A Retreat at La Trappe [pp. 862-883]

A RE TREAT AT LA TRArPPE.
and be in the chapel at three for the commencement of the
canonical office. Half-past two sounds rather startling as an
hour for rising, but it must be remembered that one goes to
bed at seven, which gives seven hours and a half for sleep.
The most important office performed for you by your
director is what he calls preparation for meditation. Three
times a day he comes to your room and spends half an hour
in an instruction which practically amounts to a sermon
preached for your special benefit. When he leaves you you go
on your knees and meditate for an hour on what he has said.
This sounds alarming, and is certainly difficult at first. I shall
not soon forget my first experience of it. I went carefully
over all the points in the discourse, amplified them, enlarged on
them, found the floor getting very hard and my knees very
sore, felt that I must have been kneeling for at least an hour,
and thereupon looked at my watch, to find that I had been on
my knees just fifteen minutes! But that was only the first
time, and one soon gets used to it; and I need hardly say
what a very excellent practice it proves to be. Then there is
free time which one can spend in private devotions, in walking
over the farm, or else, if so inclined, in giving a helping hand
with whatever work is just then going on.
Of the interior delights-the spiritual joys and consolations
of the retreat, how can I speak? Let them rather be imagined
by my readers, or better still, experienced by those of them
who are fortunate enough to be able to do so. One thing
I will say. It has frequently been declared, and I firmly believe it to be true, that no one can go to La Trappe and return home unchanged. The change wrought by your visit may
be greater or it may be less, but it will be sufficient to mark
an epoch in your life. You will have received an impression
too profound to be easily, if indeed ever, effaced. They tell of
a young man, not many years ago, a votary of fashion and
pleasure and an unbeliever, who, seeing a Trappist on the
street, and being attracted by his peculiar dress, was led from
pure curiosity to pay a visit to the monastery of Aiguebelle, in
France. Struck by what he saw he decided to remain, first for
a day, then for a time sufficient to allow of his instruction and
reception into the church, and finally for his novitiate. He has
never passed out of those gates he entered so lightly on his
mission of curiosity, and is still a happy inmate of the monastery of Aiguebelle.
And now for a few practical instructions as to how to get
to the monastery. N. D. du Lac is situated on the road be
882
[Mar.,