By Msgr. Noel C. Burtenshaw

He was far from his monastery at Conyers, Georgia. He was in Paris, France. He was attending the general meeting of the Trappist Order, when Abbot Robert McGann died. The old monk was 71. It was a heart attack. The date was October 3, 1957.

Another monk from Conyers was stationed at the Trappist Community house in Rome, Italy. He was attending this general meeting too. Now he would take the body of his Abbot back to rural Conyers for burial. Father Augustine Moore would not return to his assignment in Rome. Another destiny was up ahead, rising out of Georgia’s red clay bringing new direction to his life.

Abbot Robert had been called to Conyers from a monastery in Utah. That was back in 1948. He would say that the new assignment was as big a shock “as the recent dropping of the atomic bomb.” But he accepted and arrived to lead the little community that had just recently formed in the countryside outside the city of Atlanta.

Father Francis Kavanaugh, guestmaster at the monastery today, was one of the original band of 20 sent on the new foundation from Gethesmane in Kentucky. “I remember being called and told I was one of those chosen to go to Georgia to help found a new monastery. Twenty of us were assigned. On March 21, 1946 we took the train from Kentucky for Atlanta. It was raining and cold. I had been in Gethsemane for 12 years.”

The reception they received was cold too. “For the first year the people around Conyers were most suspicious of us,” says Father Francis. “But they warmed up after that.” The suspicion was more than justifiable. Twenty men in white and brown robes, heads shaved and not speaking, even to each other, was enough to startle the good Christian people of the Conyers area. But the new strange community won their hearts.

These first Trappists settled on the Harbin Plantation, a 1500 acre tract donated to the community by retired police Captain James Kinnarny from Louisville. “On the property was a barn, some cotton fields and lots of forest,” says Father Edmund, who is a historian at the monastery. “They decided to convert the barn and use it for living and praying.” And so they did. For two years the barn (still standing today) became Georgia’s first Trappist monastery.

Dormitories were set up in the loft on the second floor. Downstairs was the chapel. Where once the beasts of the Georgia fields had found shelter, now the Divine Office was solemnly chanted, and the mystery of the Last Supper was re-enacted.

“There was a chicken house next door to the barn,” says Father Edmund, “that became the dining room and kitchen. The barn and the chicken house was very suitable for these first men, but remember they suffered greatly from the cold in winter and heat in summer. It certainly was not like home.”

But home it became to the monks. They had their usual work to do each day. They worked the cotton fields for some years, set up a poultry farm, cultivated fields of hay, raised a dairy herd of Jersey cows, and above all else, planned for their permanent monastery.

“It took a year and a half to build a temporary monastery,” says Father Edmund, “but they got it finished about 1946 and lived there till 1960 when the present monastery was completed.”

And the community grew. Candidates from all over, many attracted by the writings of Thomas Merton, joined the Trappist life. “From the original 20, we expanded till in 1960 we were 100 monks strong,” says Father Edmund. “Monasteries everywhere reported the same boom. Then came the renewal of Vatican II and we lost many.” In the sixties and early seventies numbers were down but stability has once again appeared in the last ten years. The monastery has housed about 50 monks for that period of time. That number is most satisfactory to the men in Conyers.

In 1960, the monastic bells of the grand new abbey church rang out across the fields of Conyers for the first time. Those bells have been calling the silent monks of this contemplative community to their prayer for almost a thousand years. The order of silence and strict observance was founded in France in 1098. Their rule is that of the great St. Benedict who ordered his brothers to bring salvation to the world and to their own lives by “praying and working” (Ora et Labora).

In the Monastery of the Holy Ghost in Conyers the command is still obeyed. The monks rise at 3:45 a.m. and spend each day in silence, working and praying. A siesta may be taken in the afternoon and following the chant of night prayer (Compline) the community retires at 8:30 p.m.

Over the years the style of work has changed. “We still have the bakery, of course,” says Father Edmund, “and our bread sells well in the stores, and the bookstore does well too, but now many of us are involved in crafts instead of working on the land. Farming and poultry is a most expensive business. We do better at our stained-glass, our plants and, of course, our bonsai trees. We are famous now for those Japanese trees.”

The community is also busy maintaining their home – the monastery. “It’s a big place,” says Father Edmund, “and we all pitch in. For example the community is divided into three groups for dishwashing. Menus have to be planned, and help in the kitchen is always welcome.

On October 22, 1957, after Abbot Robert had been laid to rest, the community at Conyers held an election to designate the new superior. The man who had returned from Europe was elected. Father Augustine Moore became the third Abbot of the Holy Ghost Monastery. “A couple of months later,” remembers Father Edmund, “about 50 of us boarded a bus, in our white and brown habits and headed for the Cathedral of Christ the King in a snow storm. Bishop Hyland blessed our new Abbot.”

It was December 12, 1957. The new Diocese of Atlanta was just over one year old. The new Abbot of the Monastery of the Holy Ghost had been blessed and installed. More history in the new Diocese of Atlanta was being recorded.