Making a Heart for God: A Week Inside a Catholic Monastery [Hardcover]

Dianne Aprile (Author), Patrick Hart (Foreword)

Book Description

Series: Week Inside | Publication Date: November 2000

The monastic experience demystified—an essential guide to what it’s like to spend a week inside a Catholic monastery.

A life of quiet, work and prayer, monasticism has been a part of the Christian spiritual tradition for over 1,700 years, and it remains very much alive today. This guide will prepare you for your own first venture into experiencing monastic spirituality—a fascinating way to deepen your spiritual life no matter what your faith tradition.

Whether you’re simply curious about what’s behind the mystery, or interested in experiencing it firsthand, this is the ideal handbook.

Also included are a helpful glossary of terms and a listing of monasteries throughout North America that receive visitors.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Aprile is a journalist who spent enough time at Kentucky's Abbey of Gethsemani while researching her book The Abbey of Gethsemani: Place of Peace and Paradox to earn her the rare privilege of being considered a sister to the brothers there. It is from this unique perspective that she has written a comprehensive guide to the oldest Trappist monastery in North America. Made famous by Thomas Merton, it is a place where men dedicate themselves to "God alone." Using a week-long retreat as the framework for her "insider's view" of Gethsemani, Aprile draws on anecdotes and conversations recorded in the many notebooks she has filled with her impressions over the years. She describes the monks' daily routines, their interaction with outsiders, and their struggles to live out their vows of stability, fidelity and obedience. Aprile writes with sensitivity to the secular reader who may be unfamiliar with the trappings of Catholic religious life, and her special relationship with Gethsemani enables her to sketch a balanced picture of the oft-romanticized monastic world. Her closeness with the community is evident in such charming details as the fact that the monks celebrate the feast of St. Bernard each year with pizza and beer. Although this book has the flavor of a primer, anyone who has ever visited a monastery will appreciate it for the texture it gives to life behind the monastic enclosure. (Jan.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

To the average person, monasteries seem dreadfully forbidding. Yet for all their isolation and austerity, monasteries are hospitable and welcoming places where you may go to be apart and center yourself. This is true of both Trappist and Zen monasteries, as we discover in these two accessible books. Journalist Aprile (Louisville Courier-Journal) is a longtime friend of many of the Trappist monks at the Abbey of Gethsemani, one of 17 Trappist abbeys in the United States. Like most Roman Catholic monks, the Trappists follow rules devised by St. Benedict of Nursia in the sixth century. Trappists do not insist that guests have a purpose, so a retreat is usually informal. The guest makes a reservation to stay for a weekend or a week (their guesthouses are booked for months in advance); he or she may attend church or meet the guestmaster or another monk for spiritual advice. Aprile offers a thorough, readable introduction to the Trappists and experiencing one of their monasteries. Maguire (The Power of Personal Storytelling) takes us through a week at Zen Mountain Monastery (Mount Tremper, NY) under the guidance of its abbot, John Daido Loori. The retreat experience here is very different. While Trappists impose little structure on guests, at a Zen monastery visitors follow a formal schedule and an ideal style of observance. Guests have a specific goal: waking up to oneself and one's life. The principal means of waking up and becoming attentive is zazen ("sitting meditation"), but other activities are also directed to that end: kinhin ("walking meditation"), dokusan or daisan ("meeting with a teacher"), and mondo ("informal question-and-answer sessions"), among other activites. Both books are well worth reading, and if they inspire one to spend time with the Trappists or Zen monks, so much the better. For both public and academic libraries.DJames F. DeRoche, Alexandria, VA
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 208 pages
• Publisher: Skylight Paths Publishing (November 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1893361144
• ISBN-13: 978-1893361140
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.2 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,733,380 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A very satisfying read, July 29, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Making a Heart for God: A Week Inside a Catholic Monastery (Hardcover)

I really enjoyed reading this book. Of course, as a couple of the other comments pointed out, this book is not an in-depth presentation of life in a trappist monastery. But it is not pretending to be such a thing. This book gives a nice taste of life in the monastery for a monk and for a retreatant. You get just enough of the taste of the history of this monastery to whet your appetite for more.
If you're interested in more, the author has a large, photo-illustrated history of Gethsemani. There are other books on trappist monasteries as well. If you've ever been to Gethsemani and had the pleasure to hear Fr. Matthew's evening talks, you'll want to look for some of the books of his writings. Matthew Kelty is his name.

Also, I have read another book in this same series (A Week Inside) on a Buddhist Monastery. Very very interesting. As with Making a Heart for God, it gives you enough of a taste of Buddhism, the monastery itself and a retreat inside the monastery to whet your appetite for more.

I hope to find more books in this series.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Touching Your Heart, January 31, 2001

By 

Marcie Heil (Louisville, KY_____) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Making a Heart for God: A Week Inside a Catholic Monastery (Hardcover)

Making a Heart for God by Dianne Aprile surprised me, delighted me. I was expecting an in-depth day-by-day look at a monk's week, the perspective being from a lay person (albeit a person with much experience at the Abbey of Gethsemane) looking in on a religious person's life. And that is what I got but, oh, so much more! "A Week Inside" includes a look at the retreatants at the Abbey as well, as their days intertwine with the schedule of prayer and work that is the mainstay of Cistercian life. From her arrival to her departure, I felt as if I was following Aprile around the monastery, talking to monks and retreatants, praying the liturgical hours, keeping silence at the appropriate times, learning more and more about Benedictine spirituality. Her focus on a few brothers in particular was heart-warming, and showed the stuff of which they are made - flesh and blood, heart and soul - like the rest of us. I was as reluctant to finish the book as she was to leave the Abbey! Note: Aprile includes the daily schedule of Gethsemane as well as a lenghty list of monasteries and abbeys that welcome retreatants.

1.0 out of 5 stars NOT GOOD!, November 8, 2010

By 

evan - See all my reviews

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