Ava - Sing the Same Song
written Feb 9, 2002

[Those of you with technical expertise in Catholic worship are encouraged to offer corrections especially in the technical language. When it goes on the web, this story will be illustrated with numerous photos. Until then convoluted verbal descriptions will have to do.]

AVA - Sing the same song to the Lord

I know, I know! The Psalmist says we should sing a new song to the Lord. But the Trappists are heirs of a tradition of singing, chanting or reciting the psalms that goes back for millennia. They may have been sung this way even before Solomon's Temple was built. The question which has always intrigued me is how they were used liturgically in the Temple. I know they were sung in procession but what other forms of worship were conducted there? Did they have daily offices? Acts 3:1 says that after the resurrection the disciples continued to go to the Temple for prayer in that case at 3:00 p.m. "the hour of prayer". But was it private prayer or corporate prayer? I really don't have an answer to those questions. (As I tell my students, I may not have an answer to your questions but I will have a response.)

Since my visit to Ava, I do have the answer to another question. How are the hours observed in a different Cistercian abbey? That is what I will be addressing in this essay. How does Ava sing those same songs to the Lord? This reminds me of my history professors' favorite exam question - Compare and contrast . . . . Since I only have Vina and Ava to compare and contrast at this point, I am afraid that is what I will be doing. I just don't want what I say to come across as a critique of either as both are very rich and lovely worship experiences.

Let me begin with the church. If you saw my remarks on the Abbey itself, you may have noticed that I didn't describe the church. I wanted to save that for this story, to provide the context for the worship I will describe. The church at Ava is very modern with cinder block walls painted white, a blond wood paneling covering the whole East wall and a north wall with several floor-to-ceiling windows of modern glass. They are a bit like the abstract squares of Mondrian but not as sterile. They have all the liturgical colors - clear/white, red, light gold, green and purple. The green and gold predominate. The sun streams in through them filling the room with a warm light. I noticed on Sunday that the concelebrants' stoles are a lime green matched to the green in the windows. The light echoes from the stoles as if they are pulling the sunlight further into the room. After dark, the room is illuminated with half a dozen large opaque globe-shaped chandeliers, producing a full and brilliant but not harsh light. Then again, quite a bit of liturgy is done completely in the dark. The overall effect of the white walls, pale wood and full light is that the place is filled with the light of Christ. Thanks be to God.

The east wall holds really only three items. High and center is a crucifix in a pale wood. From old pictures in the hallway it looks as though this may previously have been a processional cross. To the lower left is an icon of the Madonna and Child with a single candle before it. Compline is sung in utter darkness until just before the Salve which is sung only in English. A monk comes forward and lights that single candle so that the singing may focus on that single pale illumination of the icon. Centered below the cross is an aumbry for the reservation of the Blessed Sacrament with a green glassed, always burning candle to its right. (When we were building the new nave at Paradise, I learned that a freestanding place for reservation is a tabernacle but, if it is recessed into the wall, it is an aumbry.) The only furnishings are an altar table and ambo made of local woods pieced together in strips of light and dark. (At the same time I learned that you can have a pulpit and a lectern where Scripture is read but if both are done at the same place it is called an ambo.) The abbot's crozier sits before his stall which is at the far right end of the choir.

Spare Trappist simplicity just like Vina with the few functional items needed becoming symbols in themselves. There is however no hugely prominent chair for the priest who presides at Eucharist.

The shape of the room is nearly square. The area of the monks' choir is, I would estimate, perfectly square with the groups of three or four stalls each arranged in a U shape, facing the altar/east. The stalls are a darker wood. There are two groups of stalls on the north and south sides with a line of prayer desks in front of the monks’ seats to hold the books they are using. On the front side of those desks is another row of seats with shelves under them for books. As there is no desk, the books must be held while in use. Ordinarily these front seats are unoccupied but with all the visiting dignitaries they were often full up with monks displaced "downward" by visiting abbots. On Monday morning the preacher commented that they were returning to ordinary time, "almost back to our own stalls." He did thank the three remaining abbots for staying on "so we don't have to go cold turkey."

