When Carmelites meet Benedictines it is Heaven

NZ Catholic
March 10-23, 2013 No. 410

Picture this. Inside a little church deep in the countryside, a nun kneels at a prie-dieu before the Blessed Sacrament on the altar. Offstage, a bell rings. Enter left, a second nun. The first nun rises, the two genuflect together before the monstrance, the first nun exits as the second takes her place.

It’s a scene re-enacted every half-hour, twentyfour/seven, in a Tyburn monastery at Ngakuru and others around the world, and my lasting impression of a weekend spent there late in January.

The church, cloister, guest house and gardens are found only after many twists and turns and dead ends, poised above a tributary of the Waikato. Pilgrims tell of consulting Google, GPS and road maps and fearing they’ve lost their way, nearly turning back. Belatedly our party realises that some agency – maybe, as one suggests, the Stokers’ Union (one of her several epithets for the Evil One) - has done away with the vital sign ‘Dod’s Road’ which a witty nun, we discover, has punned for the sign at the monastery gate: ‘God’s Road’.

The nuns wear full Benedictine habits. Always.  At the window of my room (dedicated to ‘Cor Jesu – Infinite in Majesty’) I behold a sudden epiphany. Sunglasses and  wide-brimmed hats are commonplace in January but combined with wimple, veil and face mask, the effect is surreal. Sister has evidently been detailed to clean the verandah, and she isn’t doing it by halves.

Early Saturday evening, our group has a talk on Tyburn from Mother Seraphim.  And seraphic she truly is. Young, pretty,  Asian. She says, ‘Are you Catholics?’ We say, ‘Is the Pope? We’re Carmelites.’  

All sorts come to Tyburn. Mother Seraphim cheerfully admits to being politically incorrect: Catholic Women’s Leaguers might be told that chatter in church is irreverent. Schoolgirls are told there is a hell and if they sleep with their boyfriends and don’t repent, they’ll go there. Concessions to modernity are few; Tyburn’s two computers are locked when not in authorised use. Unlike most religious orders (some actually forbid wearing habits in public) if they ever venture out it’s in full regalia. And I bet they meet with respect, if not awe.

Which brings us to the heart of the matter - the Sacred Heart of Jesus and his Adorers, the nuns of Tyburn. ‘Awesome’ is what the checkout operator says now when you produce your own bag. Or the right change. And we may eat at Café Divine, or Chapel. When our instinct for the sublime isn’t met,  we descend to the gorblimey.

As Tyburn eloquently attests, we Catholics possess the sublime. So why aren’t we all adorers? Belief in the Eucharist is the touchstone of the true disciple, the one who stays when others walk no more with him. Veiled in tabernacle and monstrance, Jesus inflames hearts now just as he did disguised as a traveller on the road to Emmaus.

To believe that we must overcome our diffidence, take the risk. Be there. Learn to believe and to love.