Bro. Denis Hooper of Glenstal Abbey edits footage for their online efforts. The monks of Glenstal have had to use the internet creatively to continue their age-old hospitality amid restriction, writes Jason Osborne
The monastic lifestyle is a human pattern as old as time. For thousands of years, people have separated themselves from others, wrapping themselves in silence and solitude that they might better hear God’s voice. How then have these communities adapted to the global invasion of technology, right into the quietest and most solitary corners of human activity?
Very well, actually, if Brother Justin Robinson of Glenstal Abbey in County Limerick is to be believed. Speaking to The Irish Catholic, he told of their reach online.
Divine Office
Their efforts have consisted in “a webcam for the liturgy, which most churches do nowadays especially, but the unique part about that for us is that it’s broadcasting the Divine Office, so literally the hours of morning prayer, evening prayer, night prayer”, Br Robinson says
The webcam is but “one strand” of their presence online – although an important one. “7000 people tuned in on Good Friday” to their stream, Bro. Robinson says, from all over the world. However, some of their other projects and profiles online are making equal waves.
“Then the other thing which has really only taken off since the start of Covid was… YouTube mainly, but then Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and Soundcloud then.”
Asked what guides their online presence, Bro. Robinson takes us back through the centuries, although equally alive and relevant today, to St Benedict and his rule.
“I’d say the key thing throughout this whole pandemic and the whole of our online presence taking off has been in the rule of St Benedict,” Bro. Robinson explains.
“Benedict says the monastery is never without guests. That’s true for us, except for the past year, there’s been nobody in the guest house, there’s been very few people coming to Mass.
“There’s been no day-groups coming to visit, all of that sort of thing – people coming for retreats, talks, conferences and so on, that’s all ground to a halt. We find ourselves that the monastery is without guests actually, so our guiding thing has been then, well, ok – hospitality is one of the key parts of the monastic life. That’s really our outreach. Ok, we have the boarding school and whatnot, but on the monastery side of things, the guests, and we don’t have any guests, so how can we reach them?”
Placing hospitality at the centre of their lives as they do, the monks of Glenstal have been pained by lack of interaction with visitors”
While the pandemic and ensuing restrictions have caused enormous suffering and strife across the board, truly leaving none unaffected, there have been hidden blessings there for those with eyes to see. Bro. Robinson and his community are fully aware of this, saying that “the online thing is what we’ve decided to do”.
“Talks have gone out online, videos, different things,” he says, continuing, “I’d really say actually, it probably wouldn’t have happened without this pandemic. I mean, we might have got there eventually but it’s caused us to have to rethink how we reach our guests, so to speak and offer the monastery to people who can’t physically be here.”
While most acknowledge the virtual realm as a poor substitute for real, physical presence, whether it’s at Mass or in the crowd at a concert or match, few would be willing to say good wasn’t done over the internet throughout the past year.
Visitors
Placing hospitality at the centre of their lives as they do, the monks of Glenstal have been pained by lack of interaction with visitors. Still, they did get some feedback about their online efforts, which they’ve drawn deep, Christian truths from – such as the idea that God may be making use of your merely human efforts in ways you can’t imagine.
“You never know who’s watching or reading or seeing videos or looking at posts, but occasionally we get an email which comes in from somewhere and somebody says, ‘Oh, actually, that podcast on lessons from lockdown where Fr Denis was talking about music. Actually, that really helped me’,” Bro. Robinson says, continuing, “So we do kind of get every now and again, somebody says, ‘Oh yeah, I saw a video on this’. So, we don’t really know what effect it’s having. We’re just putting it out there and hoping it’s doing some good for somebody, somewhere.”
And what sort of content is it they’re producing at Glenstal that elicits feedback from people? Bro. Robinson tells me about one of their most recent initiatives that went down well, ‘Fuaim na Croise’. The video is an invitation to “gather around the Cross”, and while it was uploaded during Holy Week, like the cross it is centred upon, it’s eternally relevant. The video is filled with candlelit imagery, and sees the monks chanting, praying and reflecting upon the mysteries of our Faith’s most sacred time.
“A big thing we did lately was this thing called Fuaim na Croise. This was for Good Friday, a sort of reflection around the cross. It has 2000 views, which, in the grand scheme of YouTube and whatnot, that’s not a huge amount, but that was a success,” Bro. Robinson tells, “for example, I was talking to a priest who was from Burkina Faso but he’s living in Jerusalem, and he said, ‘Oh, I saw that video by the way for Good Friday from Glenstal’.”
Unexpected places
“It’s that sort of thing,” he says, which makes him think “how on earth did that happen”?
“It’s just, in the most unexpected places we get people reacting to things and that’s good for us because it means that we’re reaching out and trying to help people in this way,” he says.
Bro. Robinson reflects that when this is all over, and people are free to come and go to Mass and the Abbey as they please, to listen to the monks chant and partake in their talks and formation, the online side of things might fade out of prominence. Their ideal, in fact, is for people “to be here experiencing Glenstal Abbey in person”. Despite this, he’s happy to get it all uploaded, so that people can tune in and see their solemn setting regardless of what’s going on in the wider world.
