"Monastery Mornings" by Michael Patrick O'Brien

Michael Patrick O’Brien, as his name might imply, came from strong Irish Catholic roots on both sides of his family. Those roots didn’t prevent the divorce of his parents, accompanied by the upheaval, physical moves, borderline poverty, and scraping to make ends meet. His mother found solace in the church, and specifically the church pastored by the Trappist monks at the Abbey of Our Lady of the Holy Trinity in Huntsville, Utah. 

For 70 years, from 1947 to 2017, the Trappists lived and worked at the abbey. Founded by a group from Gethsemani Abbey in Kentucky, the abbey’s monks raised livestock, grew crops, and kept honey bees. It managed to flourish in the midst of Mormon Utah. It also became a beacon for O’Brien and his family, and the monks became something like surrogate fathers for the boy.

 

It wasn’t the abbey’s architecture that drew the family. The monks were able to use army surplus Quonset huts, including for the church. There were no soaring stone towers and neo-Gothic architecture. Instead, this was religion and faith close to the ground.

 

O’Brien tells his and the abbey’s story in his memoir Monastery Mornings: My Unusual Boyhood Among the Saints and Monks. This story doesn’t go quite as you might expect. Born in 1961, O’Brien came of age in the period when the Catholic Church was being silently afflicted by abuse by priests. That is not the story here. Instead, the author describes how the Trappist monks became a steady rock for a family that felt regularly adrift, and for a boy who was growing up without his own father.

 

Michael Patrick O'Brien

The memoir is filled with both humorous and heartrending stories. O’Brien cites the brothers by name, explaining not only what they did but the role they played in his own life. He describes how the abbey operated, the work it did, and the visits of notable people (Mother Teresa, a friend of one of the monks, visited in 1972 before she became world-famous; O’Brien says she was already a rock star in Catholic circles before the news media discovered her). He explains how the abbey managed in an area where Catholics were a distinct minority, overcoming initial distrust and becoming a highly regarded member of the community.

 

One of the most moving parts of the book (and there are many) comes when O’Brien explains how the monks were there for him during a particularly horrible childhood trauma. Perhaps like most traumas, it happened suddenly and unexpectedly, and the monks came through with compassion, understanding, and wise counsel.

 

O’Brien is a Catholic writer and lawyer living and working in Salt Lake City. He’s written for newspapers, and his legal work has often involved news media issues. He blogs at The Boy Monk. He began writing about the abbey in 2015, which eventually led to Monastery Mornings. He received a degree in government and theology from the University of Notre Dame and his law degree from the University of Utah. He and his wife have three grown children and one grandchild.

 

Monastery Mornings is a love letter to the monks of the abbey. The men who quietly went about the work and faith were role models, counselors, friends, and often refuges. They provided a family structure, stability, and the fatherly love O’Brien missed with his own father. And he tells a wonderful story of how that shaped his life.