Camaldolese Monks, OSB a quarterly newsletter New Camaldoli Hermitage Summer 2014 • Vol. 20, Issue 3 62475 Highway 1, Big Sur, CA 93920 • 831-667-2456 • www.contemplation.com Brother Gabriel and Father Thomas Celebrate 50 Years Brother Gabriel Kirby was born in the Sacraments of Christian initiation in 1930 into a distinguished Catholic family 1961. Shortly thereafter Thomas visited of Los Angeles. One of his late sisters was the newly-founded Camaldolese Hermit- a Good Shepherd sister, and another is a age, which he entered the following year. Carmelite nun. He received a BA in Ge- From then on Fr. Thomas has had a storied ography, and completed everything for an career as a Camaldolese monk. He lived MA except for writing his thesis. He then for many years at the Monastery of Ca- traveled extensively, at one point he trav- maldoli, but has also resided in India and eling through Kenya, Africa, hitch-hiking Brazil as well as California. From 1967 wherever he could with a 40 lb. pack on to 1972 he studied ecumenical theology his back. Gabriel then came to the Hermit- at Sant’Anselmo in Rome; from 1972 age in 1962 when the community was just to1976 he was at Fordham University, beginning, and made his first profession in where he wrote his Ph.D dissertation, the 1964. Through the years he has served the well-known and beloved Yoga and the Je- community in so many generous minis- sus Prayer Tradition. He was then back tries, including sacristan and secretary to at Camaldoli where he began composing the Chapter, doing the town trip for many music for the Italian Camaldolese Psalter, years, washing and ironing altar linens and and taught Hindu and Buddhist monasti- audio recording. Brother Gabriel is an art- cism in Rome. During this era he also ist who has delighted many with his gifted Father Thomas Matus and Brother Gabriel made his first of many trips to India. He paintings in oil and water color, his deeply Kirby outside the chapel at New Camaldoli. was back at New Camaldoli in the early religious poetry and other spiritual writ- 1980s where he began work on the Eng- ing, music, and photography. Gabriel was maldoli. Brother Gabriel said of himself lish version of the Camaldolese Psalter. one of the first monks of New Camaldoli that becoming a monk was the last thing He served on the General Council of the to participate in the Catholic Charismatic in the world he ever wanted to do, but congregation from 1999 to 2005, and also Renewal, and still participates annually in God changed all that in an instant. Now, served two terms as a consultant for the the major Charismatic meetings in Cali- he says, it is the last thing he will ever do Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dia- fornia. He likes to point out that he sees – “unless God is still full of surprises.” logue. After that he made several trips to no conflict between that and his contem- our community in Brazil, shoring up that plative monastic life. In honor of his 50th Father Thomas Matus was born in small presence, and since 2006 he has anniversary he just returned from a pil- Hollywood, California in 1942, and his been full time back in the US, residing at grimage to Italy where he participated in parents raised him to be, to use the mod- Incarnation Monastery, Berkeley, teach- the International Charismatic Convention ern parlance, “spiritual-not-religious.” ing courses on history, spirituality and in- in Rome with his Carmelite sister, where But in 1951 he saw the movie “Quo Va- terreligious dialogue at the Jesuit School they both met with Pope Francis. He then dis,” and afterwards felt a strong need to of Theology. Fr. Thomas is also often back visited our Camaldolese communities be baptized, and was so on Easter Sun- with us in Big Sur, of which he himself of San Gregorio in Rome, the Sacro Er- day in 1952 at a Baptist Sunday School. says, “Every grace and gift that came to emo and Monastero of Camaldoli and the Thomas discovered monasticism and me since I entered then have been thanks tomb of Saint Romuald in Fabriano. We contemplative life by reading the “Au- to my vows at New Camaldoli Hermit- know Gabriel to be a humble and faith- tobiography of a Yogi” in 1954 and was age.” ful man devoted to the Lord in prayer and initiated into Kriya Yoga in 1958 while at- scripture, and it is a joy to worship and tending college as a Music major. But in minister with him daily here at New Ca- 1960 he realized that the Catholic Church was to be his guru