“The only really effective apologia for Christianity comes down to two arguments, namely, the saints the Church has produced and the art which has grown in her womb.” –Joseph Ratzinger

Those who know me only from the Glen Workshop may not believe I’m an introvert, but it’s true. For all my chattiness and conspicuous upstaging, I feel the energy draining away when I’m among writers and artists. I desperately need time alone, my only hope to recharge. I’ve learned, over time, to pace myself at such gatherings, to nap or say goodnight earlier than I’m inclined, lest I get sick, my immunity eroded by fatigue like chalk cliffs before the tide. My first task upon returning from the Glen is to catch up on lost sleep.

Why go, then?

Because I must. Because I crave that company the way others crave salt. Because Glen encounters, unlike my bureaucratic duties in the medical-industrial complex, provision my heart. The second task upon my return is unpacking–not just the luggage, but the lessons: seeds planted in the course of the Glen which require time and attention to germinate, to flower, to set fruit.

This year is no exception. It was my first Glen since I graduated from the MFA program and the first attended by my wife, Jill, who had the time of her life, not only in Barry Krammes’ mixed media workshop, but also in plenary sessions and spontaneous gatherings, where she finally met many of the characters I’ve gone on and on about for years.

Together, the two of us listened to readings, absorbed artists’ presentations, sang and prayed with others, made new friends over meals, and took an enchanted excursion to the pilgrimage church at Chimayo.

Tuesday evening, Jill received a disturbing phone call. The daughter of our good friends had become ill over the weekend, and on Monday night, unexpectedly died. The girl turned six this spring and she, her twin brother and her parents visited us as recently as June. Jill and I enjoyed watching her grow up, her shyness peeling away like bark from a sycamore. Her smile was luminous and, once she got to know you, she held your gaze when speaking as if you and she were the only two persons in the world.

The Glen proved as good a place to receive bad news as one could hope for. From those in whom we confided came ready offers of prayer and material help. When I told Greg Wolfe, he asked what the IMAGE team could do for us. Knowing how busy his week was, I said, “Don’t worry about us; you have more important things to do.”

Greg turned his full professorial gaze on me and said, “If community means anything at all, it means something here and now.”

In truth, there was little to do. Jill and I made arrangements to be where we had to be: with our friends. We flew out on Friday, in time for a vigil liturgy at the church where the girl’s mother is a musician. The parents were far more composed than I would have been, gratefully accepting condolences and silent embraces. There were many tears in the gathering about them, but their faces were carefully set. As a pediatrician, I’ve had the terrible duty of telling parents, “We did everything we could,” but I cannot imagine, nor do I wish to learn, what it must be like to receive such news.

Jill and I hugged them long and hard, saying little. What words could make their sorrow less? As with suffering in general–even if there is no such thing as “suffering in general, since all suffering is particular to the body enduring it–there was no practical way for us to share this pain. That’s why, I suppose, we had gathered for liturgy.

The vigil readings were tone-perfect, the music–performed by the combined forces of three choirs–was glorious. Circumstances already had everyone on an emotional cliff, and I cried more that night and the next day than in the past two years. Then came the Litany of the Saints, the communal invocation of the men and women whose lives we hope to emulate. The Litany is always an emotional experience for me; that night it was profoundly so.

We began by petitioning in song for the prayers of the Holy Family, archangels, apostles and others from the New Testament. Then the cantor doubled back through the Old Testament: Abraham, Sarah, Isaac and so on. After that, the early martyrs: Lawrence, Cosmas, Damian, Perpetua, Agatha. We sang our way through the centuries: fourth, fifth, sixth…on through the sixteenth before breaking off.

It was then I saw how the treasures of the Glen had prepared my heart, filling it with wonders before it broke. So many souls at the Glen were already praying for this grieving family, and here we were alongside them, invoking the prayers of centuries’ more.

This was the “cloud of witnesses” of Hebrews 11-12 made visible, audible, tangible. In the beautiful music we were making, in the voices and faces of the artists and writers Jill and I had so recently seen and heard, the saints the church produces and the art nurtured in her womb were one. And I was surprised to discover that, if only for a moment, I was no longer tired.