Benedictines close 150th anniversary celebration of abbey's founding

Published: 2008-05-30

DONIPHAN, Kan. (CNS) -- The ruts in the roads still held water from the previous days' rain as a small caravan of monks from St. Benedict's Abbey drove the gravel road from Atchison through the Missouri River flood plain to Doniphan one Saturday this spring. Just a week before, Abbot Barnabas Senecal and the monks had capped off a year of public sesquicentennial observances marking the founding of the abbey in Atchison. The Mass they celebrated drew a capacity crowd to the newly renovated abbey church. But it was in Doniphan that the monks officially concluded the anniversary year -- with a simple outdoor Mass in a clearing near a monument recalling the abbey's founders. Abbot Senecal carried with him a brief homily and the text of Psalm 84: "Happy the men whose strength you are! Their hearts are set upon the pilgrimage: When they pass through the valley of the mastic trees, they make a spring of it; the early rain clothes it with generous growth. They go from strength to strength; they shall see the God of gods in Zion."

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