as well as pretty much all the other baked things that we used in daily life.
At one point someone thought it would be beneficial if the novitiate had its own in-ground swimming pool. The next thing you knew, a large group of novices set to work, shovels in hand, to build one. All this meant that a novice in those days had to adapt himself to a type of physical labor that was more intense than we former city dwellers from the East were used to. We eventually got into the swing of things, but I must admit it took me some time to do so.
As I think back on my days in the novitiate I realize that I have become more deeply aware of the reasons for the stress that was laid on manual labor. Part of the motive, of course, was to teach us that many of the people we were destined to serve had no choice but to work long and hard hours to support themselves. It was to show us that we must never take this for granted and that we must never forget what it is like to work hard, to be very tired, and to have aching muscles. But it was also, at least in part, an effort to cultivate the entire person rather than simply one aspect of the person.
In our fractured and fragmented world we are apt to draw a sharp dividing line between the physical and the intellectual and an even sharper line between both of them and the spiritual. This has never been the Catholic way, and it is most certainly not the Franciscan way. For this reason the novitiate was not a time given entirely over to prayer, meditation, and spiritual instruction, as some people assume that it must be. It was a time when physical labor reminded us in no uncertain terms that we were not ethereal beings, that God had created us as flesh-and-blood creatures.
As we worked in the fields, the orchards, or the workshops we came to see that the physical was not so entirely distinct from the spiritual. If we were very blessed, perhaps we even came to understand that the spiritual life was not an aspect or division of our lives at all, but the grace-filled element that unites all the many disparate aspects of our being—the physical, the intellectual, the emotional—into the integrated person, the whole person, God wants us to be.
After the Second Vatican Council some religious and priests began to retreat from prayer and give themselves more and more totally to various social ministries. Often, when asked about this, they would say (usually rather indignantly), “My work is my prayer.” I always thought they were half right, but half right also means half wrong. Work can be a type of prayer, and a very good type of prayer. That is something we all learned at Huntington. However, work that is not nourished by a vibrant inner prayer life will eventually dry up and become simply effort. Sometimes it becomes a way of hiding from the deeper things of human life and of hiding even from the self or from God. It was at Huntington that I really fully learned what the sisters had begun to teach me back in Caldwell: that work and prayer must become a balanced unity. It was there that I began to see that the spiritual life is difficult to maintain if they aren’t.
The religious life is always marked by a series of very clear milestones: first vows, solemn professions, etc. These are the moments during which a person’s ever-greater commitment to living his life for Christ within a specific religious community is recognized. They are also the means by which the community itself affirms in progressive steps its acceptance of new members. In effect such ceremonies are the community’s symbolic way of saying, “Yes, we believe it is God’s will for you to become one of us.” The first such milestone is almost always the clothing of a novice with the religious habit of his or her community, and for us in Huntington this invariably took place on the last day of August. It was a day all the new novices eagerly anticipated, a day which we hoped would be transformative and for which we all yearned.
I remember kneeling in the chapel as the brown Capuchin habit was slipped over my head. I then stood, as I had been instructed to do, and the hem of the habit fell to my ankles, concealing my secular clothes completely. I looked down as the Franciscan cord was wound around my waist for the first of what would be countless times. And there I was, a new Capuchin and a new person—at least on the outside. I found this to be a very dramatic moment, nearly an overpowering one. It was one in which I became very aware of the words of St. John the Baptist as recorded in the Gospel of St. John: “He must increase, but I must decrease” (3:30).
If I was ever to become worthy of the habit in which I had just been clothed, I knew I would have to decrease in such a way that the light of Christ could shine through me unimpeded, undimmed. That was a rather tall order for someone who had just passed his eighteenth birthday, but it was something that youthful enthusiasm made me believe was within my grasp. It wasn’t, of course. I now understand very well that such things are not within anyone’s grasp; they are pure gifts of grace. They are things to which we can respond and with which we can cooperate, but they are never within our human grasp. That means I’m still hard at work trying to put myself second and God first, trying to let myself, my wants and needs and endless opinions, be hidden quietly away like my clothes were that day underneath my new habit.
I think it is safe to say that anybody who has ever worn a religious habit knows they take a little getting used to, especially for men. The rather loose, floor-length design of the traditional Capuchin habit is very different from the clothes men are used to wearing in the contemporary world. It feels very odd at first to have your habit constantly flapping around your legs as you walk, so odd that when you are still very new to wearing one, you sometimes feel as if the habit is going to trip you up. It rarely does, however, and over the years I’ve witnessed friars doing all manner of things including playing basketball in their habits without mishap.
I’m so used to the habit after more than sixty years that I never even give it a second thought, but I must admit that in the first few days and weeks after being clothed I sometimes felt as if I were living my life in a very large, roomy bathrobe. And, speaking of bathrobes, I’m going to let you in on a little secret. Once we were clothed in the habit we were expected to wear it at all times—even in bed at night! We actually had a special night habit, which looked almost identical to the daytime habit except that it was made of a lighter fabric. The Franciscan cord that we wore in bed was also lighter and thinner than the regular one. This tradition arose centuries ago when it was considered a great blessing (one possibly even meriting an indulgence) for a religious to die in his or her habit, and since people sometimes die in their sleep (which might be a great blessing in itself) religious took to wearing their habits to bed. To this day, cloistered Carmelite nuns wear their brown scapulars at night and many Trappists—as far as I know—still wear their entire habits.
I must say that the nighttime habit proved to be a challenge to most novices. It certainly was one to me. The problem was that, as is the case in many religious communities, the novice’s habit was somewhat different from that of the professed friar. The cowl was removable to symbolize the fact that the novice has not yet made the vows that would bind him completely to the community. It was attached to a scapular-like garment which we called a caparone. The caparone hung down the front and back of your body, extending only to your waist. This presented no great problem during the day, as the ends of the caparone were held more or less in place by the cord around your waist. At night, however, the caparone seemed absolutely expert at escaping the cord. Thus both ends of the scapular as well as the Capuchin cowl were likely to move every time you did. At times they almost seemed to take on a life of their own, and often one end or the other ended up in your face. Other times everything managed to get twisted up in a very uncomfortable way.
I can recall many nights when I felt like I was locked in mortal combat with an octopus, and there were at least one or two times when I was convinced I would end up strangled before dawn. I remember it being very difficult at times to resist the temptation to simply discard the cowl and the caparone during the night in order to get some decent sleep. I’m sure everyone felt that temptation, but I also think that few novices actually did that, at least during the early fifties. Habits in religious life have been downplayed and even denigrated in recent years, but back then we thought of our habits as being very important. They were holy symbols for us. We felt they were a necessary part of the transformation that must take place within us if we were ever to become