“That’s the plan, that’s where it’ll go. That there’s a different theme, a different area of our life on YouTube, people can go there. And then eventually we’ve done it all, and it’s just up there for people to access as another resource,” he says.
A series the monks of Glenstal have co-operated to produce is ‘Visiting the Icons of Glenstal Abbey’ – a series which sees the icons of Glenstal’s hidden-away iconography chapel explored with music and prayerful reflection.
“They (the icon videos) were really the first ones to go out. We have this icon chapel underneath the church and it’s a very special place, but it’s also a very small space, so people couldn’t come and be down there because of social distancing and so on,” Bro. Robinson says.
“Fr Luke – he’s a scripture lecturer in Maynooth – he said, ‘Could we put an icon on the screen with a bit of music and some information and a prayer, and that might help people?’”
Forever asking what people might need, the monks have tried to tailor their content to whatever they think might be useful. With that attitude in mind, the obvious place to start was a ‘Lessons from Lockdown’ series:
“What else can we be doing? ‘Lessons from Lockdown’: monks talking about their experiences of the lockdown because people think, oh well, being in a monastery, we’re well-suited to the lockdown because aren’t we in lockdown the whole time anyway? You know, yes and no, but it has been a hard time for us too,” Bro. Robinson explains.
His long term goal for the YouTube channel is a sort of “Netflix” of the monastery, in that eventually, people will be able to go to the YouTube page and say, “What do I want to look at? Ok, I want something on prayer”.
Criticism and ‘trolling’ are unfortunate staples of the internet experience, and the monks’ time online has been no exception to this rule”
“So we have something in the pipeline at the minute, a podcast where different monks are talking about different elements of prayer. People might come along and say, ‘Ok, how about vocations?’ Well we have that: Meet the Monks of Glenstal Abbey. Somebody might come along and say, ‘Ok, the rule of St Benedict,’ so we have another series in the pipeline at the minute on that, so they can see that. So that, whatever they’re looking for, they can go on there and find it.”
“Chants is the other big thing,” Bro. Robison says, “We’re working on that. The big thing at the monastery is chant, but we don’t have any chant really on our YouTube page, which is bizarre so I said to the chanters in the monastery, ‘You need to be recording something and we can put it out there’”.
With such wholesome material lining their social media accounts, you would assume the monks of Glenstal don’t encounter too much negativity online – but that would be a mistake. Criticism and ‘trolling’ are unfortunate staples of the internet experience, and the monks’ time online has been no exception to this rule.
With this being a particularly relevant problem for many people at the moment, I asked Bro. Robinson about their experiences of such ‘toxicity’, and how a monk is to deal with it:
“There was some (abuse), especially to do with the lockdown and whatnot. You know, not being open, that sort of thing. ‘Why aren’t you open?’ ‘Why can’t you come?’ So, I suppose our response is, in the monastery, silence,” he says.
“That’s a big part of our life and you don’t jump in and get into a fight over something. So, you know, we discern. Discernment is a big part of the monastic way. And you think, well, if there is somebody saying something, what is it saying to us beyond the negativity or anger, what’s it saying to us? How can we respond charitably?”
Rule of Sr Benedict
Bro. Robinson again refers to the rule of St Benedict in this particular situation. He says sometimes “somebody might come to the monastery and say something and God has actually sent them to say it to you, because you actually need to hear it, even if it’s uncomfortable”. Such is the attitude the monks take with people who are less than pleasant to them online. “So that’s the other thing – that we can learn from people,” he says.
It’s not all bad, though, with many of their viewers offering helpful suggestions:
“People come along with suggestions too and say, ‘These videos are great, but I want to be walking the dog and listening to it, so can you do an audio version?’ So actually, no matter what people say on our Facebook page or Twitter or whatever, we can learn something from it and that’s been good because we’re learning as we go along. So that’s been positive and it’s a way of engaging with people and listening, ultimately. That’s what we’re about in the monastery ultimately, listening to God and God through others.”
As uplifting as the videos have been for those who’ve viewed them, it’s equally so for the monks themselves. Bro. Robinson says what surprised him most is what some of the monks have had to say in the videos.
“The element that we have enjoyed as a community, not just me, is what other people are saying in their videos, so like the thing on the ‘Meet the Monks’ – I didn’t know half the stuff about some of the monks and their history,” he says, admitting that they’ve all learned a great deal from each other during this time.
“In the normal course of things when the monastery is open, a monk is giving a talk on a Saturday afternoon to a group, but the other 30 of us don’t know what he’s said, or don’t know what’s going on. Whereas with this, we’re all getting it in our email inbox at the same time and we’re watching and we’re learning about the icons ourselves, so I think we’ve enjoyed that.”
As uplifting as the videos have been for those who’ve viewed them, it’s equally so for the monks themselves”
Their greatest joy, however, has been “seeing what we’re capable of doing for the people of God”. Whether it’s online or in person, a servant of God derives his joy from what he can do for others.