The monk lives by the Word. He breathes it in from his rising - Lord, open my lips and I shall proclaim your praise - until his resting - Now, Master, let your servant go in peace. Your Word has been fulfilled.

They gather together in Church seven times every day to recite, hear, chant, and meditate upon the Word of God in the Scripture they live by, and that tells their story as a believing community. In a very real sense the monk becomes the Word en-fleshed, so fully is he plunged into its mediating sign. As he walks the cloister the Word echoes all around him, so drenched in it has the very building become.

Every week at the Abbey of the Genesee in Western New York there is a band of brothers whom together chant the entire 150 psalms, and when it’s over begin again. Some brothers there have been doing this every day for over fifty years. This is an immersion that is difficult to comprehend, and one that transforms a psych, the intellect, one’s very being so completely that a new creation is born: the new man, the pilgrim following the sound of the Word wherever it leads. He is a man of God.

That is not to say one should expect angels at the Abbey of the Genesee or at any monastery. They are flesh and blood just like the rest of us, and have their own problems collectively and personally, some of which they’ll carry all the way to the end, as St. Paul reminds us we’ll all do(2 Cor 12:7). Still, there is a powerful presence felt at the Abbey, especially felt when the monks file in silently one by one in preparation for prayer. It is the Word which is felt, carried in the flesh and blood heart of each of the brothers as they enter the Church… carried in love.