DOM Perignon, the man who put his name to one of the best known brands of champagne, was perhaps the only Benedictine priest ever to have made an impression on Tony Burke, an agnostic who once filmed trailers for a sex chat line.
But after Burke, 29, spent 40 days and 40 nights in Worth Abbey, a Benedictine monastery in Crawley, England, he was a changed man.
He underwent a religious conversion, came to believe in God, quit his job — and never looked back.
“It’s the best thing I’ve ever done,” he said.
Burke, a resident of London, was one of five men selected from hundreds to take part in The Monastery, a three-part reality television show which screened on the BBC in Britain last month. The show followed the experiences of each of the five participants, none of whom were Catholic, as they tried to adapt to the Benedictine way of life.
“We saw in this project an opportunity to discover what our way of life offers to people today who do not share our beliefs,” Benedictine Abbot Christopher Jamison said in a May 3 statement.
“For the participants, we hoped that they would discover hidden depths in their lives and in those hidden depths encounter God. This hope was fulfilled to an extent that took us all by surprise,” he said.
Abbot Jamison first invited the men to use silence as a “wonderful spiritual bath which we invite you to get into to relax your spiritual muscles so you can start listening to God, listening to each other and listening with the ear of your heart to your own deepest self”.
The men prayed with the monks six times a day, and each participant was asked to observe the Benedictine rules of silence, obedience and humility.
Predictably, they found the Benedictine lifestyle difficult.
Burke was one of the first to crack. In the first episode he was filmed leaving the abbey with Gary McCormick, a 36 year-old painter and former member of a Protestant paramilitary unit from Northern Ireland, in search of “virgins and cigarettes” in a nearby village.
The pair returned with a bag containing cigarettes, potato chips, chocolates and soda. They were asked to sit down while Abbot Jamison explained that true freedom rested in being able to choose to resist the urges of the body.
Burke and McCormick were joined in the abbey by Anthoney Wright, 32, a “high earning, high energy” bachelor from London who boasted to the group that he had gone to the monastery straight from a “Cartier polo match”.
Wright, who works for a legal publishing company, was filmed partying in the days before he arrived at the abbey. He was shown giving a high-five to a barman in a fashionable Mayfair salon and winking at the camera as a girl threw her arms around his neck.
Also in the group was Nick Buxton, 37, a student of Buddhism at Cambridge University who since filming ended has returned to his Anglican roots and regularly attends church. He took an intellectual approach to the challenge but struggled with the “part of me that doesn’t believe”.
Peter Gruffyd, 70, a retired teacher and published poet from Bristol, was the only married man in the cast. He said he sought the answer to the question, “What is the meaning of life?”
McCormick said he “couldn’t stay out of jail” after he became involved with the paramilitary Ulster Defence Association in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and later became a drug user. He fought back tears as he told how he swore violently at his mother, “the only one who ever really stood by me in all my life”.
McCormick was one of the first to find what he was looking for — the strength to come to terms with his past — and the ensuing inner peace.
“There are 22 monks in here, and every one of them loves you and accepts you,” he said. “I have never been made so welcome in a place in all of my life.
“They talk to you, they maybe know about your background, yet they don’t judge you. It’s hard to put into words but the acceptance here is, to me, it’s like walking into heaven,” he said.
Over the weeks that followed, Gruffyd regained the faith he rejected in his youth, and Buxton edged closer to becoming an Anglican minister.
Burke discussed his past drinking problems and confessed that he was unhappy with his present life.
Then, on day 38, he had a “religious experience”, and reported a “surge of energy” that left him in tears.
Burke told Catholic News Service on May 10 that he now attends a Catholic church near his home in London.
“I was looking for a different way of approaching life, and my time in the monastery gave me a tremendous amount of affirmation,” he said.
“I went in as an agnostic, and I had a very specific and profound experience. It was something I couldn’t ignore and haven’t ignored,” he said, adding that since filming was completed in September he has also returned to the abbey at least once a month to pray with the monks.
Wright was shown coming to terms with being raised by grandparents after being abandoned as a two year-old.
He told CNS that the monastery experience motivated him to realise his ambitions. He said he has since taken a pay cut to set up his own music production company.
He added that he now prays daily and makes the occasional visit to London’s Westminster Cathedral.
“The experience is still happening,” he said. “It is when you get back to civilisation that you start to go back over all the things you learned.”
He said he flirted with the idea of becoming a Catholic but instead opted to pursue a spiritual life of his own making.
“Definitely, the experience has changed me a lot, but at the end of the day I am not about to become a monk,” he told CNS.
“Everyone has the stereotypical idea of what a monk is.
‘You think of them as being old fashioned and not part of the modern world. But they were great. They were just like normal guys who you could talk to easily.
‘It was the most unbelievably peaceful and spiritual place. I will remember the experience forever,” he said.
“I am still in contact with them. I consider them friends. How many other guys can say they have 22 monks as spiritual advisers?” he said.
CNS