Under each "desk" where the monks' Psalters are open there is a simple shelf for other books which has the four small colored binders to hold all the music. One is labeled "Temp" presumably for TP (tempus paschalis?), that is Easter Season. Labels also say "COM" and "GEN" for common or general hymns and "ORD" for Ordinary Time. Some books were unlabeled. Perhaps the color of the book itself indicates the liturgical season. The hymns we sang during my visit were a few very standard Cistercian ones or modern, easy to sing, upbeat ones like "Morning has broken." I didn't see the range of Cistercian hymnody from many centuries which is a constant feature of worship at Vina. This reminds me of my experience with the rector of my last parish who definitely prefers easily singable and upbeat songs to the older hymns which can take one much deeper. To be fair, the singable ones are often Scripture set to music and I'm not saying Scripture can't take you deep. But I love the poetry/hymns that other Christians through the centuries have produced as a result of their meditation on the work God has done for us.

The Psalter they use at Ava is the same as Vina's, the Grail Psalter, a modern translation by the creators of the Jerusalem Bible. However at Ava they simply have a binder with the psalms from 1-150 instead of the material for each office in sequence in the large, thick binders at Vina. The binders at Vina are also in large print to reflect the large lettering of the medieval Psalters and, as those old books did, to help those of us with fading eyes. I missed the Vina binders but soon got the hang of the system at Ava. There is a card in the paperback Psalter given to each guest which has the ongoing list of psalms for each particular office in a two-week cycle. And there is a little booklet with a cover sheet telling the particulars for the offices that week and sheets of all the music that is intended to be sung. For the Sunday mass and special events a special booklet is made with the music inserted.

Each stall has a kneeler as do all the pews. When the monks enter they often kneel in prayer for a few minutes. Not unusual you may say but it is a great contrast to Vina where there are no kneelers anywhere. There is no kneeling except at the recollection in Compline and Benediction of the Sacrament on Sunday evening, and perhaps a bit in the Holy Week offices. I'm not saying the Vina men never kneel, far from it, but it isn't a part of the practice in choir. So what does it mean when a man kneels and then sits before an office? He prays and then he stops? When I see the men at Vina standing or sitting in their stalls before an office, I have no doubt that they are praying. What would a change of posture mean? I am also confused by crossing oneself at the beginning of an office which I assume means we are signing ourselves before we begin to pray. But at Lauds we have just said the Angelus. (Three Hail Marys separated by bells and done morning, noon and night. In Derry all Catholics had to be out of the walled city before the evening Angelus so the gates could be locked. They still remember the insult but the Angelus is still rung from the Church of Ireland cathedral.) So were we not praying during the Angelus and now, as we begin Lauds, we will start praying? Oh Marilla, you ask too many questions!! They also sit a good deal more at Ava.

At the bottom or west side of the U-shaped choir there is a set of three stalls on each side of a central aisle. Beyond and parallel to them are the four rows of pews for guests. If you sit in the front pew, just behind the monks, there is a definite sense of inclusion. You really feel a part of the community and of the worship. The layout at Vina has guests sitting in the right transept of a cruciform design. Since the church is quite large (at least four times the size of Ava) one has a feeling of estrangement and remoteness, of being a spectator. They have recently added a microphone system which really helps guests (and possibly the monks as well) hear the reader at the offices who is often at a lectern as far away as possible from the guests. The church is generally quite dark having small windows but the guests sit under glaring lights which make you think the Gestapo will be out to interview you at any moment. Now they are thinking about building a new church with essentially the same floor plan but twice the square footage and twice the height. Guests will be in the same transept and thus even more remote. My question is who will be paying the heating bill for all this? The profits from the harvest haven't been that large of late. Perhaps they will put in solar panels to help. In any event, the layout produces the biggest contrast. Ava has a sense of inclusion. At Vigils you would even say a sense of intimacy. At Vigils on the Feast of the Presentation the new abbot picked up his guitar and played the antiphon and cantored the Invitatory. It was lovely with an utter feeling of oneness.

Both abbeys are struggling with music. The range of cantorial talent is limited in both places but more so at Ava. Comments on my part about the music at Ava really are not fair as with my cold I could barely hear but there was only one cantor I could hear clearly, even at such close range. At Vina, since the death of our beloved Paul Bernard, we have not had an organist except on Sunday when a woman comes in from Willows. The voice of the monk in temporary vows has become the musical instrument for the whole community. At Ava one of the priests plays the organ at mass but not at the offices. This has led to simplification in the way the Psalter is used. At Vina, and I presume in most places, antiphonal singing is the mode of the vast majority of every office. Each side alternates with the other in a rhythm almost like that of a marching army though a bit gentler. On Sunday the psalms for the day office are sung responsively with the mass cantors taking the odd-numbered verses and the rest of us the even-numbered ones. We sing in unison for the Lord's Prayer and any hymn with four verses or less. We have responsorial singing in which the cantor sings the main verses and the choir responds with an antiphon refrain especially in the response [that's not the right technical term] after the readings at Lauds and Vespers and the Invitatory at Vigils. To summarize - side to side (antiphonally), front to back/leader to others (responsively), all together (unison) and by the cantor with people adding a refrain (responsorially).

