whenever God broke through my defenses, I would go and visit a monas- tery! Over the years I have come to know many Benedictine monasteries in England, France and Belgium, and I had the wonderful experience of spending a year in the Monastery of the Holy Cross in Chevetogne, Belgium. (Seated L-R) Brs. Geoffrey Tristram and Rufus Van Horn, and standing, Charles La It was almost seven years ago that I Fond, Roy Cockrum, and James Knutsen. first sat in the beautiful Cram chapel on The Society of Saint John the Evangelist 5 Memorial Drive for the first time, and sang Evening Prayer with the brothers. The strong and unmistakable sense of ‘having come home’ that I experienced then has never left me. After several more visits, I arrived at the monastery in Cambridge on St.Patrick’s Day (March 17) 1999 to begin my six months as a postulant. This was followed by two years as a novice. I was then professed in initial vows on October 7, 2001. These were years during which I was “testing my voca- Brs. David Vryhof and Geoffrey Tristram tion” before making initial and then life is not, mercifully, left to the individual profession. These years of formation are alone. We are supported and encour- marked by what our Rule calls a gradual aged by our brothers. After I had made “inner change and conversion of life”, life vows, I was asked to take a very and certainly for me, included what the active role in the work of discernment Rule predicts will be times of “emo- and formation by becoming Novice tional and spiritual trials”. To leave a Guardian. We are very blessed in previous life and work and culture, and having four novices and two postulants to embrace a new life lived in commu- at present, and we are hoping for a third nity can be a considerable challenge. postulant in February. They are all very During the years of ‘testing’ I several fine men, and it is a pleasure and a times felt tempted to leave, and at one privilege to live and work alongside stage kept the return leg of an air ticket them. We also have a large number of to Heathrow nearby, just in case! men who are inquiring into our life, Discernment is very hard. If I am and are taking seriously the possibility feeling fed up or unhappy does this that they may have a vocation to this mean I don’t have a vocation? If I life. God is certainly blessing us in a don’t like living in this country, or remarkable way, and we are full of don’t get on with certain of my broth- gratitude.