Life Under Lockdown Part 1

Dom Brendan Thomas • April 30, 2020

Our greatest sadness since the lockdown has been the loss of Br Raphael. Although increasingly frail, his death was hastened by the virus. Restrictions meant he was not able to return home to Belmont as he wished in his last days, and we were not able to be physically with him. 

Br Raphael was a talented and cultured man, a musician, but also interested in philosophy, architecture and design. As a practical craftsman he repaired and restored many things in the monastery: tables, chairs, lampstands, shelves. His largest legacy is the new organ pipes in the church that he designed to be built over the memorial to Bishop Hedley. 

But he was also a great community person who showed a great love and care for the practical needs of his brothers as Refectorian. I looked for a photo of him to put on the website. The only one I found was with a glass of wine in his hand. It summed up his joie de vivre: he would often be ready with a humourous remark. As Refectorian he was in charge of the wine to be put out on feast days, but also looked after the more mundane things like filling pepper pots and clearing dishes away well into his late 80s. In this he fulfilled St Benedict’s advice that the Cellarer “regard all utensils and goods of the monastery as sacred vessels of the altar, aware that nothing is to be neglected” Chapter 31.

Sadly, there was no Requiem on the day of his burial. We gathered around his grave, just ourselves suitably distanced, the undertakers having disappeared. It was a quietly moving moment in the spring sunshine. After Easter week we were able to sing the Office of the Dead for him and celebrate a Requiem Mass. We intend to have a public Mass as soon as things can return to normal.

The only occasion I have left the Monastery in these weeks was to attend the graveside funeral of Cindy, who worked in the kitchen, who died suddenly, unrelated to the coronavirus. Some of our guests might remember her coming in for the dishes to clear them away. There were just ten people around the graveside – the others being family members – at the Church of Thruxton. Abbot Paul and myself represented the community. When someone dies you often discover unexpected things. Although her family had owned the nearby Three Horseshoes pub for a time, Cindy was in fact born  in Hollywood. How her life might have been different. We have such good staff at Belmont and we get fond of people over the years, so this too was a sad moment.
It is good to report that, generally speaking, all the community are well. Br Bernard, Fr Patrick and Fr Joseph all had bouts of illness during this time but are now more or less back to normal. We haven’t seen any of our outside brethren as they are staying in their parishes and we are keeping a social distance, but they are all well. Fr Michael at St Francis Xavier's and Fr Andrew at Our Lady's in Hereford, as well as Fr Matthew at Abergavenny are all live-streaming Masses. 

It is lovely having Br Augustine back with us from Sant’ Anselmo, but his time in Rome has been brought to an abrupt end. He is not returning for his final semester and all his classes at the Angelicum (the Dominican University in Rome) will be held online. He doesn’t get out of his exams though which in Rome are normally oral rather than written. They will find some way of testing him at the end of his final year. 

Keep safe, everyone,

Fr Brendan

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