Gentle obedience
Saint Benedict’s
[Words of Sister Imogene Blatz, OSB]
On the afternoon of August 16, 1952, I knelt and recited the prayers for the dying at the bedside of 92-year-old Mother Cecilia Kapsner. Just 20 years earlier I had timidly knocked at her office door to ask if I had “passed chapter” and would be permitted to pronounce perpetual vows. She was my junior mistress, but because I had spent my years as a junior sister in Tacoma, Washington, this had been my first meeting with her.
The second came a few days later when, during our eight-day retreat prior to profession, she found me napping with my head on the table in the juniorate. With a gentle tap on the shoulder she woke me and asked, “Sister, did you take a siesta?” In reply to my negative response she said, “You should.”
[From Imogene Blatz, OSB, and Alard Zimmer, OSB, Threads from Our Tapestry: Benedictine Women in Central Minnesota (St. Cloud, Minnesota: North Star Press, 994), 39.]
Saint John’s
Abbot Peter [Engel] wanted the Saint John’s family to grow in charity and knowledge through generous living according to the precepts of Saint Benedict’s Rule. Wisely and kindly he strove for this by example and counsel.
If this ideal was at times lost by one or the other, he strove meekly and patiently to win him back to his first fervor.
Those who too often missed morning choir could expect to have Abbot Peter knock on their rooms on his way to the choir, and say: “Father, we are just about to begin Lauds,”
[From Colman Barry, OSB, Worship and Work, 3rd ed. (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1993), 250.]