Junior Seminar at Mepkin

May 3 saw the arrival of 12 of the region’s simply professed at the welcoming Mepkin Abbey in the state of South Carolina. The monks and nuns were coming together for two weeks of study, prayer, monastic leisure and an immersion in the local Mepkin community life.

Fr. Joseph van House, OCist from Our Lady of Dallas Abbey in Irving, Texas led the first week’s seminar on “Liturgy and Life”. Texts from Louis Bouyer, John Henry Newman, Joseph Ratzinger and Michael Lang (on Augustine) formed the starting points for five days of lecture, dialogue and synthesis in the mornings and in the afternoons the brothers and sisters met in small groups with questions for discussion provided by Fr. Joseph. The discussions were to deepen the understanding of the morning’s topics and to lead to an integration of the learning with the monastics’ daily lives in their home monasteries.

Fr. Joseph teaches at the University of Dallas. His research interests include John Henry Newman, Cistercian theology, theological ressourcement, and fundamental Christology. Currently he is working on a book entitled “A Reed after Trumpets: the Schools, the Cistercians, and Geoffrey of Auxerre’s Exposition of the Song of Songs”. As an experienced and accomplished teacher, he elicited comments from the group with ease and encouragement. His love for Cistercian life and his vocation permeated all his teaching and example during the days he was present. As a break between the two weeks of study the brothers and sisters participated in the Mepkin community’s weekly desert day of greater silence and solitude for prayer and reading.



That day of monastic leisure transitioned to the second week with Fr Simeon Leiva, OCSO of St Joseph’s Abbey, Spencer. Using a critical edition of St Augustine’s Confessions (translated into English), Fr Simeon lead the seminar in a close reading of texts from the first ten books of the Confessions. The overall topic was “Augustine’s Confessions: A Guide for Monastic Living”. Enthusiasm for the Augustine’s text and the life we share as Cistercian monks and nuns animated all morning sessions. As during the first week, afternoon discussions further enriched the day’s learning.

Mepkin Abbey sits on land rich in American history beginning the Cherokees and the Catawbas and other smaller tribes of Native Americans, followed by the descendants of European settlers who established large plantations, including the Mepkin plantation. To cultivate these large tracts of land led to the enslavement of countless West Africans who had the skills to cultivate rice. The remnants of dykes and rice fields can still be seen on the property. Some descendants of the enslaved people form the Gullah Geechee people of Carolina and some of their settlements are are across the Cooper River that serves as the western boundary of the monastery’s property. There are several sites on the Mepkin property to remember these peoples, both cemeteries for slave owner family and the enslaved and these are open to the public.  More recently a Meditation Garden of Truth and Reconciliation has opened to the public. During their time at Mepkin Abbey the Region’s Juniors had a chance learn about this history and the Mepkin community’s life and prayer for reconciliation for all the peoples who inhabited the land before them.

For two weeks the Juniors ate with the Mepkin brothers, prayed with them and came to love both the monks and the land. They studied and took long walks. So it was with both sadness of leaving behind and enriching experience, and a joy to return to their home monasteries, that all departed May 17 for the long journeys home.