and so he received dd 2 ~ New Camaldoli Hermitage Norbert: If You Love Me You Will Feed My Sheep Prior Cyprian Consiglio, OSB Cam. I have a special affection for Saint Norbert, partially because and spent several years alternating between hermit and preacher I was ordained on his feast day (June 6th), but also because he is a (a form of life that might look very tempting to a Camaldolese fascinating figure born in a fascinating era in Church and monas- monk!). It’s like two out of our three-fold good—solitude and tic history. In my favorite book on monastic history (Medieval evangelization—but­­ he was missing one thing––community. It’s Monasticism by C. H. Lawrence), Norbert is written about in the one thing to be a charismatic wandering preacher or a visiting same chapter as our Saint Romuald, entitled “The Quest for the celebrity; it’s a whole other thing to live a life of charity next Primitive.” This was an era in the Church, the first centuries of door to someone for 20, 30, 50 years, and sit next to them in the 2nd millennium, when a great many reforms and experiments choir each day when the act has worn thin. Norbert was given were happening in monasticism. The Church’s liturgy only rec- the chapel at a place called Prémontré in France and soon enough ognizes Norbert as a bishop, but he was a hermit, a preacher, a disciples gathered around him, both lay men and women as well wanderer as well as a canon, to prove yet again that there are all as clergy. Norbert formed them into a group of hermits and kinds of monks! preachers, very much in his own mold. And so the order of Pré- For many years now I’ve been par- monstratensians grew up, named, like us, ticularly fascinated with the dynamic be- When we make ourselves available after the place. The life he designed for tween the active and the contemplative to the Spirit, there is a chance them was a combination of community life, the opposition and even the false that we will be taken where we do life organized around the ideal of asceti- dilemma that we often place between not want to go and asked to do cal poverty with a ministry of evangeli- the two in Christianity. I’ve been read- cal missionary preaching. This is before ing a series of articles from the 1950s by something that we did not have on the days of the mendicant orders, and in our Fr. Benedetto Calati entitled simply our five-year plan. a way Norbert was prescient of the Fran- “Vita attiva e vita contemplativa”—“The ciscans and the Dominicans in his long- Active Life and the Contemplative Life,” in which he is trying to ing for both evangelical poverty and evangelization. Eventually show that from the beginning of our own Camaldolese tradition Norbert was called on to be the bishop of Magdeburg back in it was assumed that there was really no opposition between the Germany, and became more and more absorbed in missionary two, as long as we always return to the source, to the contem- activity. It is his successor Hugh de Fosses who is credited with plative. And he traces the lineage of Blessed Rudolf, the first being the real architect of the order. But whereas Norbert based prior of Camaldoli who wrote the early Constitutions, and Saint his original concept for himself and his disciples on the Rule of Peter Damian of Fonte Avellana back to their sources in Saint Augustine, Hugh leaned a little more heavily on the Cistercians, Augustine and Saint Gregory the Great. This is not to say that especially the customs of the great abbey of Cluny, meaning less there is no place for the purely contemplative life, but to say that on the pastoral aspect and more on the monastic. even we contemplative hermit monks still need to be reminded It’s sometimes said about Mother Teresa that she had a voca- from time to time, as do all Christians, that no follower of Jesus tion within a vocation. Well, Norbert himself seemed to have a vo- is exempt from following both of the two great commandments, cation within a vocation within a vocation: from canon to hermit- to love God and to love neighbor. And we hear it again in the preacher to monk to bishop. We, corporately and individually, are Gospel reading that we had on the feast of Norbert (Jn 21:15-19), always looking th which this year fell on Friday of the 7 Week of Easter: If you for convenient The quarterly newsletter is published by the love me, feed my sheep. If we love God, then we must manifest categories for Camaldolese Hermits of America for our that in charity.