The Salt Lake Tribune featured a front page article yesterday morning about the death of Brother Felix, one of the founding members of the Abbey of the Holy Trinity in Huntsville, UT. Holy Trinity is a Trappist monastery in the Benedictine tradition and was founded in the late 1940s as the parent monastery, The Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky, sought to establish a monastic community in the west. (See photos here)
I have spent some time on personal retreat at Holy Trinity and have always been humbled by the way the monks go about their work of prayer seven times a day and simple living. Their hospitality is quiet and attentive and sitting in the chapel listening to them chanting the psalms in the early morning hours is a deeply spiritual experience.
Brother Felix, like most monks, lived his life about as far out of the glare of the spotlight as one can. In this age of celebrity preachers, faithful men like Brother Felix remind me that fame always takes a back seat to faithfulness. His funeral was very simple – laying in state in the chapel while each of the monks took turns sitting with the body all night. The next morning, wrapped in a simple shroud, Brother Felix was laid to rest on a plywood slab in the midst of a small monastic cemetery where others whom the world will likely never know or remember.
But God remembers.
I'm thankful that there are people like Brother Felix and monks around the world who, at any hour of the day, are praying for the world and for the church. Some would say that their life of silence and simplicity is a waste of time, but I would argue that it's more a understanding of holy time and hospitality to the stranger.
As you spend time with the Lord today, give thanks for the life of Brother Felix and so many like him who teach us that time for prayer is never time wasted.
