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By Gretchen Keiser
CONYERS—An imposing figure of a man, his face radiates warmth
and a fatherly presence, at once understanding and strong.
Dom M. Basil Pennington, OCSO, is a graduate of the Cathedral
College of the Immaculate Conception in New York City, who spent part of his
youth in Brooklyn and part in Kansas. In college he “tried to find a good
mentor every semester” to challenge him academically, to help him grow and
to serve as a role model.
His vocation as a monk in the Cistercian order he credits to a
five-below-zero day when he had to hitchhike to one retreat house or another
for a retreat. “It was a wonderful day for hitchhiking,” he recalls,
so he chose to hitchhike to Spencer, Mass., which was the farthest away.
The monastery is the oldest monastic community in North America,
175 years old, he said, although it has moved several times.
“I had a wonderful fight with the vocations director ...
Later we reconciled and the next thing I knew I moved to Spencer ... I entered
four days after I graduated.”
“When I entered, I wanted to be to the whole world,” he
said. “Somehow the Lord enabled me to see that the contemplative life was
to the whole world.”
This spiritual truth has also had a literal aspect for the new
abbot. Entering the Cistercian order in 1951, he was consecrated as a monk in
1956 and ordained a priest in 1957. He received degrees in theology and canon
law and attended sessions of the Second Vatican Council as a peritus, spending
time in Rome in 1958 and in 1963-64. Following the council, as the Cistercian
order and the Catholic Church as a whole responded to the new directions, then
Father Pennington was involved in the writing of the new Code of Canon Law, the
new Constitution for his order, which was developed over a 35-year period, and
the creation of an Institute of Cistercian Studies.
Pope Paul VI, he said, expressed great esteem for the
contemplative life, stating that the renewal envisioned by the council
“will never take place unless the entire church” rediscovers the
contemplative dimension of the spiritual life.
Abbot Thomas Keating in Spencer began the re-emphasis upon
contemplative prayer in their monastic community, Dom Pennington said, and from
this flowed a contemplative outreach first to people in the United States and
then overseas. Teaching this ancient method of prayer has taken him around the
world, including the Philippines, Hong Kong and Greece, and he has written
dozens of books on the topic.
“Many Catholics don’t know our traditions,” Dom
Pennington said. “It is certainly found in the earliest Christian
writings. It is a living part of our tradition that people are thirsting for
and really need ... People want a real experience of God. They just don’t
want to know about him.”
Finally two years ago, he “retired” and returned to his
community in Spencer. “I had a wonderful year at Spencer ... wrote four
more books,” he said. To his surprise he was elected interim superior of
another Cistercian community in the United States, where he served until his
election Aug. 4 as abbot in Conyers.
There is a thread of continuity throughout his journey, Dom
Pennington said.
“The monastery belongs to Mary and I belong to Mary. I have
all my life given myself to Mary to use me any way she wants for her Son.”
It all started in 1951, when he made St. Louis de Montfort’s
prayer of consecration to Mary during his senior year in college. “I made
it January 31 and by June 1, she had me in the monastery,” Dom Pennington
said. “I really do belong to her.” |
