October 2006 Print

For 2,000 years, the Church of our Lord Jesus Christ has been making its way at the price of ceaseless trials and tribulations. The Apostles, privileged witnesses of the death and resurrection of our Lord, were its foundation stones. The martyrs sprinkled it with their blood. Then the Fathers of the desert defended its purity by separating themselves from the world to pray. Soon they recognized the need to come together in monasteries. In our time, it is in monasteries still that are to be found "seekers of God," who have but one love in their hearts, that of our Lord, whose call they  have heard: "Come, follow me. Learn from me that I am meek and humble of heart."

The Benedictine Ideal
Inspired by the monks of the Orient, St. Benedict founded the monastic life in Italy in the sixth century. The monastic life soon crossed Italy's border, and spread throughout the world. Christendom grew up in the shadow of the cross and beside monastic walls. The grain of mustard indeed became a towering tree.

During the Middle Ages, other orders providentially came into being in response to the needs of the times, each exemplifying a particular virtue of Christ: the Franciscans, poverty; the Dominicans, the defense of the truth; the Carthusians, solitude; and the Carmelites and other strictly contemplative orders, prayer. In modern times, a multitude of congregations devoted to corporal and spiritual works of mercy have exemplified the charity of Christ. As for the Benedictines, throughout the centuries, by their fidelity to the "Opus Dei"–the choral recitation of the Divine Office–they have been "maintaining and renewing continuously in the Church the spirit of religion."[1]

The Monastery's History
It is in this spirit that a small group of traditional Benedictine nuns have assembled, desiring to lead a life of prayer and contemplation following the rule of St. Benedict. Their monastery, the Monastery of Notre Dame de Toute Confiance (toute confiance [pronounced: toot kohnfjahns]: the complete confidence or total trust that our Lady inspires in her children), is situated in a peaceful little valley in western France not far from the Vendée region of the Loire valley renowned for its heroic Catholic resistance during the French Revolution. Indeed, the same heroic Catholic resistance, this time in response to the revolution within the Church after Vatican II, lies at the foundation of Notre Dame de Toute Confiance.

Heroic Beginnings
The founding of the monastery is owed to the fidelity and perseverance of a single nun, Mother Gertrude de Maissin (1914-2005). Born in 1914, Mother Gertrude entered the monastery of Faremoutiers, near Paris, in 1937, where she made her solemn profession on July 15, 1942. After 18 years of contemplative monastic life, Mother Gertrude de Maissin was elected Prioress in 1956 and maintained this position until 1969. The currents of the Council crept into the religious communities, and this devastating tempest did not spare Mother Prioress. Rome sent an Apostolic Delegate to ask her to resign and to absent herself from the monastery for some time. For this reason, Mother Gertrude went and stayed a year with the Benedictines of Lisieux and two years at St. Anne of Kergonan Abbey in Brittany before being authorized to return to her community as a simple nun, keeping only the rank of her profession. It was the beginning of a long combat to impede the Council's reforms, to preserve the Tridentine Mass, the integrity of the Divine Office, Latin, Gregorian chant, the grills of the chapel and the parlor, etc. However, the situation became worse and left her with no choice but to leave her monastery.

But where could she go? A few monasteries that preserved the integrity of tradition welcomed Mother Gertrude. Unfortunately, one by one they accepted the reforms of the Council, and each time Mother Gertrude had to leave. After having passed nearly a year at an abbey near Orleans, she finally ended up temporarily in Paris, where she became a "parishioner" at St. Nicholas du Chardonnet and met Msgr. Ducaud-Bourget, to whom she explained her situation and confided to him the unanswered question: must she found a monastery in order to keep Benedictine tradition? Msgr. Ducaud-Bourget gave his lively encouragements and counseled her to ask the advice of Archbishop Lefebvre.

In 1978, Mother Gertrude went to Econe to consult Archbishop Lefebvre, and met with him several times in France as well. He encouraged her to found a monastery and showed much good will. But now a place had to be found, and this was not an easy task. All the propositions were examined, many properties were visited, and she finally settled down in Lamairé, a little village in the Deux-Sèvres region of central-western France. It had been an old school house occupied by some Sisters, with one wing of the building already made into a chapel, some linden trees shading the front yard, a vegetable garden, a meadow descending to the bottom of the valley, and a beautiful view of the neighboring hillsides. The beauty and silence of nature made it favorable for the contemplative life.

In the end, Lamairé seemed a suitable enough place to start a foundation. Thanks to a few friends, the property was bought and on May 10, 1980, the Monastery of Notre Dame de Toute Confiance was officially founded. The first taking of the habit (1981) and the first triennial profession (1983) were both presided by Archbishop Lefebvre, who until his death never ceased to encourage Mother Gertrude.

