“I’m glad there’s such a thing as monks.” Remembering Father Charles Cummings OCSO

By Michael Patrick O’Brien–

A sad but inevitable fact of aging is that one must endure the pain of various forms of loss, including the loss of old friends. And so, with a heavy heart, I write about another Utah monk’s departure to Heaven. Father Charles Cummings passed away on January 15, 2020 while visiting the Trappist monastery in Vina, California (Order Announcement).

I first met Father Charles in the Summer of 1972, about a year after he was ordained a priest in Utah. My mother, looking for peace of mind after a difficult divorce, started taking my sister and me to the now-closed monastery in Huntsville. The Trappists befriended us. I was 11 and over the next decade grew up as a sort of boy monk. Holy Trinity Abbey became a beloved home away from home. 

During our first summer at the monastery, Abbot Emmanuel Spillane organized regular Sunday masses on the Abbey’s front lawn. The good abbot loved guitars, and played the tambourine. (Remember, it was the 1970s!) Father Charles often was the main celebrant at these monastic folk masses.

He was tall and slim. Even at my tender age, I was impressed with his serene face, calm demeanor, dignity, and skilled manner of speaking. He carefully chose and distinctly pronounced each word, crafting them before they ever left his mouth. Such young monk skills (he was only in his early 30s) foretold the prolific scholar and popular writer/speaker he would become.

A native of Grand Rapids in Northern Minnesota, Father Charles joined the Utah Abbey in 1960. He studied for the priesthood there and then earned a master’s degree from Duquesne University in formative spirituality. He spent most of his monastic life writing, editing, teaching, counseling, speaking, serving as a chaplain, and engaging in inter-religious monastic dialogue. At the time of his death, he was the chaplain for the Trappistine sisters in Crozet, Virginia (recent photo here: Charles Cummings photo).

His best known written work likely is Monastic Practices, published in 1986 by Cistercian Publications. Amazon still sells the book online.  Google Books describes the revised edition this way: “For three decades, Monastic Practices has been a valued resource for English-speaking aspirants to monastic life. [This revised edition] explores the common practices of the monastic life in order to rediscover them as viable means of leading persons to a deeper encounter with God….After long monastic experience, Cummings shows us how the ordinary things we do constitute our path to God. In the art of living life, he argues, we are always beginners, searching for God through our concrete circumstances and actions.”

Like his other Utah Trappist brothers (see: Bees, theology, and toilets), Father Charles also engaged in many forms of manual labor. A 1992 Salt Lake Tribune news article about the monastery reported that Father Charles was in charge of placing lids on the tops of tubes of the monks’ famous honey (for more on the monks’ honey business, see: Trying to align my ora and labora). He told the reporter, “My fervent hope and wish is that they get a machine to replace me.”

One job he never wished away, however, was helping construct the Abbey’s lovely mountainside A-frame hermitage. My last email communications with him were about that project (see: Invisible wapiti at the old monk Hermitage). Father Charles explained how when the work was done, he loved the fruits of his labors: “The view from the deck, watching the deer and sometimes the elk, the panorama of mountains and foothills, out of sight of the abbey, indoors the wood fire in the fireplace that provided warmth and some light and dancing flames.” 

While visiting places like the hermitage, Father Charles wrote wonderful words. For a website called “Monasteries of the Heart” (Monks in Our Midst: Charles Cummings OCSO on waiting) he reflected on waiting: “The monastic night watch is good practice in the art of waiting, as we patiently look for the coming of dawn. Monks and nuns wait in the dark, longing for the light of dawn but unable to hasten its coming. No one can force the dawn or bring it about in any way. It dawns in its own good time on those who wait for it. The ability to wait is characteristic of those who have learned to slow down and live in the fullness of the present moment. By quietly watching and praying through the night, I learn to live with the slow process of my own spiritual growth. I have no control over the future and I do not know exactly what will happen. I am asked only to stay awake and be ready because the light will surely come and will claim its victory over every form of darkness, despair, suffering, and death.”

In his book Monastic Practices, Father Charles anticipated the very moment of death he faced last week, “I do not know, except by Christian faith, what lies beyond this life. In death I lose everything without knowing for sure that there is anything to follow. Faith, however, assures me that there is a God who is like a loving father or mother. The ultimate reality is not death and extinction. But God.”

One Utah Deseret News reporter, reflecting in 2017 about the closure of the Huntsville monastery, recalled an earlier conversation when Father Charles told him, “I’m glad there’s such a thing as monks. I’m no good at anything else.” (Bidding adieu to a life made from honey) Obviously, the second sentence of that humble statement is not true. It is good, however, that there are monks. And I’m glad Father Charles Cummings graced my life and our world by becoming one.

*Mike O’Brien 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, will be published by Paraclete Press (more information here) in August 2021.