Grey skies suggested imminent rain, but with several hundred friends surrounding them, the community of Trappist monks, led by Gethsemani abbot Dom Timothy Kelly, OCSO, celebrated the golden jubilee liturgy outdoors.

The Mass is the first public celebration marking the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Our Lady of the Holy Spirit Monastery in Conyers. The original 20 monks were sent forth from their home in Kentucky on March 21, 1944, traveling by train and arriving to take possession of expansive Honey Creek Plantation.

Because the barn where they lived that first year is still standing, the community under abbot Dom Bernard Johnson, OCSO, decided to celebrate this Mass outdoors, in the shadow of this site, rather than in the abbey church.

The simplicity of the setting was a reflection of the spiritual core of the Trappist community, and a vista to look back, literally, on the physical progress made in 50 years.

Dom Timothy pointed out from the hill all three monasteries where the monks have lived. The red barn, home from March to December, 1944, was vacated when the first pineboard monastery was completed by the vigil of the Immaculate Conception that year.

The third monastery of stone and concrete was not ready until 1960, built by the monks under the direction of building superintendent J. Leslie Ray, who was sent with them from Gethsemani.

The manual labor to construct all the buildings was done by the monks themselves, from felling trees which were then cut into lumber at their sawmill, to pouring concrete into wooden forms to make blocks and buttresses.

Red clay and rain figure high in the memory of Father Luke Kot, OCSO, one of the founders. “It rained for two solid days from when we got here, day and night, until the 24th,” he said.

Retired abbot Dom Augustine Moore, OCSO, said the Rockdale County site was selected by Dom Frederick Dunne, OCSO, of Gethsemani because it was crossed by Honey Creek and the South River and because it was supposed to be good land for growing corn. In that regard, Dom Augustine laughed, they “sold him the Brooklyn Bridge” because the top soil had washed away, leaving clay behind.

The monks harvested the cotton that was already planted, and later put in row crops of wheat and corn, raising the wheat for monastery bread and milling it. At one time the monks had a “fine herd” of about 120 Jersey cows and they also raised and sold vegetables.

From 1944 until 1961 the community built the permanent monastery, the retreat house and the abbey church.

“Over the years it looked like it would be forever…we would never finish,” Dom Augustine reflected. The jubilee celebration was an opportunity to “realize that the whole plant is completed. We’re back to a monastic schedule.”

“Everybody just seemed so happy that day. The whole environment was peaceful. It looked like a lot of love was around.”

In his homily for the jubilee Mass, Dom Timothy reflected upon the hidden interior construction that the monks labor at in their vocation.

The readings spoke of Abraham, a journeyer whose life reflects the monastic calling, “from the known, through confusion, into new life,” the abbot said.

“Jesus’ own incarnation has the same dynamic, leaving the side of the Father, going in to an alien environment…The monks going forth is again a mystery of the incarnation…in a particular form, in a particular place and time.”

The homilist also reflected upon the meaning of a “jubilee,” which, in the Old Testament, was a year of mercy, forgiveness of debts, release of slaves and fallow year for the land.

“Jubilee is both a year of release and a year of conversion,” Dom Timothy said, reflecting that in its leveling of goods among peoples, it is “a glorious ideal . . . many of us have not yet learned to live.”

“We must be willing to live a jubilee reality,” he concluded, “willing to share ourselves totally so others may know the plentitude of God’s life.”

When the first monks came to Georgia, Catholics made up less than one half of one percent of the population of the state and part of the mission of the foundation was to express the Catholic tradition of monasticism where it was least known and understood.

While Atlanta and its suburbs have changed all around the Rockdale enclave, the monastery in Conyers is now well known and a place of prayer and reflection for church leaders and lay people of all denominations.

The Conyers foundation was the first Trappist foundation to be made in the United States from another American Trappist monastery. Our Lady of the Holy Spirit sent monks in September, 1987, to make a Trappist foundation in Venezuela.

--Gretchen Keiser