CONYERS—Born on Holy Saturday and baptized on Easter Sunday, Father Tom Tarcis (Thomas Tarcisus Skonieczny) died on Easter Monday, April 16, at the Monastery of the Holy Spirit. He was 84.

Born April 7, 1917 in Calumet City, Ill., just south of Chicago, he was baptized Thomas Gabriel Skonieczny at St. Andrew’s Church on Easter Sunday, April 8. He was confirmed there on May 3, 1933.

Wishing to become a Religious, he corresponded with the Holy Cross Brothers during his senior year in high school. He was accepted for his postulancy at Watertown, Wis. After a year, he went for a novitiate year at Rolling Prairie, Ind., and was given the name Brother Viator. He made temporary profession on Aug. 16, 1938, and was sent to Notre Dame University in South Bend, Ind., to study for a teaching degree.

“I tried for two years,” he would later write, “but toward the end of the second year a discontent seized me and an attraction for the contemplative life came.”

After one year in New Orleans as a teacher at Holy Cross College (a Brothers of the Holy Cross high school), Brother Viator appealed to his spiritual director at Notre Dame and Brother Agatho, CSC, his superior, for help in discernment. Both encouraged him to explore the contemplative vocation.

In a letter to Dom Frederic Dunne, OCSO, abbot of Gethsemani Abbey in Kentucky, Brother Agatho wrote of the 23-year-old Brother Viator: “I can recommend this young man very highly. He is one of the best men I have in the house, and has a marked gift of prayer.”

Encouraged to visit, Brother Viator did so and entered Gethsemani Abbey on June 7, 1941, after completing his simple vows with the Brothers of the Holy Cross.

Given the name Brother Mary Tarcisus by the abbot, he wrote a brief account of his life. It included the influence of St. Therese of Lisieux. “My conversion came with a devotion to the Little Flower in the fifth grade and now it is clear that she has had a good deal to do with a better life on my part since.” He was professed on Oct. 6, 1946.

His early training in music at St. Andrew’s Church was a gift to Our Lady of the Holy Spirit Abbey. It was because of his talent that he was sent to the newly founded monastery in Conyers to serve as organist. He arrived on June 13, 1947, and was ordained a priest on June 29, 1951.

In addition to his musical skills, Father Tom Tarcisus brought a love for the works of St. Bernard. Between work periods, he would go into the woods to be with nature and read St. Bernard in Latin. On warm summer days, a pond would be the place for holy reading and taking in God’s creation that he loved deeply.

Father Tom, as he was affectionately called, left an enduring mark during the construction of the present monastery in the late 1950s not only with his manual labor but also with his devotion to the Way of the Cross. Using leftover cement he made a seven-foot cross for each station and placed them in the woods east of the abbey church.

In June 1983, Father Tom was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. The degenerative dementia was gradual but rapidly increased in 1996 after a broken hip from a fall confined him to bed. As the disease accelerated, Father Tom’s body steadily weakened and eventually left him bedridden. For five years, his monastic brothers devotedly took care of him around the clock, praying with him and reading Scripture to him.

Father Tom seemed to offer up his infirmities for the novices. Frequently a brother visiting with him would hear the question, “And how are the novices?”

He is survived by his brother Dominic and his sister Brendana. He was predeceased by three sisters who joined the Congregation of the Holy Family of Nazareth: Sister Mary Cordia, Sister Sarah Marie and Sister Amata.