When the office ended, we silently filed back to the dorter, and I promptly went back to sleep again. The same process was repeated just before dawn with the service of lauds, and after daybreak with prime. And although I enjoyed the beautiful canticles, I was exhausted from the interrupted sleep by the time the sun rose over the abbey wall.
Days followed one another, turning into weeks, then months. On some mornings, as I struggled to clear my head from the vapors of sleep, I thought about my mother and how she would let us stay in bed until the sun was high above the forest. I felt such longing for home then that I would imagine myself running out of the enclosure, through the abbey gate, and down to the town to find someone travelling in the direction of Bermersheim to take me there.
My new life was not what I had thought it would be. The gray earth of the tiny courtyard, the dull wood of the buildings, and the many hours of silence made me long for the colors of the world, even the wintry ones, and its vivid sounds. Amid the unnerving stillness of my existence, I even missed the games my sisters had sometimes persuaded me to play with them.
The study of the Scriptures and the Latin lessons with Jutta were the few bright spots in my days. They commenced when it became apparent that my reading skills, while sufficient for my mother’s gardening book, were inadequate for a deeper understanding of biblical passages. Twice a week after the midmorning service of terce, the usual monastic study time, Jutta sat with me at the table with a copy of Regula Benedicti to improve my Latin and enlighten me on the formal aspects of life in the Benedictine order.
“All of our daily activities are prescribed by The Rule,” she explained on the first day of the instruction, “written by our order’s founder, the Blessed Benedict of Norcia, in the year 530.”
I made a calculation in my head—that was nearly six centuries ago! At first I found it hard to fathom that life had existed at such a distant time, its reality clouded by the darkness of the ages. Yet out of those shadows, my imagination soon picked out familiar images; the world could not have been that different back then—the hilltops must have been just as green, the ribbons of the Nahe and the Glan equally sparkling under the sun. “He wrote it especially for our monastery all those years ago?” I asked wonderingly.
A shadow of a smile crossed Jutta’s lips but faded before it could blossom. “Our monastery did not exist at that time. The holy monk Disibod arrived between these rivers a hundred years later. Benedict had written for the existing communities as well as those that were yet to be founded.”
“Did monasteries in Benedict’s time have big churches and walls around them?” My mind was teeming with images of the bygone world.
“I suppose it depends on where they were located,” Jutta said. “Benedict’s abbey at Montecassino was known for its impressive size. It is still said to be the most beautiful abbey in all of the Italian peninsula. But there were also many small and poor foundations, just as there are today. The most important thing is,” she steered the conversation back to the text, “that The Rule has survived unchanged all this time, and it requires Benedictines to spend their lives in prayer, work, and fasting, and to hold themselves aloof from the worldly ways. It also bans unnecessary speech and laughter, and enjoins us to practice chastity, humility, and obedience to our superiors.”
I stared at my teacher, unsure of the meaning of ‘worldly ways’ and ‘chastity.’ Whatever these prescriptions referred to, they sounded harsh. I had already noticed that Jutta applied herself to fasting much more diligently than the others. Our typical fare, sent from the abbey kitchen once a day, consisted of black bread, boiled vegetables, water, and wine diluted according to the monastic custom. But Jutta ate hardly anything at all, taking only a piece of bread with a pinch of salt. “Does fasting make God happier with us?” I asked, unable to keep myself from glancing at her thin frame.
“God wants us to repent for the sins of the world, and the best way to do it is by denying ourselves those things that we find most pleasurable,” the magistra replied.
“Is it better than praying, going to Mass, and doing good deeds, then?”
“They are all necessary for the redemption of sins.”
“So God will not forgive us if we do good deeds and pray but don’t fast all the time?”
Jutta hesitated. “The sins of the world are too great to be redeemed by prayer and good works alone.” There was a hardness in her voice.
I was not satisfied. Why should one person, or even a group of anchoresses such as ourselves, take on the work of repenting for everyone else’s sins? Surely that was not a feasible task; there were many people in the world who did bad things. How could the four of us ever accomplish that goal?
Then something occurred to me. “But Sister, did not Jesus die for our sins so we would be saved?”
Jutta blinked, but before she could answer, the church bells rang out to summon the community to another service. She rose hastily. As I followed her to the chapel, I reflected that there had to be better ways to serve God than what she was asking of me.
My only other diversion was music. I soon memorized all the chants of the
