By Michael Patrick O’Brien–
When I was a boy, my Trappist monk friends shared their homemade wheat bread with me. It was a precious moment of monastic hospitality, made even better years later when I realized that Dorothy Day and Mother Teresa of Calcutta had enjoyed the same gift at about the same time.
Seventy-five years ago monks from Gethsemani Abbey in Kentucky established a new monastery—Holy Trinity Abbey in Huntsville, Utah—on July 10, 1947. To support themselves, the Utah Trappists farmed, operated a dairy, raised chickens and beef cattle, and bottled honey from their beehives.
They also baked and sold bread from the wheat grown on their 1,800 acres. Most people know the monks for their bread. This bread is a notable character in my new book Monastery Mornings (Paraclete Press 2021), a memoir about my boyhood growing up beside the monks at the Ogden Valley abbey.
The monk bread was a deep-auburn-brown color and smelled and tasted of honey. It was substantial; just one slice could fill you up. It was delicious too, particularly while still hot.
Only one thing made the bread even better—the monks’ creamed honey on top. A monastery brochure from the 1970s explains how the monks made this spread: “The alfalfa-clover honey is carefully mixed with choice nut meats, fruit pieces, flavored extracts, or fresh spices. Each of the different flavors is allowed to age until it has naturally changed to a fine, crystalline state, giving it a soft, creamy texture that is delicious on fresh bread or toast.”
It turns out I was not the only one who loved the monk bread. In 1978, New York Catholic writer and activist Eileen Egan visited the Utah monastery. Egan was friends with Dorothy Day.
Day, a founder of the Catholic Worker Movement, was an activist for the poor. Pope Francis, in his 2015 speech to the United States Congress, explained how Day’s “passion for justice and for the cause of the oppressed, were inspired by the Gospel, her faith, and the example of the saints.”
Day had visited the Utah abbey in 1970. She browsed through the bookstore, spoke with some of the monks, blushed when she saw the monks stocked her book, and no doubt ate some monastery bread. After Egan’s 1978 Utah visit, Egan sent some more Trappist bread and honey to Day.
Day thought enough of the gift to mention it in the September 1978 edition of her newspaper, The Catholic Worker: “Eileen Egan sent out home-made bread and creamed honey from Holy Trinity Abbey, Huntsville, Utah….The monks sent promises of prayers. Since our beginnings in the Thirties, Trappists have been close to us, and we depend on their prayers.”
Egan also was friends with Mother Teresa of Calcutta and wrote several books about her. A meeting of Mother Teresa’s co-workers had brought Egan to Huntsville in 1978 when she bought bread for Dorothy Day. Egan also had accompanied the woman-who-now-is-a-saint during Mother Teresa’s October 1972 visit to Holy Trinity Abbey.
I was there at the abbey in 1972 too, fifty years ago this year. A few weeks before the highly anticipated visit, some excited monks told us the sensational news that someone they called a living saint was coming to the monastery.
Sure, we all know Mother Teresa’s name now—Nobel Peace Prize winner in 1979, given a state funeral to rival Princess Diana during the year they both died in 1997, beatified by Pope John Paul II in 2003, and then canonized a saint by Pope Francis in 2016. She was not nearly as well-known back in 1972.
As explained in Monastery Mornings, we attended morning Mass with Mother Teresa and the monks. We sat in the upstairs church balcony, in the second row, and fortuitously just behind her. She arrived wearing a black sweater, her simple white sari robe with the blue trim, and sandals with socks.
As I watched her from behind during the first part of Mass, I noticed how tiny she was. At my young age, I was already taller than her. Her face was worn, homely, and wrinkled, her nose was bulbous, and you could not see any of her hair. Still, even I could detect that she radiated with an intense inner beauty.
While in Huntsville, Mother Teresa visited with her Utah Trappist friend Brother Nicholas Prinster, who had worked with her in Calcutta. She also met with some of her volunteer co-workers. She stayed at the Holy Trinity Abbey family guesthouse for a few days.
The ever-hospitable Trappists served Mother Teresa several meals during her Utah visit 50 years ago. Almost certainly those meals included slices of the monks’ homemade wheat bread…the same bread Dorothy Day and I ate.
Although I have read and understand the Biblical admonition about not living by bread alone, I can never forget the delectable aroma and wonderful taste of that monastery bread, or the kindness of the men who shared it with me.
It’s also quite delicious to think that two of the greatest Catholic women of the twentieth century may have felt the same exact way.
*Mike O’Brien (author website here) is a writer and attorney living in Salt Lake City, Utah. His book Monastery Mornings (found here), about growing up with the monks at the old Trappist monastery in Huntsville, Utah, was published by Paraclete Press (more information here) in August 2021.