During her 25 years at Lamairé, Mother Gertrude was assisted in her many difficulties by the spiritual aid of the priests of the Society of the Transfiguration, the Dominican Friars of Avrillé, and other traditional priests of the region. Her constant care was to transmit to the young nuns the treasures of the monastic tradition she had received. The present Mother Prioress, Mother Claire, entered the monastery in 1989, and other vocations followed.

Plans for the Future
Mother Gertrude had always recognized that the property at Lamairé was not entirely suitable for a Benedictine monastery because it did not allow for a real cloister, and that a move would eventually become necessary. When the traditional Benedictine monks of Brazil started a monastery at Bellaigue, France, in 2000, a hope glimmered that someday the Benedictine nuns would be able to find a property nearby, so that the Sisters could be close to a monastery of Benedictine monks, a practice that has been customary since St. Scholastica followed her brother Benedict by entering a convent nearby. Indeed, their experience of monastic life and their roots in the same ideal of holiness make Benedictine priests good spiritual directors and confessors of Benedictine nuns, and more apt to understand their aspirations and needs. They belong to the same spiritual family and strive to realize the same ideal of St. Benedict, oriented towards purity of heart and continual prayer.

The dream began to be a reality just a year after the Benedictine monks moved to the Monastery of Notre Dame de Bellaigue in the Puy de Dôme region of central France in 2000. The Sisters first visited a property nearby in 2001. After long negotiations, the sale was agreed upon on November 20, 2004, just a year before Mother Gertrude's death (November 20, 2005), and the property of Perdechat at Virlet, about a mile from the Bellaigue monastery, was purchased. Renovations and construction have been ongoing ever since under the direction of Fr. Matthew Haynos, a monk of Bellaigue, and Bro. Bernard, a monk of the Monastery of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Silver City, New Mexico, and an architect. The plans call for the construction of a monastic cloister able to accommodate 30 vocations.

The Benedictine nuns of Notre Dame de Toute Confiance expect to move in the summer of 2007. The community now numbers seven Sisters, of whom two are French, one German, one Canadian, and three Americans. More American girls are expected to enter, one in October and the others, American and French, in 2007. Ultimately, when enough American Benedictines have been fully formed in the Benedictine life, it is hoped that a contingent will return to America to found a convent near Our Lady of Guadalupe Monastery at Silver City, New Mexico.

Benedictine Life
The Benedictine order is one of the oldest orders in the West, and its Rule constitutes one of the foundational documents of Western Civilization. The very first lines of St. Benedict's famous Rule are an invitation to the soul to renounce the world for the sake of everlasting goods.

Listen, my son, to your master's precepts, and incline the ear of your heart. Receive willingly and carry out effectively your loving father's advice, that by the labor of obedience you may return to Him from whom you had departed by the sloth of disobedience. To you, therefore, my words are now addressed, whoever you may be, who are renouncing your own will to do battle under the Lord Christ, the true King, and are taking up the strong, bright weapons of obedience.

The rule of St. Benedict is organized for "seeking firstly the kingdom of God." A great Irish monk, Dom Marmion, who governed the Abbey of Maredsous in Belgium at the beginning of the century, explained it thus:

When one submits oneself entirely to Christ Jesus, when one abandons oneself to Him, when our soul does but answer, as His did, a perpetual "Amen" to all that He asks of us in His Father's name, when we remain in this attitude of adoration, then our Lord Jesus establishes His peace in us.

This "peace" sought and pursued unstintingly has become the motto of the Benedictines.

The Benedictine life has been summed up in two words: "Ora et labora–Pray and work." But it can also be characterized by "listen": this is the life of prayer of the contemplative. In the silence of the cloister, the religious hears God, but it is not enough to simply "hear" God; she must prove that she is listening by putting her hand to the "labor of obedience." This is the union of prayer and work whereby the Benedictine treads her path to God.

The nun lives for Christ alone. Her only desire is that our Lord Jesus Christ live in her, sing in her, pray, suffer, and come to life again in her. Thus the Benedictine fills her days with blessing the Beloved in chanting the Holy Mass and the Divine Office, and in imitation of His life and virtues. She begins to "run in the way of the commandments with an ineffable sweetness of love," but only after having accorded her life, by an oft exercised patience, to the passion and death of her dear Lord.

Living by the Rule
The monastic day begins and ends with the liturgical prayer known as the Divine Office, or as St. Benedict calls it, the "Opus Dei–God's work." "Seven times a day," and once while it is still night, they assemble in the chapel to praise God. The Divine Office, the prayer of the Church since the first centuries, is chanted in Latin, which requires care and study, so that "the heart be in accord with the voice," as St. Benedict says. Seven times a day and once while it is still night the bell rings and the Sisters are called to the choir to offer to God the "sacrifice of praise." About four hours a day are devoted to the recitation of the Divine Office. St. Augustine's dictum that "to sing is to pray twice" is incarnated daily in the life of the Benedictines.

