Trappist Monks: good examples of spirituality for all, but especially for men

By Michael Patrick O’Brien–

Monks are good examples of spirituality. This is true, of course, not only for men. Yet, it also is true that monks are good examples of spirituality especially for men. I spent about a decade of my early life growing up near the old Trappist monastery in Huntsville, Utah, founded 75 years ago this year. Here are ten bits of spiritual and life wisdom—and corresponding challenges—that my friends the monks taught me.

1. Ora et labora: This is the monk motto—Latin for “prayer and work”—and it sums up nicely the monastic life. Many of us men (including me) are good at work, but neglect our prayer lives. The monks and Nike provide the key for integrating the two: just do it! When he blessed the old monastery fields last spring, my monk/friend Father Patrick Boyle said, “Every time a monk lifted a bale of hay out there, it was a prayer.” (See: The Blessing of the Fields). How many of us men bring this attitude to our own work days?

2. Singing: Our church choir is dominated by women, and although it was a little harder to tell when we wore masks at church, my own general observation is that many men do not sing at Mass. In contrast, I think of my monk/friend Father Alan Hohl who I met when I was just a kid visiting the monastery in the 1970s. He was the irrigation manager, a big strong man who carried huge metal pipes on his shoulders and ran from one watering site to another. Yet, that same big strong man also was the monastery cantor and had one of the most gentle and angelic singing voices I ever heard. Anyone who heard the Utah monks sing also heard Father Alan. (See: Fr. Alan Hohl: Utah’s Trappist Bud). Do you sing enough?

3. Hospitality: My Catholic monk friends follow the Rule of Saint Benedict, which mandates hospitality, i.e. that all guests be welcomed as if they were Christ himself. In my book Monastery Mornings, I write about how the monks showed great hospitality to complete strangers—including my family and me—when needed the most. And they usually did so without judgment. How often do we men, stereotyped as competitive creatures, create hospitality at home, at work, or in the other important places of our community? When it does happen, do we make room at the inn without judgment?

4. Seeking Peace: Most of the monks served our country with great passion and patriotism in the military during some of its most difficult and bloody conflicts. Many were deeply scarred by what they saw in war (see: Memorial Day with Veteran Monks). As a result, they also passionately sought and prayed for peace, and quite literally beat their swords into plowshares. Many men are notoriously bad at feeling their feelings, let alone expressing them. Although the monks I knew never wore their feelings on their sleeves, they faced them, integrated them, and tried to turn them into something good for others. Do we bring peace to our own lives and the lives of others?

5. Finding Beauty: During my association with the monks, I was amazed at how they noticed and cultivated beauty. They loved and nurtured their 1,800 acre farm/ranch in Northern Utah’s rural Ogden Valley. They installed beautiful works of art at their monastery, much of which still exists today (see: The Guadalupe Tiles Mystery). My monk/friend Father Jerome Siler, a scholar and the monastery librarian, wrote to me while I was in college in the spring of 1983. Instead of lecturing me on questions of morality or theology, he recounted the latest happenings at the abbey, saving for the end his most significant announcement: “The real good news is our lilac is now full of buds!” (See: A pandemic of lilacs) Do we notice and nurture the lilacs in our lives?

6. The Trappist vow of obedience: Utah’s Trappist monks took five vows. One of those promises was to obey their leader and the rules of their community. In my Monastery Mornings book, I try to translate those vows and make them relevant for men like me who do not live in a monastery. As I wrote the book, I realized that keeping a promise of obedience involves a journey away from selfishness, a passage powered by the act of listening to others. When mentioning obedience, the Bible often originally used the Greek word hupakouo, which means to listen, such as in the lovely image of listening for the knock at the door to find out who is there and to let them in. An awesome power is unleashed when, in our own lives, we take the time to listen at the door to and for others. Do we do that?

7. The Trappist vow of stability: The Trappists explain their vow of stability as follows: “By our vow of stability, we promise to commit ourselves for life to one community of brothers or sisters with whom we will work out our salvation in faith, hope, and love.” Similarly, the lives of us non-monks are inextricably connected to many others who will love us and care for us, flaws and all. Dorothy Day, the great Catholic advocate for the poor and for workers, concludes her autobiography The Long Loneliness by writing, “We have all known the long loneliness and we have learned that the only solution is love and that love comes with community.” How do we build community where we live?  

8. The Trappist vow of celibacy: Celibacy is a complex and mysterious promise, especially for us men who choose the non-celibate life. It is not the simple question of whether or not to have sex. It actually is all about relationship, for at the heart of celibacy is the notion of devotion. We love best and most enduringly when we love with devotion, whether to a partner in a non-celibate life, or to friends and family, or to the whole world in the celibate manner followed by my Trappist friends. Are we men of devotion?

9. The Trappist vow of poverty: Those of us who do not live in a monastery likely will not live a life of strict material poverty like the Utah monks. Yet, we all can try to minimize the type of self-inflicted complexity that the American cowboy poet and philosopher Will Rogers once described so well: “Too many people spend money they haven’t earned, to buy things they don’t want, to impress people they don’t like.” The vow of poverty is a call for all of us to live with greater simplicity and increased compassion. In their daily struggle to, as the Trappists say, “free themselves from the self-centeredness that separates us from God and others,” the Utah monks did a lot of good for a lot of people. The Dalai Lama once said that “at the door of the miserable rich man sleeps the contented beggar.” Which one are we?

10. The Trappist vow of conversion of manners: The Trappists say this vow is “a means of learning the truth about ourselves” and discovering whether we are willing to “change.” In Apology, Plato’s account of the trial of Socrates, the Greek philosopher proclaims, “the unexamined life is not worth living.” Ultimately, my interactions with the Utah monks as described in Monastery Mornings helped me to know myself better, to change, to mature, to grow into the imperfect person I am today, and to continue to evolve into the better person I hope I will be tomorrow. Doesn’t the notion of a conversion of manners make sense outside a monastery too?

I am a married man with three adult children. Obviously, I never took the vows that the Trappists took, but their words and their actions imprinted upon me the true meaning of those actions and promises. Years of watching the monks struggle to fulfill their promises to God and to others revealed, unexpectedly, the existence of a pathway for me, and indeed for all of us, to take as we search for a life filled with faith, hope, and love. 

Among other things, this path involves trying to integrate prayer into my daily life, singing more, welcoming others into my world, looking for peace, and appreciating beauty. It also includes striving, like the monks, to keep five basic promises: (1) to listen and focus on others; (2) to build and sustain community; (3) to live with greater simplicity and more compassion; (4) to act with devotion in relationships; and (5) to develop self-understanding and try to grow from it, that is to change for the better.   

This spiritual and life pathway is not only for men, but for men it is an especially fruitful one. In 1972, my Trappist monk/friend Brother Boniface told a news reporter about a visitor who had arrived at the Utah abbey thinking the monks were “weak men hiding from society,” but left the place admiring “the manliness of their commitment.” I think we can be better men, whether we live in a monastery or not, simply by being just a bit more monk-like.

*Mike O’Brien (author website here: michaelpobrien.com) is a writer and attorney living in Salt Lake City, Utah. His book Monastery Mornings, about growing up with the monks at the old Trappist monastery in Huntsville, Utah, was published by Paraclete Press in August 2021.

This article also was published on June 17, 2022 in The Intermountain Catholic: Men’s spirituality seen through the lens of Trappist wisdom.