The most sacred surprise on another oridinary day in Rome

Today was a remarkable day.

Normal days as a benedictine volunteer in Rome are fairly simple. I wake up and try to get to morning prayer on time. After prayer is breakfast, a two-to-four hour shift in the library (depending on the day), midday prayer and finally an hour shift cleaning the refectory. Then I’m free for four or five hours until vespers. I usually walk around the eternal city, read in my room or take a nap. After vespers and dinner – I go to sleep.

Today, however, was different. It was remarkable.

Technically this was a normal day when compared to most major liturgical feasts, which see major revisions to the schedule. They also see my shifting away from my normal work in the library to the kitchen and refectory to set up for the large meals. There was nothing abnormal in that moment though. Even with the pending arrival of an importance guest, most of my day was regular.

The mass should have felt strange, but there was a sense of familiarity to it. Same Formula as always. It was the same language as I had struggled with for three months. The celebrant, though surrounded by an entourage, looked like he could have been my parish priest or a friend of my grandparents. When a con-celebrant accidentally knocked off the celebrants zuccheto, it felt like the same sort of innocent mistake an altar-server would make at home.

Yet, scuttling into the line of monks wrapping around the wall of the cloister I felt that sense of ordinariness melt away. There we waited, until a group of suited men came out occulting the view of our white-clad guest. But quickly he came nearer and nearer until, before I knew it, he was in front of me – reaching for my outstretched hand.

That is how I shook the hand of his holiness, Pope Leo XIV, at roughly 6:00 PM on November 11th following the celebration of the consecration of the Pontifical Atheneo Sant’Anselmo. The momentous nature of this occasion is something to remark upon.

Most of the BVC experience is uninteresting. Though there are moments of struggle or surprise in each day, most of it is the quotidiennal prayer, work and leisure of Benedictine life.

In this sense, there is little difference between the Benedictine Volunteer Corps and our ordinary lives. Each day has the horizons for tremendous opportunities and various struggles but most of the time we wallow through a set of habitual events and tasks we find rather unengaging.

The difference is that Volunteers are in a different place, immersed in a monastic lifestyle and culture unfamiliar to us. Each day I try to stay engaged because the familiarity which I could dismiss work and study in Minnesota is unavailable to me.

In this environment, in this state of mind, when something does happen which breaks the normal cadence of monastic life, I come to not only realize how enriching the experience is, but how enriching normal life can be. Slowly the expectedness of the unexpected is revealed and the magical in the monotonous becomes apparent.

All of that to say, two hours later, I not only appreciated how dishwashing had secured an opportunity to shake the popes hand; I appreciated dishwashing as an act a bit more.

I won’t pretend the Benedictine Volunteer Corps is all fun and games. It can often feel insignificant as you alternate between cycles of work and prayer. Then moments occur which disclose the wonder and strangeness of the situation one finds himself in.

Sometimes that’s a brief, remarkable meeting with the Pope.