I’ve always loved the word vespers because it sounds like a precious form of whispers, but I’d never heard vespers sung until I recently discovered a sacred oasis at the Abbey of Regina Laudis in northwestern Connecticut. The 40 cloistered Benedictine nuns who live a contemplative life here sing the Psalms, expressed through Gregorian chant, seven times a day and once a night. When I arrived early on a Saturday evening, I wasn’t sure I had found the right place: The outside of the Church of Jesu Fili Mariae resembles a rustic barn nestled in hundreds of acres of woods.
But when I entered the building with its soaring ceiling of knotty pine beams, windowed walls imbuing the air with dreamy light, and the grille placed behind the altar, I was awash in a sense of peace that is home. Within a few minutes, I already began to plan when I could return there.
‘A Lightness Overtook Me’
From the back of the church, the nuns in black and white robes filed in, taking their assigned places with Psalters on the other side of the grille. While as Benedictines they welcome all as Christ, this separation creates physical and spiritual protection for them during worship when others from outside their community attend. I’d never seen a grille before, and I was absolutely fascinated, as it held a beauty I had not anticipated. A grid of thin metal lines adorned with curved glass and copper crosses, it is a barrier, both delicate and strong, firmly held in place as a solid, clear boundary, and yet, it has an openness, an airiness. Breezes, shadows, light, scents of incense and lilies: All of it can pass through easily, back and forth. It is neither a wall nor a screen; tall candles burn on top. It’s a way to turn to their inner world freely, while still seeing the outside world fully.
Other visitors arrived, sitting on the chairs near me: a few single women and clusters of bearded workers in jeans and sweatshirts. When vespers began, the nuns’ ethereal chanting floated through the grille, the Latin cadences entering and filling our hearts. A lightness overtook me as I imitated the faithful, bowing deeply when they bowed. The timeless service, the maternal beauty of blending voices—it was everything. The chants that have been sung over 1,500 years refreshed our wearied spirits.
Creating Our Personal Grille
The vespers whispered within us, and the healing potency of that grille hummed within me for days. The nuns of Regina Laudis model the safeguarding of our connection to God. I began to wonder: Can we take this image and apply it to our own lives? This “inner grille” will look different for each of us. How can we follow their example and create a boundary with our chaotic world? Maybe if we spend time reflecting on what our prayer lives need, then put it solidly into place, we can create our own personal grille to protect our relationship with God.
The nuns embrace the motto ora et labora (prayer and work), the flow of it. Returning to chant throughout the day allows them to embody their charism of “caring for all things as if they are vessels of the altar.” After exiting the enclosure, the nuns begin their work once again in cloistered life at the abbey, making prize-winning yogurt and cheeses, tending to their herds of cows and sheep, laboring within their orchards and gardens.
Yet that protected place remains a sanctuary of wholeness to which they repeatedly return. They don’t run back behind the grille in a panic, they stride evenly and with hope and purpose, because it is already formed, ready to receive them. Certainly, our lives are quite different from the nuns of Regina Laudis. But don’t we have their same longing to return, again and again, to the safe enclosure of God’s peace and grace? Perhaps we, too, can create more lightness, freedom, and beauty in our communication with God by setting a boundary, and not being quite so tangled up with the world.
Prayer of St. Benedict
Almighty God,
give me wisdom to perceive you,
intelligence to understand you,
diligence to seek you,
patience to wait for you,
eyes to behold you,
a heart to meditate upon you,
and life to proclaim you,
through the power of the spirit of Our Lord Jesus Christ.
Amen.