At Ava I don't recall a single instance of antiphony. At ordinary Vigils and I believe at Compline, the psalms are recited in unison and all hymns are sung that way but then they were always only three verses. At Lauds and Vespers they sing responsively from cantor to people. In addition to that festal Vigil Invitatory I think a few things may have been done responsorially. Other than the things done responsorially there are no antiphons used before and after individual psalms or groups of psalms or canticles. None. The presider does read something before each psalm which I could never hear but it isn't taken up by the others or repeated at the end of the reading. Perhaps it is a bit of an introduction such as the phrase in italics printed in the Vina books before each psalm but never spoken aloud.

Finally, let me describe each office. Vigils I have mentioned with unison recitation. Some days they have "dark vigils" which seemed to me to be different only in that the Second Nocturn (a set of three psalms after the reading from Scripture and before the reading from "other Christian literature") was read in the darkened church by a single monk standing at the lighted lectern. Lauds and Vespers are done in a different sequence from Vina, with the hymn at the beginning.

I don't recall anything striking about the mass that follows Lauds, though they did do the incense differently. On the big occasion the Bishop used a traditional thurible hung on chains. But on Sunday morning Father Alberic used a simple pottery bowl with layers of sand, burning charcoal and incense which he waved in all the usual places. I felt as if I were looking back to ancient times before specialized liturgical equipment was available. Also, it was noiseless or in Trappist language - silient. I was told in my training that if the chains clank against the censer, you aren't doing it right but at Vina only Fr. Anthony works that way. At Ava no "ching, ching, ching."

Terce and None are done in the Chapter Room and thus are inaccessible for guests. When I asked about this, I was told that doing them in the church is very unusual in the US because men don't want to wear their work clothes into church. I was really shocked by that. To me a choir full of men in denim and other blue is an absolute statement that manual labor is sacred. I remember one time during harvest when it had rained a bit in the morning, leaving the men spattered with wet leaves, even on their faces. At Sext (just before the mid day meal) there they were, slumped, dirty and exhausted in their stalls and not rising til the very last sound of the bell. This is it, I thought. The work of God and manual labor, ora et labora, inextricably linked in the lives of these men. But at Ava the work time offices are not said before God in the church. The monks throw on the traditional black and white for midday/Sext in the choir but with pants cuffs and shirt sleeves sticking out everywhere. Trappist pragmatism - if it works, it doesn't have to be pretty.

At the end of Vespers they have something that at first confused me. A lay brother brings in a little shelf with two lit votive candles which he inserts under the aumbry on the east wall. Then a priest comes forward and brings out a ciborium (like a chalice but with a lid) containing the Blessed Sacrament and covered with a white cruciform veil of silk or brocade. There was a period of about 15 minutes before supper when one could sit in the church in silent meditation before this representation of Christ. I was confused about this because I thought this was like Sunday evening Benediction at Vina in which the Sacrament is brought out and put in an elaborate and beautiful cruciform monstrance and people kneel for a time of reflection. Fortunately one of the guests staying in the Abbey itself was the abbot of Berryville with whom I had many opportunities for conversation over meals. He has an impulse to teach which I find quite rare among Cistercians. When I seemed puzzled by something, he would immediately offer an explanation. This, he explained, was called exposition of the sacrament which is a bit less than what I was thinking of. And indeed at Sunday Vespers we did have Benediction. The sacrament was put in a quite unique monstrance - not cruciform. It is quite modern with a single gold spike up the middle and a wooden crescent moon shape beneath a hollow round of wood into which the wafer is placed. The round piece made me think of a cross section of a thick hollow bone, though it is made of wood. The whole thing made me think of the Turkish flag. Incense was lit and people did kneel. Compline is done in total darkness with the leaders using small flashlights.

Well, that is probably more than anyone would want to know. Each place has wonderful features. Each is a whole and rich experience of Cistercian worship but different. Things at Ava are not even like their mother house, New Melleray, I was told.