Trappist monks look ahead to Christmas otherwise than the remainder of us, with out coloured lights, yard decorations or vacation events. As a substitute of Bing Crosby or Mariah Carey, an Iowa monastery will get the spirit of the season from an organ constructed by Latter-day Saint artisans in Utah.
I found this shocking musical reality on the New Melleray Abbey close to Dubuque whereas visiting my good friend Father Brendan Freeman. The 82-year-old Catholic monk joined the abbey six a long time in the past, led it from 1984 to 2013, and now serves once more as chief.
I first met Father Brendan whereas he was in northern Utah, serving to Trappist monks shut Ogden Valley’s beloved Abbey of the Holy Trinity. He additionally helped me with “Monastery Mornings,” my 2021 memoir about rising up on the Huntsville monastery.
When my spouse and I had been in Iowa not too long ago, Father Brendan confirmed us round his 173-year-old abbey, based throughout the Potato Famine by monks from Eire. We noticed a peaceable cemetery with black crosses relationship from 1850, a stunning bell tower and a surprising limestone church with 3-foot-thick partitions and arched Gothic home windows.
Within the chapel, my eyes fell upon a 15-foot-tall pink oak and pipe organ subsequent to the monks’ choir stalls.
“That organ is from Utah,” Father Brendan instructed us, “made by the Bigelow firm in American Fork.” I used to be intrigued, so I appeared it up.
Since 1978, Bigelow & Co. has hand-built or restored virtually 4 dozen organs for church buildings, houses, universities and museums throughout the USA. As a boy, firm founder Mike Bigelow fell in love with the instrument whereas taking part in for his Latter-day Saint congregation.
Bigelow apprenticed with one of many nation’s greatest organ makers. Now he, his household and a group of consultants make their very own music in a historic 1903 pink brick former Latter-day Saint meetinghouse. The chapel and cultural corridor are workshops, and the Bigelows used to reside proper upstairs.
(Bigelow Organs) The Bigelow & Co. workshop, the place hand-built organs are made, is on this historic 1903 former Latter-day Saint meetinghouse in American Fork.
Bigelow instructed me that within the early Eighties, the Iowa Trappists requested him to make an organ for his or her renovated church. After visiting the abbey, Bigelow designed an organ within the Italian type, with a softer and subtler sound than the highly effective organs made within the German custom.
He lived within the abbey guesthouse for a number of weeks whereas putting in the organ. Father Brendan remembers that Bigelow all the time attended Sunday providers on the Dubuque ward, or congregation, of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
“Being in rural Iowa, we’ve virtually no contact with the Latter-day Saints,” the Catholic monk mentioned. “Attending to know Michael opened our eyes to a distinct expression of religion.”
Based on Father Brendan, “In Gregorian chant, the phrases are outstanding. The music is on the service of the phrases. The organ additionally should comply with this sample.” He mentioned Bigelow was “a great listener” and created the proper instrument for the monastery, one “integral to our reward and worship of God.”
After Bigelow put in the organ, a Julliard-trained monk performed a dedicatory live performance on it in 1985, and known as it probably the greatest he’s ever performed at a monastery. Featured on the Bigelow web site website as the corporate’s “Opus 11,” the organ continues to be used 4 a long time later by the monks on daily basis.
The Trappists awake within the wee hours to start out a day that features Mass and 7 chanting providers, known as the Liturgy of the Hours. The monks sing your entire Ebook of Psalms — known as the Psalter — each two weeks.
Their Bigelow organ facilitates this lyrical praying all 12 months. In late November and early December, nevertheless, the Iowa monk-song adjustments, tailored for Introduction, the four-week interval earlier than Christmas Day.
“In a monastery, Introduction is noticed with deep appreciation for its distinctive character,” the New Melleray monks clarify on their web site. “This isn’t procuring season for monks. It’s not Christmas. Christmas decorations, which within the basic tradition seem shortly after Thanksgiving, are nowhere in sight in a monastery till Christmas Eve. Introduction and Christmas are totally different. Introduction is the interval of joyful expectation. Christmas is the celebration of the start of God into the world, born of Mary.”
The Introduction chants on the abbey characteristic totally different antiphons, or refrains, targeted on the themes of ready, anticipation and persistence. Father Brendan’s good friend (and former Utah monk) Father Charles Cummings famous the worth of ready in his 2015 ebook, “Monastic Practices,” that “the power to attend is attribute of those that have realized to decelerate and reside within the fullness of the current second.”
Finally, in fact, the ready ends and Christmas arrives. Mike Bigelow instructed me that the week earlier than, he’ll sing together with one in every of his organs throughout vacation chorale concert events on the Provo Central Stake Heart of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He’ll spend Dec. 24 at residence along with his household.
(New Melleray Abbey) The chapel at Iowa’s New Melleray Abbey is adorned for Christmas.
The New Melleray Trappists shall be at residence with their monastic household, too. At Christmas Eve Midnight Mass, the abbey church bells will ring, and the Iowa monks will sing hymns like “Angels We Have Heard on Excessive” and “It Got here Upon a Midnight Clear.” Their Utah organ will punctuate this second of pleasure to the world.
Maybe the Iowa monks clarify all of it greatest: “There’s something exhilarating about seeing all of the Christmas decorations come out and on the very day by which all of the hymns, antiphons and prayers all shift from sober foretelling of the Lord’s look to jubilant celebration of his start. The miracle finds expression within the full transformation of our ordinarily very austere and plain monastic chapel right into a banquet of greenery, candlelight and flowering poinsettias.”
Michael Patrick O’Brien is a author and lawyer dwelling in Salt Lake Metropolis who typically represents The Salt Lake Tribune in authorized issues. His ebook “Monastery Mornings: My Uncommon Boyhood Among the many Saints and Monks,” about rising up with the monks at an previous Trappist monastery in Huntsville, was revealed by Paraclete Press and chosen by the League of Utah Writers as one of the best nonfiction ebook of 2022.