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__NEWS__Czech Republic________________
What Is a Monk?
French Cistercians are building a new abbey in a region still marked
by decades of Communist rule and lingering atheism
By Jean-Marie Guénois
In a school playground in Touzim, a small Czech village, a group of bewildered children ask: “Who are these men?” In front of them, two young Trappist monks stand in their monastic habit: long white robes, black scapulars, sandals, and leather belts. The schoolmistress answers: “They are monks.” She has to explain the meaning of that word, because in this part of the Sudetenland, after 50 years of Communism, nobody has ever seen a cleric. Eyes meet. Smiles are exchanged. Two worlds meet.
A few minutes later our two heroes, Brother Jean and Brother Procope, climbed into a small Fiat. The road is rough, and the noise of the gravel hitting the underside of the car, together with the enervating roar from the engine, disturb the silence of the forest. A vast glade opens up in front of them, seemingly untouched by the passage of traffic and even of time.
Time seems to be standing still at Novy Dvur. A visitor is reminded of a medieval engraving that depicted a robust monk in midair, jumping from one scaffolding to another. The effect of that engraving is almost magical, but here the vision is real. Here in 2001, Trappist monks are working to restore an 18th-century baroque farm. Their project is both old and new; they are founding the first contemplative monastery in the Czech Republic since its liberation from Communist rule.
The acrobatic monk, Brother Martin, is coming down the ladder. He is a Czech but also a monk of the Cistercian Abbey of Sept-Fons, near Moulins, in France. His own personal background runs parallel to the story of the adventure that is taking place here. Father Martin was originally a priest in the Diocese of Brno, in Moravia, a region of Czechoslovakia. He dreamt of living a contemplative life as often as he dreamt of political liberation. In January 1977, he joined with 243 Czechs in signing the famous Charter 77, in the petition drive led by Vaclav Havel. Soon after the Velvet Revolution brought him his new freedom, Father Martin became vicar general of his diocese. But two years later he asked his bishop for permission to fulfill his lifelong desire of leading a contemplative life—a way of life that has ceased to exist within his country’s boundaries. The bishop agreed.
Armed with that permission, one morning in August 1991 Father Martin, together with several other young men, pushed open the imposing gate of the abbey of Sept-Fons in Allier, France.
They were welcomed there, but communication with the monks of Sept-Fons was possible only by gestures, since none of the Czech contingent could speak a single word of French. Ten years later the community of 75 monks at Sept-Fons now includes a dozen monks of Czech origin.
“We would never have thought of founding a monastery in the Czech Republic,” remarked the abbot of Sept-Fons, Dom Patrick Olive. The abbot, now 53 years old, was elected in 1980 at the age of 33 and he has already given the monastic habit to 46 young men. This vocational affluence has made the vast abbey at Sept-Fons rather overcrowded. The only possible solutions were to push the old abbey walls outward or to build a new monastery. “Obviously, the second option, was taken,” the abbot observes —adding the phrase that is ubiquitous in monastic life: “God willing.”
Vocational surprises
In this case, God’s will has held some surprises for the men involved. Consider the Czech monks of Sept-Fons. “I did not choose this Abbey because of the Czech project,” states one of them, Brother Procope. “It is a call from God.” It is the cloistered monastic life these young Czechs intend to embrace, not a return to their native country. They took their final vows in this French abbey, intent on remaining there.
This deeply rooted attachment to the monastic way of life makes the odyssey of the Czech monks all the more interesting. Take for example the prior of the Abbey, Brother Samuel. He is a civil engineer who has retained the instincts and organizational sense he developed in his days of practicing that profession, before taking the habit. Now placed in charge of the Novy Dvur project, he can be found conferring with the foreman on the building site, negotiating with a civil servant, or sending an e-mail to another tradesman. Yet all these activities stop abruptly with the call to prayers, whether he is on a Czech road or on his retreat.
“It is our work,” Brother Samuel explains calmly of the building project. Manual work is, in fact, one of the principal characteristics of Cistercian spirituality, he reminds us: “The monk prays and works. Here the monks pray, and, in the guise of work, build an abbey.” Brother Samuel continues:
We are extremely vigilant; our aim remains spiritual and monastic. During the period of building, equilibrium is certainly difficult to find. This is what requires the most attention—at Sept-Fons, as well as at Novy Dvur. We are unfortunately always behind schedule. But this keeps our feet on the ground.
