The Congregation of St. John monastery in Princeville — 35 miles east of Galesburg — is an eerily quiet place early on a Thursday morning. This silence is not because its members are still sleeping. Many of them are already up praying at that hour.

Silence is simply a way of life for those who live at the Catholic monastery. They believe that a contemplative lifestyle of prayer and rigorous study will bring them the closest to God.

Entering the men’s chapel at about 6:45 a.m., just before the beginning of Lauds (the first prayer office), the still-dim sky and the absolute silence of the grounds emphasizes the intensity of seeing 10 to 12 men on their knees on the hard, cold stone floor. They are in monk’s attire, complete with pointed hoods. Only a few candles are lit. Guests can take a prayer book from a table when they walk in, so as to follow along with the schedule of each mass or prayer.

“Silence isn’t a rule,” says Gina Franco, an assistant professor of English at Knox College who regularly attends Mass at the monastery and is likely to be here for Christmas. “It’s a guideline. They can speak, but they try to live in silence.”

Looking for spiritual direction
St. Joseph’s Priory in Princeville is a Catholic monastery affiliated with an order founded in 1975 by Marie-Dominique Philippe, a Dominican Father who then was a university professor in Switzerland. Franco learned about it from Michael Suarez, a Jesuit priest she met at Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference in Vermont.

Franco remembers that Suarez held an informal Mass at the conference and convinced Franco to look for spiritual direction in Galesburg or nearby by calling a local parish.

“Nancy Wong, an Oblate, which is a lay member of the Community of St. John, works at Corpus Christi parish and happened to answer the phone when I called,” Franco says. “She directed me to the Community when I explained that the Jesuit had piqued my interest. This is important because as an Oblate she’d spent several years deepening her faith with the Community, so she really understood what I would find there. I’m sure Father Suarez knew nothing of the Community.”

Franco has been visiting the monastery since 2006 and has converted to Catholicism.
“I had a small memory of Catholicism from around age 6,” Franco says. “I remembered just little things, mostly aesthetics of the Mass.”

Confirmed at age two as a Catholic but raised Pentecostal, Franco was not a believer in any of it when she asked that Jesuit priest why he believed in something so intense and contemplative. He told her: “Desire is the best thing ever to happen to theology. You’re an academic. You need to do some reading.”

Wong later said Franco might like the Brothers at the monastery since they’re more philosophical. Once Franco visited, one of the first things she tried to do was question the head monk, or Prior, Brother Joseph Mary. “I wanted to fight, but he wouldn’t fight with me,” Franco says. “He said if I had to live a more spiritual life, I had to work toward a confession, a life confession.”

Over the course of six months, Brother Joseph Mary sent Franco to read voraciously — writings from the monastery’s founder, Father Marie-Dominique Philippe, selections from the Catechism, and from other spiritual and mystical literature. After these readings and visits to the monastery, after learning Catholicism in way in which she’d never known it, Franco eventually was drawn in.

“I guess I couldn’t have been drawn in by a parish,” Franco says. “(This) is as close to Christian mysticism as I could get. First, I was drawn in aesthetically, then intellectually and then spiritually.”

Rigorous and intense life
To this day, Franco is amazed by the monks and nuns — called Brothers and Sisters at St. John — who live at the monastery.

“They’re all very young — most under 40,” she says. “They have an incredible will, and they are truly happy. From the outside, it looks like a beautiful life, and it’s easy to romanticize it, but it’s very rigorous and intense.”

The Brothers and Sisters live in two buildings at the monastery, only a small driveway apart. Each side of the grounds, the women’s side and men’s side, has its own chapel and living quarters. Classes are held at a conference center. Residents of the monastery generally take 12 classes a week in philosophy and theology, including “History of the Church” or classes that focus on various ones of the Ten Commandments.

Besides mass, there are four “offices” (or sessions) of silent prayer in the chapel every day during which the members of the monastery, and welcomed members from the outside community, follow a schedule of prayers and songs written on a dry-erase board on the wall.

Offices are meant to be sung, or chanted. The morning office is called Lauds, the afternoon office is called Sext, the evening office is called Vespers and one before bedtime is Compline.
Since everything is so quiet, voices travel, and echoes are abundant. Whispering is the main choice if speaking must occur, unless you are in the conference center, where talking is “allowed.”

The silence is considered devotion because it is not a steadfast rule, Franco explains. There is no punishment for speaking, but “you can’t hear God if your head is full of junk.” Members of the monastery simply strive to live that way because they desire a life of prayer and study.

Lifelong devotion
The youngest Brothers and Sisters are not there for the rest of their lives. They are living at the monastery with a definite direction: to live a contemplative lifestyle. They are called novices, people new to the community of the monastery, and they go through a long two-year process of taking and following the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. The Sisters are cloistered and much more difficult to make contact with than the men, so the process monks go through is easier to understand and more talked about than that of the women.

But there is a less rigorous way to experience this contemplative life. Young people in the area or from surrounding states can stay at the monastery for one year. This year, nine young adults are in a program called the Eagle Eye Institute, six women and three men.

It costs them each $250 a month to live on the monastery grounds and decide whether such a life is right for them. It is clear, however, after sitting in on one of Brother Joseph Mary’s classes about the commandment “Thou shall not steal” that some of them are still just toying with the idea of lifelong devotion.

One girl in the Eagle Eye Institute raises her hand. “If I ate a grape when I was walking through the supermarket, does that mean I have to go to confession?” she asks jokingly, as other Eagle Eye members laugh.

For others, it is much more serious. After visiting the monastery three or four times, prospective male novices then decide if the life is what they truly want. If they do, they are given the regular outfit that monks wear, called a habit. A habit consists of a grey hooded robe, a belt, and a scapular, a shawl-like garment that drapes over the shoulders.

When given the mini-habit as novices, they get only the scapular. Six months after receiving this mini-habit, the monk-to-be is then called a brother and receives a full habit and a new name.
“After they get their new name, they take their vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, and after four years they are no longer novices,” explains Brother Joseph Mary, the head monk at the monastery. “They then become professed brothers.” After they go through this process, they are sent to Burgundy, France, to the congregation’s order and mother house is located. Once there, the superior monk in France will decide where they will be sent to continue their life of devotion to Christ.

At the monastery, even meals are eaten without conversation. During a meal, one monk read aloud to the group from a book about living a life of silent contemplation. Food was passed down the line, but nothing was said except a beginning prayer and short announcements.

“I was just responding to that call,” Brother Joseph Mary says later of why he chose the way of life in a monastery.

When asked if he found the silence of the grounds daunting during his first years in monastery, he simply says, “Well, you know, if you love someone, like we love God, you just want to be with them. You don’t necessarily need to say anything.”