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Novice Andrew Broom becomes Brother Anselm
By Dan Madden
How does one go from the individual existence of an only child to the communal life
of a religious community?
“I guess I’m probably compensating for a lack of community growing up,”
quips Brother Anselm Broom, displaying the dry wit he sprinkles throughout most conversations.
“Maybe the only reason I did this was to finally get some brothers.”
Brothers he got – more than 60 – on Oct. 16 when Abbot Gregory Polan received
his simple profession as a monk of Conception Abbey and gave Novice Andrew the name Anselm.
Simple profession follows a yearlong novitiate, followed by three years under “simple
vows,” after which Anselm may ask the abbot and the entire community for permission
to profess solemn vows, thus sealing his lifelong commitment to Conception.
Brother Anselm professes vows to Abbot Gregory Polan.
Brother Anselm is the fourth man this year to express simple vows, a number unsurpassed
for the past quarter of a century. There are 10 men currently in varying stages of monastic
formation, all but two of whom are in their early 20s.
In his admonition preceding vows, the Abbot challenged his newest confrere to open himself
to mysterious ways of the Holy Spirit and to become a “living sacrament of God’s
love, mercy, compassion, and peace.”
Drawing on a Scripture reading of the day, Abbot Gregory compared monastic profession to
God’s midnight call to young Samuel in the Old Testament.
“One of the things often overlooked in this passage is that Samuel’s response
to the divine voice begins a relationship that will draw him into the unfolding plan of God.”
Adding a little dry wit of his own, the Abbot said, “Now I know you do not think
of yourself as a ‘morning person,’ but in truth, when that alarm goes off each
morning, it is akin to the voice which Samuel heard in the darkness of night.”
But in that alarm is a “loving but insistent command,” the Abbot explained.
“Arise and follow me. Each new morning is the opportunity to start again. Yesterday
may have been full of inadequacies and failures, but today Christ renews his call.”
Brother Anselm signs his vows as his novice-junior master, Brother
Bernard Montgomery, looks on.
The Abbot advised his new confrere to take comfort and find inspiration in the long
heritage of the Benedictine order, and its “great company of witnesses.”
“The monks of this monastery, with all our imperfections, represent a continual
blossoming of dedication, quiet heroism, ready obedience, and steadfast perseverance,”
Abbot Gregory said. “And today, Novice Andrew, you are called to take up that heritage,
to clothe yourself in it, and live it with conviction, honor and joy.”
In placing Novice Andrew under the patronage of Saint Anselm of Canterbury, the Abbot
described a man who shared the novice’s love of philosophy, a man full of wanderlust,
who aimlessly traveled through France in the mid-11th century, before joining a monastery
at Bec in Normandy. He would later become the community’s second Abbot and shape the
Abbey of Bec as an intellectual center, where philosophy and theology were taught and written
in ways that remain relevant today. In Brother Anselm’s words, Saint Anselm was
probably “the finest thinker between Augustine and the 13th century guys (Aquinas,
Bonaventure, Albert the Great…), a shining light in the otherwise boring Dark Ages.”
Father Benedict Neenan welcomes his new confrere during the
traditional kiss of peace.
Later, as Archbishop of Canterbury, he struggled to keep the Church free of power-hungry
political rulers. Pope Clement XI named him a Doctor of the Church in 1720.
Brother Anselm, who by the way shares the moniker with the late Anselm Coppersmith, fourth
abbot of Conception, first considered religious life as a high school student in Houston, Tex.
At the urging of his pastor, Father John Kappe, who attended school at Conception from 1965
through 1971, Andrew entered Conception Seminary College in 1998, under the sponsorship of
the monks. Following graduation four years later, he left to explore the stricter, more
contemplative religious life practiced at a Trappist monastery in New York. After a couple
months he returned to Houston where he worked at a hospital and briefly dabbled in the
mortgage business. But the urge to at least try monastic life for a couple of years led
him back to Conception last year.
“I just fit in here,” he says of his choice of Conception over other
communities he’d considered. “And I got tired of window shopping. Eventually
you have to choose. You can’t experience every community in the world.”
He says he was also drawn to the variety of apostolate and jobs available to him as a
monk of Conception. “We’re not pigeonholed into anything, yet we’re not
so broad that we’re scattered,” he explains, “just nicely overworked.”
We welcome your comments:
communications@conception.edu
www.conceptionabbey.org
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