MY BROTHERS' KEEPER
by Martin "Marty" Crenshaw

I have known Joe Coraldi, a Monk, for a long time. Recently he turned 93 years old. Besides one fall a couple of years ago. which broke his nose and put out some teeth, he is in general good health. I met him several years ago through relatives of mine when he called them to compliment an article of mine, which ran in the local newspaper. He and his Abbot were so impressed that they invited me to their rectory quarters for a benediction.

I had a few assumptions: I assumed that the community of Benedictine monks he is a part of is mostly aged, and that as such was mostly stricken with ailments familiar to the infirm elderly. But I was wrong on both counts. During the first part of our visit, over coffee and pan dulce, I asked them how they handle things when the brothers get sick. As an amateur armchair sociologist, I wanted to compare aging in this group of people to my experience of other groups in the secular world. Affably, they changed the subject to trying to dicuss my writings. But I persisted and asked again, this time in a more direct way.

"When the brothers go to the hospital are they able to come back home here and, well, live until they die?"

I wanted to know if they were able to attend to members who were, because of prolonged illness, frail and dependent for care. They still acted as if illness among them were an infrequent occurrence. I kept pressing the matter. Finally, with the patience of a man who'd dealt with the impertinence of many a green-horned novice, he offered to show me the infirmary. We took the path that snaked through the calla lilies beds and up to the entrance of the cloistered monastery. Then we made our way through dark halls that smelled like incense and old books. The infirmary seemed deserted. Brother Joe showed me three rooms, which were obviously rarely used and sparsely furnished. Like the repeating sounds of a broken record, I asked again who was here to take care of the brothers when they were sick.

"Family or friends of the community," came their typically vague answer.

"But what if you needed a nurse?" My unsanctified need to know was desperately showing itself.

"Well," said the Brother obviously exasperated with me, "when I fell and broke my nose there was a nurse here on retreat that night and she took care of me."

Finally giving up at the impossibility of making sickness a big issue, I said, "Maybe she was an angel."

I could see his eyes twinkle even in the half-light of the hallway. What I later discovered, once I'd seen the whole community of black-robed and sandaled men assembled at Mass (on previous visits I'd only seen a few individual monks meandering the grounds), was a community of mostly bearded, robust men with only a handful of them sporting silver hair. In Benedictine tradition, the men who come here to live, work and pray together do not, and will not leave. There is a permanence and deep serenity in belonging to a place, a people and a tradition that is anchored to things eternal. Here even time and space are sacramental. And here, age doesn't seem to be important. Elevating purpose and value continue to be assigned each brother no matter what their stage of life. There are no cast aways; none who are less important based on level of production or material worth. They do simple but grand things like study theology and take care of bees. They pollinate the rest of the world with their daily prayers and constant generosity.

In this small monastic city overlooking the Pacific there is such an elegant simplicity and natural vitality that sickness, seems to be short-lived, ephemeral, rather than being the defining reality of aging. The stark contrast with what I see in my everyday life is breathtaking. So many old men and women alone, frightened, neglected. So many lack the security and warmth of human community. Some just try the best they can to be brave and tough it out. Some spend their life savings trying to find a belonging in retirement homes. A few do get lucky but most are crushed by disappointment and frustration and give up incrementally, every day, in small invisible ways. To those I am called. They cannot seem to find the hive so I try to bring the life-giving substance of the hive to them by writing about their plight. And, in return, they make my life infinitely sweeter. As my parish priest, Father Giovanni Bissitto, has said, "There is charity in caring."