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| STAGE LEFT: Schachenmayr, star of the 1995 campus production Real Critical Thinking,traded the footlights for monastic life in Austria. |
| Alex Stewart |
THE FACE of the alarm clock shows 3:59 a.m. Hidden in darkness, nestled among trees, Heiligenkreuz monastery is perfectly still. But in one minute, that will all change. In one minute, the alarm clock will sound, Frater Alkuin Schachenmayr will climb out of bed and life will come into focus.
This is a time Schachenmayr has come to love. It’s a time when he
reminds himself that he is human, makes mistakes and needs to start over
each day. It’s a time when he can greet the day as it comes, meeting
it with prayer.
He makes his way across the small room. The floors are wooden; the walls
are white and bare with the exception of a hanging crucifix and a picture
of the Virgin Mary. The Cistercian monastery, located about 20 miles southwest
of Vienna, Austria, calls these rooms cells, but Schachenmayr explains
this is in no way a reference to prison cells. In fact, he says his space
is quite comfortable. At one end is a narrow bed, at the other a desk
with a phone and computer. There are also four long bookshelves stacked
with, among other things, a biography of Evelyn Waugh and bibles in three
languages—English, German and Latin.
Every now and then, the 31-year-old monk reaches for the English version
to relieve a “hankering for English,” he says. It’s the
language he has spoken much of his life. Born in Boblingen, West Germany,
Schachenmayr was raised in Lake Placid, N.Y., after his father was transferred
there by IBM. Here at Heiligenkreuz (German for Holy Cross), life is very
different—different from Swarthmore College, where he got his undergraduate
degree, and different from Stanford, where he earned a PhD in 1997. He
doesn’t go to coffeehouses much anymore, and he doesn’t stay
out late. But he likes the rules of this place. He likes the order. And
he likes the prayer, which he offers on behalf of the whole world. Prayer
is set to begin in an hour, and so he gets dressed.
Two habits hang in the closet. A third is at the dry cleaner. Not much
else is in there: some undergarments, some running shoes and shorts, and
one clerical suit with that familiar white collar, because there are places,
such as airplanes, where habits tend to get stuck and tangled. Schachenmayr
puts on his undergarments and reaches for a white cassock. Over the cassock
he drapes a black scapular—a full-length apron of sorts, covering
the front and back but not the sides of the cassock. Finally, he ties
a cingulum around his waist. It dangles by his left leg as he makes his
way down the Baroque staircases, through the dark, Gothic halls and on
to the church.
There, the monks line up in two rows of stalls, each man kneeling about
a foot from the next, facing the parallel row. At 5 a.m., the abbot knocks
on wood and there is a rustle of white fabric as the monks rise. Then
they open their mouths.
“Domine, labia mea aperies et os meum annuntiabit laudem tuam,”
they chant in unison. Lord, open my lips and my mouth shall proclaim
your praise.They pray like this for almost an hour and a half. After
that, Holy Mass. The morning light slowly breaks through the stained-glass
windows, and another day of devotion has begun.
There are other things that must be done, of course. The monks have lectures
to attend in the seminary and gardening work to do, but prayer is the
staple of their day. They will gather in this fashion at least five more
times before going to bed.
On the other side of the world, in the Stanford drama department, sits
a relic of a former life. It’s a videocassette tape of a one-man
play, Real Critical Thinking, written and performed on campus in
1995. Ron Davies, the department’s administrative manager, pops it
into a vcr. On stage, a thin man with short, dark hair and glasses rolls
on the floor. He looks to be in his mid-20s. “I’m a homicidal
maniac,” the actor yells. He curses, flails his arms, argues with
projected images of himself. The actor was a doctoral student in drama.
The actor was Schachenmayr.
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| Courtesy Frater Alkuin Schachenmayr |
“He was easily one of the most promising students we admitted in that period,” says Davies, PhD ’86. On stage, Schachenmayr wears a piece of paper on his chest, marked with the number 5. He rips it off and changes personas for the sixth time in the production. He’s still speaking awfully fast, but now he looks more like an academic, using his hands as a professor might. The new piece of paper on his chest says “me.”
Davies smiles. “That’s him. That’s Volker.”
Volker was the name given to him by his parents. At Heiligenkreuz, each monk gets a new first name. The old name, the old life, dies away as a person begins a life of complete devotion to God. Volker chose this life. The monastery named him Alkuin.
Schachenmayr doesn’t think the leap from drama to the monastery was
particularly drastic. “All of drama is trying to understand the Cross,”
he says. To him, that means understanding the depth of the human being,
understanding suffering and the struggles with death and sin, love and
pain. That’s what he strives for as a monk, as well.
What lured him to this particular monastery was the chance to continue
scholarly work. A seminary for men from all of German-speaking Europe,
Heiligenkreuz prepares monks for priesthood, so classes are a big part
of life there. Schachenmayr has three years completed and another four
to go before he can become a priest. He attends lectures on theology,
church history and liturgy from 2 to 6 each afternoon. In addition, he
teaches a weekly German composition class for others in the seminary.
There are sacrifices, of course. If there weren’t, he says, he would
be cheating himself, because sacrifices are at the heart of monastic life.
Although friends and family may visit, Schachenmayr says he misses the
opportunity for frequent travel. The monks get just a couple of weeks
off each year, since the monastery depends on all of them to keep things
running. He doesn’t get much spending money, either. The equivalent
of $100 a month is all he’s supposed to need. There are other deprivations,
as well. Monks must not father families of their own. They are men of
seclusion, he says, and leading a family life would conflict with that.
“It’s supposed to hurt a little, and of course it does,”
he says of the lifestyle. At first, he had some difficulty adjusting to
living in such close quarters with dozens of men he did not get to hand
pick. But one of the monks’ obligations is to love each other. And
although this requires tremendous effort, Schachenmayr says, it also can
be a joy. The brothers are a family of sorts. They all work together,
not for vanity or self-advancement, he says, but to “build up the
kingdom of God.”
It seems strange to hear this talk of avoiding vanity and self-advancement
from the man who ranted on the stage back at Stanford. That man, that
actor, seemed to enjoy being in the spotlight and hearing himself pontificate.
Then again, that was Volker. This is Alkuin.
At Heiligenkreuz, it’s 8 p.m. and the sun has set. Schachenmayr says
compline—the night prayer—before walking down those dark hallways,
climbing the staircases and crawling into bed.
Brian Eule,’01,is a freelance writer in Boston.