Tower Topics ~ Spring 2002

Back to Table of Contents

Facing death in a Benedictine community
Compassion, confidence in monk's final hours

Father Lawrence Gidley prepared for this moment all his monastic life – on the day he first entered the novitiate 69 years ago; each time he prayed the Divine Office; during the more than 23,000 Masses he celebrated; and again in early December, when Abbot Gregory Polan administered the sacrament of the sick.

The rhythm of life at Conception Abbey gently guided Father Lawrence to the afternoon of Dec. 6 when an 88-year-old heart ceased a lifetime of work.

The death of a monk brings his community together in a special way. Throughout the week preceding Father Lawrence’s death, his brother monks took turns sitting at his bedside. Some read aloud from Scripture. Some sat in silence. Some wept.

There were stories told of a devoted priest and teacher who loved to celebrate Mass, a man with a flair for the dramatic, who laughed heartily and “sang like the dickens.”

“When he talked to you, it was like you were the only person who existed,” said Brother Jeremiah Tuttle. “He always had that exuberant greeting, like he hadn’t seen you in ages, even if it was just the day before.”

The monks sit with their dying brothers for many reasons: to be reminded of their own inevitable death, to learn something about themselves and the life they’ve chosen, and, primarily, to comfort and be comforted.

“This week has reminded me that there is a lot of loving and caring in this community,” said Father Walter Heeney, 84, who lived two doors down from Father Lawrence in St. Stephen’s Infirmary. “It’s comforting to know I’m in good hands.”

Father Philip Schuster, 84, who sat with Father Lawrence in the predawn hours, said such times are one of the blessings of life in a religious community. There is a feeling of safety and security that goes beyond old age and sickness, he said. “I know that when I die someone will pray for me.”

A poetic continuity links the beginning of monastic life and the end. In the Rite of Solemn Profession, the ceremony that seals a new monk’s commitment to the community, he lies prostrate on the floor and is covered with a funeral pall. This mystical burial symbolizes a death to his previous life and resurrection to the new life of a monk. The cuculla, the garment in which the monk is then robed is what he will ultimately wear when he is laid to rest.

At 12:40 p.m., as the bell in the Basilica’s north tower alerted the community to Father Lawrence’s death, Abbot Gregory Polan and other monks trickled into his room to offer their blessings and pay their respects. Others proceeded to the church to pray.

Within the hour, the monks would resume their routine with daytime prayer. Brother Jonathan Clark, the infirmarian, and the charge nurse cleansed the body and prepared it for burial. Father Lawrence’s body would later be placed in a simple pine coffin lined with sawdust. He would be dressed in his cuculla and a priest’s stole. His pillow and a rosary would be buried with him. The photographs lining the walls of his room would go to family and friends.

The Rule of St. Benedict urges the faithful monk to “keep death daily before one’s eyes.” The result is a community that faces the final hours with an almost matter-of-fact air. Elderly monks know their caskets await them in storage. And to an outsider it would seem abrupt how quickly after the funeral the community returns to the daily routine of prayer and work.

“Death is the most important threshold in life,” Abbot Gregory said, “and we bring to it compassion coupled with confidence.” There is an absence of fear, he says, because the monks know that all three of the theological virtues — faith, hope and love — come together in death.

“We don’t get callous to death,” said Father Philip. “But I don’t think it is traumatizing for us. Of course there is death, but there is also resurrection. I don’t just believe this. I know it is true.”

Father Hugh Tasch offers a theological explanation for such conviction. “Monks are expected to bear witness to the resurrection, to life after death,” he said. “But you can’t be a witness to something unless you were there to experience it.” He suggests that through his daily life — the prayer, the work, the sacrifice — a monk in some unique way has experienced something of heaven. “We have had a foretaste, a hint of things to come.”

The monks of Conception will remember Father Lawrence as one of the community’s “characters,” a priest given to superlatives, for whom a simple announcement was treated as a proclamation. To Father Lawrence, the world was a “glorious” place and he said it often.

Still fresh in Father Regis Probstfield’s memory are the poems he learned as a high school student 55 years ago in Father Lawrence’s English class.

As he sat at Father Lawrence’s bedside and recited Emily Dickinson’s “The Day,” Father Regis shed tears for a man who had instilled in him a love of literature.

“I wanted to be with him to pray him into paradise,” Father Regis said. “He always prayed fervently, but when he could no longer articulate it, I was there to say the prayers for him.”

The monks carry their departed confrere into the Basilica where
Abbot Gregory waits to receive the body.

In the twilight of Dec. 9, the second Sunday of Advent, a hearse returned Father Lawrence’s body to the front steps of the Basilica. The old priest would have appreciated the blazing sunset that provided a backdrop for his grand entrance. Their habits billowing in the breeze, the monks carried the casket into the church. With a wave, the mortician knew his work was done. The monks would handle it from here.

As a starry night fell on Conception, people from the surrounding countryside, mostly from nearby Stanberry where Father Lawrence served as pastor for seven years, filed into the church to sing vespers. Father Lawrence, a man who according to his niece “made friends wherever he went,” had drawn a crowd.

According to custom, a monk, appointed by the abbot, eulogizes the deceased confrere. This time it would be Father Peter Ullrich, a 51-year-old seminary chaplain who as a young brother worked under and was befriended by Father Lawrence.

He described his old friend as a man of strong convictions who loved Shakespeare and Longfellow, and who insisted that everything be done with a touch of class.

Quoting St. Paul, Father Peter praised a man who “stirred into flame” the gifts God had bestowed upon him.

“Father Lawrence certainly did not possess a cowardly spirit,” Father Peter said to the smiles of the other monks. “He had a way of getting things done the ‘Gidley Way.’”

“We pray for our brother,” he concluded, “we pray that he now enjoy the glorious banquet for which he waited and to which we are all called.”

Later, the Basilica empty and dark except for the illuminated mural of the Immaculate Conception on the ceiling above, Father Lawrence’s casket waited out the night. His fellow monks took turns praying for his soul until his funeral Mass the next morning.

Like monastic life itself, Father Lawrence’s funeral was simple and unadorned. As the abbot blessed the casket with incense and holy water, the clear-eyed monks sang of resurrection and hope.

I will walk in the presence of the Lord, in the land of the living…

Following the funeral, the monks and their guests proceed to the
cemetery for the final blessing.

Every moment in a Benedictine monk’s life is preparation for death and a funeral is no exception. As the Mass ended, the monks and their guests walked in procession to the cemetery for the final blessing.

Abbot Gregory, at right, says the final blessing over
Father Lawrence's grave.

There, amid the gravestones of confreres who had gone before, they sang to the Virgin Mother: Ultima in mortis hora. Filium pro nobis ora: Bonam mortem impetra…

“In the final hour, pray to your Son for our happy death.”

Back to Table of Contents