DALLAS — As the Cistercian Abbey of Our Lady of Dallas turns a corner in its bout with the coronavirus, life for the monks is still far from returning to normal.
The nine monks who tested positive for COVID-19 have all nearly recovered, but the brothers are waiting for the results of a second round of tests last week, said one of the monks who tested positive, Fr. Thomas Esposito. His quarantine recently ended.
For the monks living in the abbey, it’s been a trying time unlike anything they’ve seen since the official founding of the monastery in 1961. Three of the Cistercians had to be hospitalized, and the rest had to go into strict isolation. Esposito said the hospitalized monks have returned to the abbey, but a custodian in the process of being weaned off a ventilator.
“The experience has certainly been trying for us, even though in theory we should be capable of isolating since we do that routinely anyway,” Esposito said. “We signed up for this monastic adventure knowing that we’d have a group of brothers that we can pray with and rely on and be annoyed at on occasion, and not having that community life has certainly been a trial of sorts.”
Fr. Peter Verhalen, the abbot of Our Lady of Dallas, said in an email to The Dallas Morning News that in his 45 years at the abbey, the monks have never experienced anything like this: no common celebration of Mass, no common prayers or meals and confinement to personal rooms.
He said that while the monks have been “exemplary” in caring for one another, “our circumstances are just not tenable. As a monastic community we are in many ways like a family, talking and sharing activities. We are not an apartment complex with 21 individuals living their own separate lives.”
But that could nearly describe the abbey the last few weeks as the brothers kept their distance from one another. Healthy monks brought meals for COVID-positive ones and tended to them — a system Esposito said they referred to as “man-to-man coverage” — but the monks were alone most of the time. The priests would celebrate Mass in their rooms, and group meetings were mainly relegated to Zoom calls.
But thanks to these temporary sacrifices, the monks are starting to prepare for life after quarantine.
“I think we would consider ourselves pretty fortunate,” Esposito said. “We didn’t have any really dire symptoms manifest in any of the monks. And while we think we were prudent in taking the measures we did, we’re certainly eager to get back to doing the monk thing, which is what we’re familiar with.”
Esposito said the monks will meet this week to discuss a return to something resembling normal. For the time being, masks are required, there’s a strict limit on how many people can be in the dining areas, and no one can leave the premises without permission. Whenever common prayers and Masses resume, social distancing will likely be in place.
“We are doing our best to find a way to live a more common life here in the monastery and at the same time reduce the opportunity for the virus to come back,” Verhalen said. “We do not want to go through this individual isolation and quarantine again.”
There’s also the matter of tending to the extended Cistercian community in Dallas. The abbey runs a preparatory school that serves boys in grades 5-12, and many of the monks also teach at the University of Dallas, just across State Highway 114.
Esposito said nonresidents will be welcomed back to the abbey’s limestone-walled church in a matter of weeks.
“We just want to make sure that we wouldn’t be a risk for people coming to the church,” he says.
He said the brothers were concerned about how the greater community would respond to hearing about the virus’s spread in the abbey. But the monks have received “overwhelming” support, he said, and kept in touch with students and friends via Zoom, phone calls, emails and handwritten letters.
“I’ve been floored by the outpouring of prayers and support — and even an occasional bottle of whiskey that shows up randomly at the front door,” Esposito said. “There’s just been so many little reminders of how many people love and respect us and want us to live our monastic life as best we can.”
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