A Utah Emmanuel brings the ancient Advent song to life

By Michael Patrick O’Brien–

“O come, O come, Emmanuel, And ransom captive Israel, That mourns in lonely exile here, Until the Son of God appear. Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel Shall come to thee, O Israel.“

As a small child, during the four weeks before Christmas, I sang this ancient Advent song in church and in Catholic school. The unique melody intrigued me, but the enigmatic words perplexed me. I wondered…just who is this Emmanuel fellow? 

Many decades later, I now know about the song’s rich and textured history. The hymn originated some 1,200 years ago in medieval monastic Catholic liturgy. Monks would chant the “O Antiphons” or refrains designed to focus their minds on the imminent birth of Jesus on Christmas. This Latin chant referenced the Old Testament names for the Messiah. 

Thus, the monks sang: “O Sapentia [wisdom], O Adonai [the Hebrew word for God], O Radix Jesse [root of Jesse].” They included in these “O” antiphons the name “Emmanuel” as mentioned in Isaiah 7:14 and in Matthew 1:22-23 (“All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet: ‘Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and his name shall be called Emman′u-el.’”)

In 1851, the English Anglican priest and songwriter John Mason Neale translated the Latin into an English hymn. Soon after, English choirmaster Thomas Helmore paired the words with a catchy French melody that was used in burial processionals. This fortuitous union created the “O Come Emmanuel” hymn we know and sing today. 

When I was a child, however, I did not know any of this interesting backstory. I needed something tangible, a more flesh-and-blood explanation of “Emmanuel.” And then I met a Utah Trappist monk with the same exact name.

His given name was John Joseph Spillane, born in 1916 in New York with Irish and French grandparents. Although originally from the East, Spillane grew up in Southern California on the West Coast. His father was an actor and a former circus acrobat, and his mother sang in vaudeville shows. Spillane once told a news reporter that he was raised in a stage trunk. 

He was a talented actor too, and dabbled in the theater before becoming a Catholic priest. Spillane served parishes for five years in the Los Angeles area. In 1950 at age 33, however, he made a radical decision. He joined the Utah monastery and took the religious name of “Father Emmanuel.” 

His choice generated headlines on television and in newspapers. Both the Los Angeles Times and the Ogden Standard-Examiner described him as a “Hollywood priest.” The Los Angeles Mirror said the young monk had been a “spiritual advisor to many screen notables” in California. Spillane, however, told reporters, “I feel that I can do more through a life of penance and prayer than I have done in the outside world.” 

Six years later, the Utah monks elected him as their leader at age thirty-nine, shortly after founding Abbot Maurice Lans died. Father Emmanuel served in that role for the next twenty-six years. We met him in the early 1970s (the approximate timeframe of the photo above), when we first started visiting the abbey regularly in the middle of a traumatic family divorce. I tell this story in Monastery Mornings (Paraclete Press 2021), my memoir about growing up at the Utah abbey.

We liked Father Emmanuel immediately, and we were not the only ones. After they attended a 1964 Trappist leadership meeting together, famous Kentucky monk Thomas Merton wrote in his journal, “It is good to know Dom Emmanuel of Utah better, he is very capable.” Fifty years later, like many others, my friend and fellow blogger, Utah Deacon Scott Dodge, mourned Father Emmanuel in his blog when he passed.

Father Emmanuel was a big and solid man, a former football player who was larger than life. He had a shiny bald head, a round face, solid jaw, warm personality, deep voice, and a loud laugh. Someone—perhaps Father Emmanuel himself—told us he was related to the colorful crime novelist Mickey Spillane. 

He stayed in office both before, during, and after the dramatic changes of the Second Vatican Council in the early 1960s. He pulled off this remarkable act of religious dexterity because he exuded both traditional monastic spirituality and a sort of California cool. He led his monks in traditional monastic chant, but also loved wearing aviator sunglasses and attending guitar folk Masses on the abbey lawn in the summer of 1972. 

He sometimes played the tambourine during these outdoor Eucharistic celebrations. I’ll never forget his rendition of “Song of Good News” by Father Willard Jabusch. The hymn has a traditional Israeli melody and starts rather slowly, telling Christians to open their hearts to the good news of the gospel. 

The tempo increases dramatically on the chorus, explaining how God speaks to the people. This point in the song was tambourine time for Father Emmanuel. During each chorus, the tambourine in his hand virtually exploded with movement and with sound. I am surprised he never broke it. He grinned the whole time.

When I was applying for admission to the University of Notre Dame, I asked Father Emmanuel to write my required recommendation letter. He agreed. Seeking such a letter from a Trappist abbot seemed like a perfectly normal thing to me. The Notre Dame admissions office probably thought it rather unique, and I got in.

The question of financing such a college education was an entirely different matter, however, but I talked to Father Emmanuel about that too. He said he would speak with Utah monk Brother Nicholas Prinster, who came from a Colorado family that owned many grocery stores and strongly supported the university. A few weeks later, a letter arrived from ND with a sizable financial aid package. I was able to go. He helped me in many other ways too, as also described in my book.

Besides helping unknowns like me, he welcomed a variety of notable Catholics to the abbey, including Mother Teresa of Calcutta, Dorothy Day, and Bede Griffiths a British-born priest and Benedictine monk who lived in ashrams in India and became a famous yogi. After he retired as abbot in 1983, Father Emmanuel worked as the Utah monastery guest master and then served as chaplain for the Trappistine sisters at Santa Rita Abbey in Sonoita, Arizona.

When he died in 2010, guests released balloons at his graveside in the quaint old Huntsville abbey cemetery. It was a touching tribute based on his favorite (and oft-recited) poem, “Balloons Belong in Church” by Ann Weems, about a four-year-old boy who gets into trouble for bringing a balloon to church.

The poem reflects Father Emmanuel’s point of view too: “Where did we get the idea that balloons don’t belong in the church? Where did we get the idea that God loves gray and Sh-h-h-h-h, And drab and anything will do? I think it’s blasphemy not to appreciate the joy in God’s world. I think it’s blasphemy not to bring our joy into His church.”

For me, God often is hard to believe in—hard to see—within a world so violent, so sad, and so bereft of much divine light. When I do find God, however, it usually is in other people, in their love and kindness. Singing “O Come, Emmanuel” during Advent reminds me of one of the best examples of this sort of person. 

Emmanuel means “God is with us.” My friend Father Emmanuel wore that name quite well.

*Mike O’Brien (author website here: https://michaelpobrien.com/) is a writer and attorney living in Salt Lake City, Utah. Paraclete Press published his book Monastery Mornings (https://www.amazon.com/Monastery-Mornings-Unusual-Boyhood-Saints/dp/1640606491), about growing up with the monks at the old Trappist monastery in Huntsville, Utah, in August 2021. The League of Utah Writers chose it as the best non-fiction book of 2022.