Father Philip Schuster, O.S.B.

together with three other monks, was cruelly gunned down by an intruder unknown to us at Conception Abbey and whose motivation for the crime is still unknown. While Fathers Kenneth and Norbert survived with critical wounds, Father Philip and Brother Damian Larson were killed almost instantly. It was a day of sudden tragedy and great sorrow for our monastery.

Father Philip was born in Pilot Grove, Missouri, on 25 August 1917, one of the eleven children of Frank and Effie Schuster. He was baptized Francis Leo on September 7. He attended St. Martin’s Grade School at Booneville and Pilot Grove Public High School, where he graduated in 1935. He learned of Conception Abbey through his cousin, Father Daniel Schuster, a monk of Conception Abbey, and principally through his sister, Sister Mary Flora Schuster, of the Benedictine Sisters of Perpetual Adoration in Clyde, very near to Conception.

He entered our novitiate on 29 August 1942 and made his first monastic profession on 30 August 1943. He had already begun his studies for ordination to the priesthood, which, together with the future Abbot James Jones, he received on 29 March 1948. He was to live to see both his golden jubilee of monastic profession in 1993 and, in 1998, his golden jubilee of ordination to the priesthood.

All his life Father Philip considered his role and vocation in life to be something quite simple: to be a good monk. In accomplishing that task in an exemplary fashion he served his monastery and the whole Church in a wide variety of assignments. In carrying out these assignments he came into contact with large numbers of people, many of whom came to consider him as their adviser and guide in spiritual matters. This gift of his is perhaps best illustrated by the fact that in 1994 Our Sunday Visitor Books Press published a small book of his, entitled Seeking God’s Will through Faith, Hope, and Charity. The succinctness and clarity of the title is a good resume of Father Philip’s life.

Shortly after ordination he began a long litany of assignments that came from his abbot and continued to the day of his sudden and unexpected death on 10 June: he was first an assistant pastor at St. Joseph Church, the abbey’s parish in Springfield, Missouri. Then, over the years, he was successively a spiritual director in our seminary, a director of Oblates, the chaplain at Sacred Heart Convent, Yankton, South Dakota, the novice and cleric master at the Abbey, subprior, brother master, the pastor at Kennel, Cannonball, Pocupine, and Shields on Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota, the hospital chaplain at Sacred Heart Hospital, Yankton, South Dakota, the Abbey guest-master, the pastor at Fort Yates, North Dakota, the chaplain at St. Francis Hospital in Maryville, Missouri, the pastor at St. Joseph Church in Parnell, Mo., and more recently and at the time of his death, porter at Conception Abbey.

During those assignments for which he resided here at the abbey Father Philip was also the retreat masters for many of the retreats offered by what is now called our Abbey Center for Prayer and Ministry. Many of the retreatants have continued to return to the Center to seek Father Philip as confessor and spiritual adviser. His presence will be sorely missed not only by his fellow-monks but also by many who came to regard him as a spiritual father.

Father Philip was a very straightforward individual who would not mince words to the point that his confreres at times joked about his unambiguous honesty. Yet he was always kind and gentle while adhering to convictions which some would at times see as demanding. Yet he answered them by practicing what he preached.

Although he had many assignments which took him away from the Abbey itself, Father Philip was completely and totally a community man. Individualism did not play a significant role in his piety. When at home here at the monastery, especially during these latter years, his fidelity to the common exercises of the community, especially to the celebration of the Eucharist and the Liturgy of the Hours, was legendary. And monks took it as a matter of course that he would be one of the first to be present at chapter meetings and other community functions. He contributed readily to the discussions and banterings that take place at common recreation and was one of the community’s avid bridge players whenever recreation was long enough to permit a game or two to be played.

As must be obvious, his presence will be sorely missed even as we commend him with confidence to God’s mercy. The manner of his death, so much in contradiction to his whole life, has left our community in shock, and yet we have no doubt that, if there was anyone in our community prepared to passover from death to eternal life at a moment’s notice, it was our Father Philip Schuster. When your own confreres consider you to be a holy man, warts and all, you must be somebody quite extraordinary.

It helps to recall at this time what Father Philip was credited with saying at the time of his fiftieth anniversary of monastic profession in 1993: “If you’ve never been confused, then you were not paying attention.”

A wake service for Father Philip and Brother Damian was celebrated on Thursday, 13 June 2002 at 7:00 PM, and the Mass of Christian Burial on Friday, 14 June 2002, at 11:00 AM. We commend both these beloved confreres and our community to your prayers.

Abbot Gregory and Community