The monks are constantly challenged to find ways of maintaining the balance between work and prayer, between the uproar of construction work and the quiet of monastic contemplation. As they began their work on the Czech project, they set up a mini-monastery in an old, huge, and rather austere building a few miles from Novy Dvur. There they installed their quarters, with a chapel, a scriptorium, a chapter room, a dormitory, and a kitchen. The monks of Sept-Fons work in teams of six, with a replacement team from France arriving every five weeks. That system of rotation has several aims: to avoid disrupting the monks’ pattern of a life of prayer; to maintain their communal solitude; and to involve the maximum number of brothers from the French abbey in the Czech project. Brother Jean, a young Frenchman, is ending his period of duty as superior of the temporary house as this reporter arrives. He allows: “It is a blessing to be ‘disturbed’ for God’s work. But we are here to be monks and not to make a monastery!”
Prominently displayed at Brother Jean’s side is a superb architect’s model showing how the restored Novy Dvur will finally look. Novy Dvur—literally “New Court”—was a baroque farm built three centuries ago by the Czech builder Dienzenhofer. God provided the site, but insofar as is humanly possible the monks are leaving nothing to chance. The beautiful model bears the signature of John Pawson, an eminent London architect who spent years living in Japan. His style, with its simple, sober lines, is compatible with the spirit of the first Cistercian abbeys—in which he also found a source of inspiration.
Nothing, however, had prepared this architect—who had designed the luxurious Calvin Klein shop on New York’s Fifth Avenue and the spectacular air terminal of the Cathay Pacific Company in Hong Kong—to restore a farm building. It is admittedly a beautiful structure. But it is lost in a corner of the Sudetenland, a good hour away from Prague. And Pawson would be asked not simply to restore the old building, but to transform it into an abbey!
How did John Pawon become involved in the Novy Dvur project? The key to the mystery is that the abbot of Sept-Fons has a passion for architecture. It was a series of photographs of a New York store, seen in a professional magazine, that caught his eye; the abbot immediately recognized in those photos the architect’s Cistercian inspiration.
From that point things flowed naturally. There was an immediate ease in communications when the abbot contacted this famous architect and asked him to design the future monastery. Pawson not only accepted, but agreed to work on “gratis pro Deo” basis, charging only for his unavoidable expenses.
Rocky soil
The site of the new monastery furnishes the final twist to this story. This region of the Sudetenland was an old stronghold of the Warsaw Pact, which had earned the title, “the Red Belt.” Signs displayed around the towns not too many years ago informed visitors: “You are entering a land of Socialism and Peace.” Translated into today’s more candid language, that message might be: “You are in a region where Communism and anti-religious propaganda was all-powerful.”
The results of the years of Communist domination are summed up by Bishop Frantisek Radkovsky of Plzen, the diocese in which the Novy Dvur abbey is located. “I am the bishop of the most atheist diocese in the world,” he attests. The bishop offers that judgment with good humor, but the facts support his statement; overall church attendance in the region is a little over 1 percent.
There are other, historical factors here to explain the situation in the Plzen diocese. Many people here rejected the Church because Catholicism was closely associated with distant ruling powers: first the Austro-Hungarian empire and later Germany. There are still echoes from the case of the 15th-century reformer Jan Hus, who was burned alive by the Catholic Church in Prague. But from the perspective of Bishop Radkovsky, it is pointless to dwell on these past problems; only the present and the future count. And as he looks to the future he is anxious to have the support of the Cistercians at Novy Dvur. “Our situation is difficult,” he concedes. “We must therefore begin with prayers, and let the faith grow here under the protection of the prayers of the brothers.”
Another local resident can stand as a witness to the recent history of the region and its future prospects. Petr Moravek is a small man, bent by trials and exhausted, but still on his feet. Today he is a senator of the Czech Republic, after having worked as an electrician at the National Railway Company. For years under the Communist regime his professional aspirations were thwarted; he paid a high price for his Christian commitment. Now Moravek, a Social Democrat whose wife manages a rehabilitation center for handicapped people, speaks with the authority of a survivor. Weighing his words carefully, he announces: “We are here in a land with a mission.”
In sharp contrast to its Communist predecessor, the Czech government is also anxiously awaiting the completion of the Novy Dvur project. The Ministry of Culture gave approval in record time for the transformation of the old farmhouse—which is officially classified as a historic monument—into a monastery. In Prague, Jana Repova, the director of the government’s Bureau of Religious Affairs, remarks that “the peaceful witness of these working monks will be appreciated in the region.” At a local level, the Town Council of Touzim also has positive expectations. Mayor Josef Sebesta supports the Cistercians’ project, and assured this reporter that his civil servants respect and admire the monks, “who are easy to approach and who work for their living.”
Directly adjacent to the town hall in which Mayor Sebesta works there is a playground. In January 2001, as snow covered the region, the children on that playground could not recognize a monk. Those children, however, will be the real witnesses of the spring that is coming at Novy
Dvur.
Jean-Marie Guénois writes for the French newspaper
La Croix, in which this article originally appeared. It is reprinted here with permission.