ARTICLES

From North County Waves to Northern Italy Monastery

A Local Surfer's Vocation Story

BY FATHER ANDREW KOCH, OSB (AS TOLD TO JAMES MCCOY)

Faced with a snarling ten-foot wall of water, my heart pumped hard as I prepared for battle. Way too late, I thought, I've caught this one way too late. All down the line, farther than any surfer would want to see, the goliath of a wave was collapsing as it pitched its final fit of rage.

Earlier that late winter day at Cardiff Reef in North County, a six-foot wave had ripped my trusty Canyon swallowtail from my hands and given me a thorough thrashing and a broken leash. If I wiped out now, my surfboard would be nowhere near at hand. Bracing myself for another brutal beating and a rough swim to shore, I plummeted down the wave's face.

Free-falling, without a bottom turn, I found myself buried alive in a ferocious barrel of a wave. This wasn't a classic smooth tube ride on which the surfer looks serenely down the pitching line while letting his hand graze along the wave's innermost superficies as it caresses him to sunlight and air. Oh no. This was a whirlpool turned sideways; it bucked and flayed and tightened around me as I writhed and flailed back. Trying to go forward towards the light of day, I was being muscled back and down. If I managed to stay on my board, it was only because the sea seemed intent on swallowing us both.

Every surfer's dream had turned into a nightmare. Fighting for breath, fighting to think, fighting with every fiber of my nineteen-year-old being, I was being gulped into a gulf without form and void. Time stopped. Darkness was upon the face of deep....

For you cast me into the deep, into the heart of the sea, and the flood enveloped me; all your breakers and your billows passed over me....

The waters swirled about me, threatening my life; the abyss enveloped me....

Down I went to the roots of the mountains; the bars of the netherworld were closing behind me forever.

But you brought my life up from the pit, O Lord, my God.

When my soul fainted within me, I remembered the Lord. —Jonah

Then the wave, first spewing forth spray, coughed me up. As I blinked in the sunlight, my brother surfers were paddling out with holler and hoot. Although my feet were still firmly planted on my surfboard, my heart was no longer in it as a master passion. For years my surfboard had been a ship for fleeing from before the Lord's face. Little did I realize that I was now entering the impact zone of grace.

I was born in San Diego in November 1961, and was baptized David Koch on New Year's Day 1962 in the Immaculata chapel at the University of San Diego. I lived in San Diego all my young life, except for three years in New York. When my family of seven moved back to Point Loma in the summer of '74, it was inevitable that my 12-year-old twin brother, Sean, and I would give surfing a try. It became our passion.

My Catholic faith, meanwhile, became a matter of indifference. I had been an altar boy; I had prayed; I had the faith. But by high school, just when I needed it most, the light of faith grew dim. While my father converted to Catholicism, I was turning more and more to the world with its false light of sin.

My senior year at Point Loma High, I went to visit Thomas Aquinas College in Santa Paula. Not surprisingly, I found the fledging school too small and too Catholic.

For a year and a half after graduation I lived at home, working first as a room-service waiter on Shelter Island and then parking cars at the Rodeo club in La Jolla so that I'd have money to play. I went to Sunday Mass with my family most of the time. A three-month trip to Europe, the ancestral home of Christendom, introduced me to the Catholic faith's rich legacy of culture and learning, but my overarching desire to enjoy pleasure and avoid emotional pain remained. Until that day late in the winter of 1981 when the wave ingested me.

From the belly of the fish Jonah said this prayer to the Lord, his God:

Out of my distress I called to the Lord, and He answered me; from the midst of the nether world I cried for help, and You heard my voice.

I was in the belly of the whale. There was no question of harmony with this wave; this was combat for life with the primal elements. And someone else had pulled me through. It was His victory, though I didn't think in those terms at the time.

As in any war, it is not the combatant who decides who lives or who dies. "Life is mine," says the Lord. I was still alive, and I had lived in those moments with a fullness I'd not known before.

So I went to Thomas Aquinas College and began riding a different kind of wave: practicing my faith again. I dated a really nice girl there for three years. I also first learned of monastic life from my roommate who lived near a Benedictine monastery in Massachusetts. Little did I dream that I would one day be a monk there.

Having graduated in 1985, I moved to Massachusetts with my family. That's when I first visited Saint Benedict Abbey in Still River, Massachusetts. But I spent a couple years more discerning my vocation. I taught school on both coasts. I moved to San Francisco, where I became part of a circle of Catholic friends, including Father Cornelius Buckley, SJ, who had a great influence on my vocation. I considered going to law school, then decided against it. I even took acting classes and did some modeling. Finally, I went on a long retreat at Saint Benedict Abbey, and I fell in love with the Benedictine tradition, with its Latin plainchant and its balance of work, prayer and study.

I professed solemn monastic vows as a monk at the abbey in February 1993. I was ordained a priest in June 1997. For several years I rode high on the Still River wave. But towards the end I couldn't escape that Jonah sense that, once again, the Lord had a different mission for me.

So in August 2002, when Tom Dillon, the president of Thomas Aquinas College, was looking for a college chaplain for a few months, I received the abbot's permission and went. My temporary assignment stretched out into two great years, during which time I went to visit Saint Benedict's Monastery in Norcia, Italy.

According to tradition, Saint Benedict and his twin sister, Saint Scholastica, were born here in the year 480. Benedictine monks have had a monastery here down through the centuries; but it was closed under the anticlerical Napoleonic Laws in 1810. To celebrate the Jubilee Year 2000, however, the Archbishop of Spoleto-Norcia, Riccardo Fontana, invited Father Cassian Folsom, OSB, to bring his fledgling monastic community here from Rome.

Father Cassian is originally from Saint Meinrad's Archabbey in Indiana. A professor at Sant'Anselmo, the Benedictine College in Rome, he was inspired to found a new community. He wanted a monastery that would flourish being fed by the many streams of waters which feed the Church, including fidelity to the Holy Father and the magisterium, study in Rome, devotion to our Lady, and full observance of Saint Benedict's Rule, with vigils and fasting. Ever since I came here to stay in June 2004 I've been giving God resounding praise.

There are now seven of us; so far, we're all Americans, including one Latin American. We're here at the very birthplace of Saint Benedict, amidst a supernatural brotherhood of hundreds of thousands of Benedictines over the centuries, and we're on a mission: To help restore the Church and monastic life through beautiful worship and faithful prayer, through scholarship and hospitality to pilgrims. We want to re-evangelize Europe, carrying on the work pioneer monks began over a thousand years ago. Just in our area of Umbria, there are dozens of monasteries and convents just waiting to be reclaimed by brave souls willing to give all to Christ, willing to come on the one adventure that really matters — I speak of the adventure of Love.

The love of Christ, Who gives so much, is now my master passion. That's the wave I'm on now, and it's a ride that will never end. Sometimes it's fierce and consuming like that wave at Cardiff; other times it's mellow like the long cruisers at Sunset Cliffs. But now I know that the Lord is always with me; I know it is He, and I always take heart.

Those who worship vain idols forsake their source of mercy.

But I, with resounding praise, will sacrifice to you; what I have vowed I will pay; deliverance is from the Lord.

In January I'll be in California for a recruiting trip; and yes, I do intend to go surfing.

Father Andrew can be emailed through his monastery's website, www.osbnorcia.org.

TOP