By Michael Patrick O’Brien–
During a recent trip to New England to visit family and friends, my wife Vicki and I decided to search for some of the famous Trappist hospitality we knew so well from our Utah monk friends, and which I describe in my 2021 book Monastery Mornings.
We wondered how the Massachusetts Trappists—who had never met us—would implement the Rule of St. Benedict which governs their thousand year old monastic order. The Rule’s Chapter 53 mandates, “All guests who present themselves are to be welcomed as Christ, for he himself will say: ‘I was a stranger and you welcomed me.’ (Matt 25:35)”
We were not disappointed.
We spent a delightful morning with some of the Trappistine sisters at Mount Saint Mary’s Abbey in Wrentham, and a joyful afternoon with some of the monks of Saint Joseph’s Abbey in Spencer.
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In 1949, nuns from an Irish monastery, St. Mary’s in Glencairn, County Waterford, crossed the Atlantic and started the first community of Cistercian sisters in the United States near Wrentham, Massachusetts.
According to its website, almost seventy-five years later, Mount St. Mary’s in Wrentham is a thriving multigenerational and multicultural community. The 40 sisters working and praying there range in age from 26 to 93 and come from the United States as well as Canada, Brazil, Scotland, Wales, Spain, Germany, Korea, Hong Kong, Japan, Australia, and India.
The sisters support themselves by making several lines of delicious candy. (See Trappistine Candy.) In their small self-serve abbey store, the butter nut munch and almond brittle seemed especially appealing to me.
Although they live according to an ancient monastic rule, the nuns have 3 modern renewable energy sources—solar panel farms, wind turbines, and a geothermal system. All three provide energy and operating income to the monastery.
The Massachusetts sisters also have started new monasteries for women elsewhere in the United States. Their monastic daughters live in Dubuque, Iowa (Our Lady of the Mississippi Abbey, founded in 1964), Sonoita, Arizona (Santa Rita Abbey, 1972) and Crozet, Virginia (Our Lady of the Angels Monastery, 1987).
In 2019, the Mount Saint Mary’s sisters elected Mother Sofia Millican as their new abbess. She is a citizen of the United Kingdom who grew up in Wales. While enrolled at Harvard University, she attended a monastic retreat weekend at Wrentham.
Soon after she entered the order and made her solemn vows in 2014. The youthful Mother Sofia also has worked as the monastery’s web master and the candy production manager. She took time from her busy schedule to visit with us during our recent trip.
Mother Sofia served us refreshing apple cider and delicious molasses cookies while we sat in a cozy parlor room and talked easily and comfortably, as if we had met there often before. She told us about the monastery and her unique path to the abbey.
She also listened intently as we told her about our family, and the unique health challenges faced by our daughter (see: The Velveteen Daughter). Mother Sofia promised the constant prayers of the sisters and hugged us before we left.
Afterwards, we walked to the sisters’ simple but lovely stone and wood church. The ringing chapel bells serenaded us along the way.
Inside, the Trappistines sang their afternoon chant—Psalm 18: “The Heavens proclaim the glory of God…” A kind sister came all the way to the back of the church to bring us hymnals and show us how to follow along.
We’d never met any of these kind and gentle women before, and yet they treated us better than do some people we have known for years.
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Spencer (near Worcester) is only about fifty miles away from Wrentham in central Massachusetts.
Spencer men fought at Bunker Hill during the American Revolutionary War. George Washington passed through in 1775 to take command of the Continental Army, and then he returned to visit as president in 1789.
My now-favorite bit of Spencer history, however, is that Trappist monks founded Saint Joseph’s Abbey there in 1950. The monks arrived after their Rhode Island monastery was destroyed by a fire. The Rhode Island monks also had relocated just fifty years earlier from Nova Scotia, Canada.
From our own observations—and according to the monks’ website—the abbey’s stunning location on an old dairy farm is nestled “at the crest of a steeply sloping hill blanketed in oak, maple and pine, but bared in part by farmed meadows and broad pasturelands.”
Today, the Spencer monks make over two dozen flavors of fruit preserves, jams, and jellies. They started production in 1954, after one monk made some mint jelly from a bumper crop of garden herbs. The jelly quickly sold out at the monastery gift shop and a new monastic industry was born (see: Trappist Preserves).
Brother William James, an abbey cook for over four decades, has explained that Spencer’s jams are made from pureed fruit, the jellies are made from fruit juice, marmalades include peel, conserves are made from whole fruit (raisins and nuts may be added), and preserves are made from whole fruits too.
To further support themselves, the monks also sew liturgical vestments and related linens under the name Holy Rood Guild. Up until 2022, the monks also brewed the only Trappist beer made in America. The business line fell victim to the pandemic and stiff competition from the pale ale craft beers now so popular in America.
During our trip to Spencer Abbey, a delightful monk named Father Emmanuel Morinelli met us and gave us a short but wonderful tour. Father Emmanuel is a professional artist, trained in studio art and design as well as church music and choral conducting, and serves as the abbey’s music director and guest master.
He’s focused his creative energies in recent years in photography, and describes his work as “painterly” and as a “form of visual contemplation.” His website includes dozens of lovely images of the monastery grounds. We bought a print of the beautiful stone abbey church with the red front door.
Father Emmanuel is quite thoughtful about balancing his art and his monastic vocation. He wrote on his website: “To be both monk and artist is to live a delicate balance between two strong desires….One seeks self-expression and recognition, the other seeks self-denial and anonymity….I have decided to embrace them both and work towards their integration in my life.”
His obvious balance made him the perfect tour guide for us. We learned about the stone abbey’s unique architecture and art. We saw beautiful wood fireplace mantles donated from old Newport mansions and a stone Roman garden planter gifted by William Randolph Hearst.
We then sat in choir stalls and heard Father Emmanuel play the organ to lead the three dozen or so Spencer monks in their daily evening vespers chant.
Afterwards, the good monk walked us to the abbey doors, hugged us, and said goodbye…just like we were old friends.
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Anyone who has met Trappist monks and nuns knows exactly what I mean when I refer to their famous and warm hospitality. Even today, I often rack my brain wondering where it comes from.
The only plausible explanation is that these men and women have huge loving hearts. And that they really do see Christ in every visitor. Even in a couple of strange Utahns like us wandering around New England and dropping in to visit them.
*Mike O’Brien (author website here) is a writer and attorney living in Salt Lake City, Utah. Paraclete Press published his book Monastery Mornings, 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.
Always good to read your stories, Mike, and this one just reinforced the loss to Utah when our Trappists had to close the monastery in Huntsville. I have to look at the positive of what a blessing it was to have had them here at all. A very unlikely blessing, all things considered. Thanks for keeping their spirit alive for us.
Thanks Andy!