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Monks join daughter house's golden celebration
Father Aidan McSorley wandered the grounds of Mount Michael Abbey, surprised at how much the place had changed since he attended high school seminary there 50 years ago.
 “I remember when corn grew a few feet from the building,” he recalls, looking over what is now a pastoral park of trees and manicured grass. “During the harvest dust got everywhere,” he says. “We’d go to the dining room and we could write our names in the dust on our plates. We’d go to our classrooms and we could write our names on our desks. But we didn’t care. We were boys. It was an adventure.”
Father Aidan and the rest of the Conception community carpooled north to Elkhorn, Neb., June 12 to celebrate the golden anniversary of the founding of Conception’s daughter house. Mass, a picnic in the shade of the oldest trees on campus, and tours, and a poignant and humorous oral history of Mount Michael highlighted the day.
“This golden moment of jubilee celebration is an occasion for your brothers at Conception Abbey to wish you a hearty, fraternal, and sincere congratulations,” Abbot Gregory Polan said during his homily at the Mass. Reflecting on the Gospel passage of the day, Matthew’s recounting of the Sermon on the Mount, Abbot Gregory remind the monks to see “the multitudes” as Jesus saw them. “He saw life with all of its hope and prospect, its sorrow and sin, its longing and desire,” Abbot Gregory said.
This example is especially important, he said, in the apostolate shared by the two communities - the education and formation of young men.
The monks of Mount Michael Abbey in Elkhorn, Neb., welcomed the entire community from Conception Abbey June 12 for the celebration of Mount Michael's 50th anniversary. Both communities posed together for a photo outside the chapel. Photo by Bob Ervin.
“We work to help them wrap words around ideas, to articulate those ideas with clarity, and to clarify their views with examples and experiences,” he said. However “we give them greater gifts when we show them how to see as Jesus saw, when we ourselves explain to them how we see the life that surrounds us…with the vision of faith, with the eyes of Jesus.”
Mount Michael’s origins trace back to 1952 when Abbot Stephen Schappler of Conception Abbey began looking for a place to relocate Conception’s high school seminary program.
With Archbishop Gerald Bergan’s blessing, Abbot Stephen sent Father Dominic Lavin to Omaha to find a suitable sight in the heavily Catholic city. While in Omaha, Father Lavin met Omaha businessman and lobbyist, Rex Olson, owner of the suitably named Journey’s End Farm. Father Lavin persuaded Olson to donate the farm as the site of a new monastic foundation. The first carload of monks from Conception arrived May 14, 1953. Three years later Mount Michael was raised to the status of a priory, and by 1966 the thriving community became an independent abbey. In 1970, facing dwindling seminary enrollment, the monks decided to close the minor seminary and open Mount Michael Benedictine High School.
Abbot Raphael Walsh, a former monk of Conception, whom Abbot Anselm appointed the first abbot of Mount Michael (breaking with the Benedictine tradition of electing abbots, by the way), now serves as president of the school. He said he arrived with much uncertainty.
Abbot Raphael Walsh, the first abbot of Mount Michael.
Photo by Bob Ervin.
“We didn’t know in August if we would be here in September,” he said. But worries were put to rest quickly.
The school which has maintained a steady enrollment of between 150 and 160 students for the past four decades, will see a dramatic increase this year to 185 students. Abbot Raphael credits the rapid urban sprawl of Omaha, which is reaching Elkhorn, the school’s solid reputation, and an influx of students from Korea, the result of the school’s Internet presence.
While few of the monks from Conception who attended the celebration actually attended Mount Michael or had even visited the abbey, Abbot Raphael said the fraternal bonds remain.
“This means a lot to us that they would come celebrate with us,” he said. “They are our founders.”
We welcome your comments:
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www.conceptionabbey.org
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