By Michael Patrick O’Brien–
Despite popular belief, St. Augustine probably did not say that the person who sings prays twice (see: Because sometimes the internet is wrong: Augustine: He who sings prays twice). It is a lovely sentiment, however, and someone should get credit for it. I nominate some professional pray-ers, the Trappist monks who used to live in Huntsville, Utah, for their love of a wonderful variety of music.
My family visited the Ogden Valley monastery regularly for about a decade starting in the early 1970s. The monks sang 7 or 8 times a day, running through the entire psalter (the Book of Psalms) about every two weeks. Their a cappella Gregorian chant was beautiful, and still serves as a source of peace for me today. (see: Can’t Sleep? Sing Like a Monk!) It is not, however, the only music I learned from them.
The Abbey’s leader at the time, Father Emmanuel Spillane, joined the monastery after serving as a parish priest in Los Angeles. He loved guitar music and sponsored several folk masses in Huntsville. The monks and other participating musicians liked the works of Gregory Norbet, who at the time was a Benedictine monk at Weston Priory in Vermont. We sang songs like “Come to Me,” “Wherever You Go,” and “All I Ask of You.” Now fixtures at Catholic liturgies, these songs were brand new at the time.
Hearing and singing Norbet’s song “Come Back to Me” all those years ago was my introduction to the Book of Hosea, a minor prophet who had a major problem in his personal life—an unfaithful wife named Gomer. From that unfaithfulness emerged a wonderful story of reconciliation and forgiveness, where love overcame all, when Hosea decided to “bring her into the wilderness, and speak tenderly to her.” (Hosea 2:14) We need more tender words spoken in our modern wilderness.
The Utah monks also liked music by nuns. One day a Trappist lent us a cassette of songs by the Medical Mission Sisters, a group of Catholic Sisters engaged in professional medical work and…making music! They had a hit song called “Joy Is Like The Rain” as well as an amusing tribute to Zacchaeus, the little tax collector from Jericho who had to climb a tree to see Jesus (listen here: Zacchaeus).
The music we heard via Holy Trinity Abbey was not always biblical or even obviously religious. One of the younger novices told us about a monastic prayer service featuring popular music of the era, including songs from Neil Diamond (“He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother”), Simon and Garfunkel (“Bridge over Troubled Water”), and James Taylor (Carole King’s “You’ve Got a Friend”).
And every once in a while, the first Trappist monk we met, Brother Felix McHale, would break out in Irish ditties. Felix was known and loved all over the Ogden Valley for many things; two of them were his enthusiasm for singing and his pluck in performing despite widespread nagging doubts about his ability to do so on key. As his friend Brother Nicholas Prinster used to say, “Brother Felix thinks he can sing.”
Because no one else can really claim pride of authorship for the allegedly-Augustinian reference to singing as twice-baked prayer, I credit the Utah monks. Their life was a prayer and a song, expressed with both silence and sound.
By finding joy and meaning in so many different kinds of music, the Trappist monks convinced me that the created world is a composition, a symphony of God’s grace. Sometimes we sing along, at times we add our own verses, and often we just listen. But we are all part of the band.
*Mike O’Brien is a writer and attorney living in Salt Lake City, Utah. He is writing a book about growing up with the monks at the old Trappist monastery in Huntsville, Utah.
