By Father Joseph Sanches

On December 11 the Trappist monks of the Holy Spirit monastery assembled together in their monastic Church to bid prayerful farewell to one of their brothers, Father Charles English. Archbishop Donnellan along with the abbot, Father Augustine Moore, and the other monks celebrated the Mass of the Resurrection for Father English.

Father English was a native New Yorker who spent his younger years as a supporter and collaborator in the Catholic Worker Movement in New York City with Dorothy Day. Twenty years ago he came to Georgia to serve the Lord and the Church as a Trappist monk in Conyers.

The quiet and hidden life he lived as a monk made his passing almost unnoticed except for the few relatives, friends and monks he left behind. Only one friend of many years paid him special tribute. Tom Sullivan delivered the homily of the Mass. His death and burial, like the life he had lived, was quiet and unadorned and celebrated in the striking simplicity of the Cistercian custom.

He spent his life for God in secret; may his Heavenly Father reward him in secret.