Wake Forest Magazine, March 2007 - Past Issues - Wake Forest ...

P R O F I L EThe Hermit in the Wait Chapel TowerSamuel Weber—the first Roman Catholic priest ever appointed to the divinity faculty of aninstitution with Baptist heritage—helps infuse Wake Forest Divinity School with “true ecumenism.”By David FytenEV. SAMUEL F. WEBER,RO.S.B., is a man of routine.Most weekdays he eats hismidday meal in the ReynoldaHall dining area officially calledthe Fresh Food Company butknown still to many on campusas simply “The Pit.” He teachesin late afternoon on Mondaysand Wednesdays, attends facultyfunctions, and meets with studentsby appointment in his office in thetower of Wait Chapel. Otherwise,he almost certainly is in his unit inFaculty Apartments, living the lifeof a Roman Catholic monk as it hasbeen lived for fourteen centuries.Weber, an associate professor ofearly Christianity and spiritual formationat the Wake Forest DivinitySchool, is a priest in the Order ofSaint Benedict, a monastic orderfounded by its namesake in the sixthcentury. Weber, like all Benedictines,adheres to the Rule of Saint Benedict,a voluminous tome that regulatesevery aspect of monastic life, fromdress and diet to strict obedience ofsuperiors and moderation of speech,including periods of complete silence.Seven times each day at specifiedhours, Weber recites aloud sets ofprayers in Latin known in the aggregateas the Divine Office, or CanonicalHours. Other times are given tostudy and work. The monastic disciplineis one of solitude and separateness,with no purpose in life otherthan to exist and to serve God andone’s spiritual community. Apartfrom his monastery, he is classifiedas a hermit.His scholarship mirrors hisconservatism, in the classicsense of the word. A skilledorganist and expert in liturgicalmusic, he has been commissionedto create a BenedictineMonastic Office for the SaintBernard Abbey in Cullman,Alabama, and Propers of the Mass ofthe Roman Rite for the Archdioceseof Charleston, South Carolina—theformer a ten-year project. His workincludes text translation, commissioningof poets to translate hymns,and composition and arrangement ofchant melodies based on the monastictradition. He even does the designand layout, basing his musical notationon a form developed for chanta millenium ago. He also has prepareda hymnal and settings for allLauds and Vespers for the entire liturgicalyear, has completed a setting ofMARCH 2007 27