The following reflection is offered by Chris Mileski, a seminarian for the Diocese of Toledo who celebrated Holy Week with the monks at St. Meinrad Monastery.

The Octave of Easter may be over, but the Easter season has just begun! Last week, my brother seminarian Michael gave a wonderful account of what Holy Week was like in the Diocese of Toledo, but my experience was a little different . Scott and I spent the time preparing for the Pasch on retreat with the monastic community at Saint Meinrad.

This once in a lifetime experience began with first vespers of Palm Sunday on Saturday evening. We gathered together and recited the antiphon, which proclaimed to us to "go even unto the altar, processing with branches." We did just that, in a simple procession of Hosannas into the Archabbey church, carrying our palms and in a way entering Jerusalem with Our Lord. Evening came and morning continued as usual, including the Mass on Palm Sunday. Like every parish around the world, the Gospel was the passion account from Mathew. Unlike every parish around the globe, the Benedictine monks chanted the eight-page account in both beautifully simple tones and breathtakingly complex polyphonies that emphasized the simplicity of what our Lord set out to do for us, and the complexity of emotions that accompany that time changing event.

The retreat continued in a very Benedictine fashion from Monday through Thursday morning. Following the Benedictine motto of Ora et Labora (work and prayer), we prayed all of the Liturgy of the Hours communally, and in the time in-between practiced the study of scripture and did physical work for the benefit of the community. For example, we cleaned top to bottom both our chapel and campus pub, so the community could return from our break to a clean home.

Holy Thursday at the Mass of the Lord's Supper, the ordinary of work and prayer became extraordinary with the beginning of the Triduum. For me, the most moving part of the liturgy was seeing the Abbot in his full dress, remove his miter and chasuble, set aside his crosier (shepherd's staff) and serve his sheep by washing their feet. What was more, after he retuned to his pontifical dress, he presented each of the twelve people with a wrapped gift; thus not only serving them, but also, like Jesus, giving them a gift at the supper they would only later understand and appreciate. We left the banquet of the Eucharist and continued to a dinner of lamb and potatoes, traditional to the monastery for the evening. After this meal, no one on the retreat spoke. In doing so we remembered that it was after the meal that Christ was betrayed, and we became recognizant that the joy of palms quickly became the agony in the garden and the passion.

On Good Friday, we broke our silence only to pray the office. Like many parishes on that day we attended the Stations of the Cross and attended the Solemn Liturgy of Good Friday. After three in the afternoon, we converted, in silence, our chapel into a Byzantine chapel for the Mystical Burial of Our Lord, including the building of the Tomb of Jesus. When we were nearly finished, we began an Assembly of Charity, or what is often called in monasticism a chapter of faults. We stood in front of the tomb of Christ and the community and publicly confessed sins that directly harmed the community, such as rudeness and distracting others from prayer. As each person accused himself, he would take a stone and place it with the others, completing the tomb that would later that evening hold the icon of Christ, the Christ who died that very day for our sins.

Holy Saturday was quiet and very much an in-between time. We had participated in Christ's death, but he had yet to rise from the dead. It was an experience I still, after many days, find hard to describe.

At 8:30 P.M. the Easter Vigil began. In the darkness of night, we gathered around a new fire, made from the wood of the cross, which brought forth Christ our Light in the lighting of the Easter candle and we processed into the church. As usual, we began the liturgy of the word, reading from the scriptures our story from Genesis through the Old Testament. After five readings, the Deacon stood and proclaimed, "Let us keep vigil for Our Lord." The Abbot stood and left and his party followed him. In the church the seminarians and the junior monks began to keep vigil through the night. We began with psalm 1 and did not stop until psalm 149 was proclaimed. Most of us seminarians had only a few psalms each, and we proclaimed them between 2:00 AM and 3:30 AM. The monks began returning around 4:30 AM and the Easter Vigil resumed at 5:00AM with psalm 150 and the other two readings.

From this point the liturgy continued as it would in the parish, except for the blessing of a live lamb which made young and old alike smile, from both the adorably cute new born lamb and the seeming ridiculousness that was only intensified by a lack of sleep. The Mass was finished around 7:10 AM, Making the Easter Vigil last 10 hours and 40 minutes. We went quickly to breakfast and enjoyed our first Easter meal blessed by our rector with the water just blessed at the vigil. Then, at 8:30 AM, twelve hours after we began, we finally went to bed, singing the many alleluias that Christ our Lord was risen.

Looking back on my week, I was glad to share in that unique experience of monasticism, waking early to pray, adding hard work to balance the self, keeping a general silence, but I really came away with a greater joy that I am called to the diocesan priesthood! Happy Easter!