These canonical hours, moreover, are but the repercussion or echo of the "sacrifice of praise" of our Lord Jesus Christ: the holy Mass. The Mass is at the center of the monastic life. Each day, Christ Jesus offers anew the sacrifice of Calvary, and renews His call to a greater love: to give one's life, to give oneself, to let oneself be seized by Christ.

The monastic day also allows considerable time for study and spiritual reading, called "lectio divina." The Rule, which some have called a summary of the Gospel, must be studied not only in the novitiate, but throughout a Benedictine's life, for it contains the rule of life and a wealth of counsel for advancing in the way of virtue and perfection. The psalms are studied in detail so that the mind and heart can be united to the voice during the recitation of the Opus Dei. Spiritual reading, too, is a daily necessity, for it instructs the mind, elevates the soul, and inflames the heart, thus providing sustenance for mental prayer.

"To combat under the true King, Jesus Christ, with the strong, bright weapons of obedience" also means undertaking everything that is commanded. A vegetable garden and a poultry yard are quite useful in the countryside. Household chores also fill up the hours, but all that is accomplished out of a love that dispossesses us of our self-will. The virtue of obedience is the daughter of humility, and is it not this virtue that pleased the Most High in our Lady? It is comforting to pray to her under this name of "Complete Confidence," sure that it is she who governs the community and gives it its unity. The nuns pray the rosary daily in private.

Apostolate of Prayer
If the monastic life is a life of prayer and work, it is also an apostolic life. Indeed, how can one keep from making one's own the intention that our Lord be formed more and more in souls. Archbishop Lefebvre thought–because he had experienced it–that the "treasures of graces for missionaries are found in the convents of contemplatives." "It is by prayer, sacrifice, and penance that God gives His grace to the world," he would say. And this is the desire of the young women who come to Lamair– to become Benedictine nuns, following in a long line of greats saints starting with St. Benedict's own sister, Scholastica. To belong to the Church, to keep the Mass of all time, to maintain the monastic tradition: such is the desire of the nuns of Notre Dame de Toute Confiance. They do not seek to innovate, but rather "attach their barque to the ship of the ancients."

Becoming a Benedictine Nun
The Benedictines welcome candidates between the ages of 18 and 30, in good health of body and mind, to come and try their vocation. After six months of postulancy, during which the candidate lives the monastic life in common with the Sisters, she receives the traditional black habit and white veil of the novice, which marks her entrance into the novitiate. During the two years of the novitiate, the novice especially studies the Rule of St. Benedict, the Constitutions of the monastery, and the obligations of the religious life, as well as Latin and Gregorian chant. The novice then makes temporary vows for two periods of three years. She is free to leave at the end of each three-year period. If she desires to persevere in religion, then she pronounces her perpetual vows. The evangelical counsels of poverty, chastity, and obedience are the matter of the three vows in religion, and while these counsels are practised in the Benedictine life, the vows are expressed differently. The Benedictine nun makes three vows: 1) obedience, which she embraces in order to follow Christ, who became obedient unto death; 2) conversion of life, by which she promises to tend towards perfection in the practice of the Christian virtues, including poverty and chastity, so as to live ever more and more for God alone; and 3) stability, by which the nun promises to persevere in the monastery of her profession until death.

At the time of perpetual vows, the nun also makes an oblation of herself in the rite of the Consecration of a Virgin. While not a part of the Benedictine Rule, this ceremony is of ancient usage in monasteries of consecrated women. During this ceremony, which takes place during the Mass, the nun receives the cowl, the black veil, the ring, the crown, and the breviary. It is similar to the ordination of a deacon, with recitation of the Litany of the Saints, consecration preface and the receiving of the breviary.

Interested persons are welcome to come for a visit or to make a private retreat. While postulants should learn French before entering, this is not necessary for an initial visit. While no dowry is required, postulants and novices are asked to contribute something for their room and board, the amount of which can be accommodated to family means. As yet, the monastery lives thanks to the generosity of benefactors. A newsletter is available in French, English, and German, and may be requested by writing to the monastery.

"Whoever you may be, who hurry to attain everlasting life, with our Lord's help, accomplish this little rule for beginners," says St. Benedict modestly, "and you will attain to the loftier heights of doctrine and virtue."

_{Story compiled by Angelus Press from several sources and combined with text from the Monastery. Pictures submitted by the Benedictines.}

_{For information:
Reverend Mother Prioress
Notre Dame de Toute Confiance Monastery
Lamairé
F-79600 Airvault
France
Telephone/Fax: [33] (5) 49.64.61.58 [Six hours ahead of US Central Standard Time–Ed.]}

_{1 Remark of Jean-Jacques Olier (1608-57), a French priest who founded the seminary and Society of St. Sulpice; quoted by Dom Bruno Destrée, The Benedictines, tr. by Dom Bede Camm (New York: Benziger Brothers, 1923).}