PEACE
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In the early morning hours of Wednesday, 5 August 2009, as the community was awakening and beginning its preparations for the Office of Vigils, the tolling of the great bell was heard, announcing to the monks of Conception Abbey the passing of their beloved confrere and former monastic superior,
Abbot James Jones, O.S.B.
Jubilarian of profession and ordination, Abbot James had been resident in St. Stephen’s Infirmary here for many years. With advancing age his health had become precarious, and his prayer life correspondingly more fervent. He was hospitalized only a few days ago, when doctors discovered that he had developed a gastrointestinal perforation. Because of the inherent dangers of surgery for a man of his years, Abbot James opted against it. He returned to the monastery, where his last days were spent simply awaiting the Lord’s final call, supported by the prayerful presence of his brother monks and the watchful care of our attentive Infirmary nurses.
Donald Carlin Jones was born in Kansas City, Missouri, on 30 March 1924, the only child of J. Vernet and Angela (née McGinnis) Jones. He was baptized on 13 April 1924 at St. James Catholic Church; he subsequently attended parochial school at Saint James, and was confirmed there by Bishop Thomas F. Lillis on 22 May 1934. In 1936, an extended illness on the part of his mother occasioned the search for a boarding school for the young Donald; his pastor, a Conception alumnus, recommended that he be sent north to the highly regarded Conception College High School. For the next four years, the future monk happily lived and studied in the pastoral peace and quiet of rural Nodaway County, Missouri. His mother eventually made a full recovery from her illness, but the link that was forged between her son and Conception in those four years proved unbreakable.
Upon graduation from the high school at Conception, Donald returned to Kansas City for a year at Rockhurst College, where he found that his emerging vocation was directing him toward monasticism as well as priesthood. So he returned to Conception for his second year of college. During his first year of high school at Conception, he had written in his diary, “In twelve years, I will be a priest-monk of Conception Abbey, teaching first-year high school Latin.” His words proved prophetic. He was admitted to the novitiate in 1942, and together with his novitiate classmate, Francis (later Father Philip) Schuster, professed first vows as a monk on 30 August 1943. Donald received at that time the religious name James, after the patron of his home parish and in honor of a favorite uncle. The two were to be lifelong friends as well as monastic confreres; they professed solemn vows together in 1946, were ordained to the priesthood on 29 March 1948, and each year on the 3rd of May were to celebrate together the shared feast of their heavenly patrons, Saints Philip and James.
Father James’s assignments were many and varied in his time as a monk. Upon solemn profession, he was appointed secretary to Abbot Stephen Schappler, a post he held for three years. After ordination, he was made Latin instructor, as he had foreseen. But it was not long before Abbot Stephen decided to cultivate Father James’s talents more fully. He was sent to the Collegio Sant’ Anselmo in Rome in 1949, where he earned a licentiate in Sacred Theology. He returned to his tasks as Abbot’s secretary and Latin professor for two years, but was again sent off to Rome for further studies, this time to the Lateran University, for a doctorate in Canon Law. Back at Conception in 1955, he resumed his teaching duties and was appointed Subprior as well. He became Dean of Theology in the seminary in 1956.
While most of his assignments kept him at the abbey and seminary, Father James also served the Church in other capacities that took him afield. He was chaplain at St. Joseph Convent and a professor at Benedictine Heights College in Tulsa, Oklahoma (1958–1959), and chaplain at Mount Alverno Convent in Maryville, Missouri (1959–1963). He completed courses in Clinical Pastoral Education at Baptist Memorial Hospital in Kansas City (1970–1971) and Texas Medical Center in Houston (1971), and then served as chaplain at St. Joseph Hospital in Kansas City from 1971 to 1973. In the same time period he acted as Director of Parish Liturgy at St. Aloysius Parish in Kansas City. He was then assigned the demanding but rewarding mission of serving as chaplain at the Medical Center for Federal Prisoners in Springfield, Missouri from 1973 to1977, during which time he also ministered as senior priest in residence at St. Joseph Parish. In both the Diocese of Kansas City-Saint Joseph and the Diocese of Springfield-Cape Girardeau, he made his expertise in canon law available to the local church as a member of the Diocesan Tribunal.
Father James was appointed prior of Conception Abbey in 1977 by Abbot Jerome Hanus. He continued in that office for ten years. When Abbot Jerome was elevated to the episcopacy in1987, the monastic community elected Prior James to serve as their spiritual father. When called to respond to his community’s selection, Father James said, “With confidence in the mercy of God, and relying on the support—daily support—of each one of you, I joyfully accept.”
In his time in office, Abbot James carried forward the period of renewal inaugurated by Abbot Jerome. Abbot James had the roof of the monastery replaced, which allowed the community to move into the important period of the Basilica Renewal. For Abbot James, the renewal of the buildings was a necessary sign of interior renewal of the heart for the monastic community. He fervently believed and preached that our salvation as monks was bound up in our community life.
After six years as abbot, at the age of 69, he began to feel that the demands of the job required the vigor and endurance of a younger man. He began to notice, he said, that at abbots’ meetings, he was “the oldest man in the room.” Upon his resignation in 1993 (the year of his golden jubilee of profession), he took up residence in Saint Gabriel’s Parish in Kansas City, where he served for a year. He then returned to Conception, where he worked in our Guest Department and preached occasional retreats. As a gesture of fraternal support for his fellow abbot-emeritus, Abbot Anselm Coppersmith (who at that time was finding it difficult to adjust to the requirements of advancing years), Abbot James recommended that the two of them “retire together to the Infirmary.” It was just such small matters of simple charity that were so characteristic of Abbot James. Yet he remained as active and involved in community activities as his health would allow. This involvement decreased slowly as time progressed, but he continued to pray Lauds and Vespers each day in the company of one of his younger confreres.
Abbot James was widely regarded for his spirited and joyful sense of humor. He was once heard to observe: “You can always tell when a man is well traveled; he lies with impunity.” During his term as prior, he would regularly greet a particular novice with the exclamation: “Ahhh, there he is—my favorite novice!” He was, in point of fact, the only novice that year. A week before this young man was to make his first profession of vows, another novice was admitted to the community, so he asked Prior James, “Am I still your favorite novice?” The prior’s answer was diplomatic yet immediate: “Ahhh, I’ll have to pray on that.”
But even more than for his sense of humor, Abbot James was known for his great capacity to love. Even in the midst of friendly jibe and jest, he was unfailingly kind to everyone he met; he loved people with the fullness of charity counseled by the gospel yet so difficult for most of us to achieve. His own struggles with depression and human weakness, which had so suited him for ministries as various as teaching, spiritual direction and prison chaplaincy, had also taught him how much each of us is in need of the saving love of our Lord. And he became the channel of that love. Everyone, from truck stop waitress to prison inmate to cloistered nun, knew that in Abbot James they could always find an open and caring heart, a willing listener and a bearer of Christ’s own consolation and comfort. His own peaceful resignation upon hearing his fate last week is a clear indication of the deep faith upon which he depended all his life.
Reception of the body was Friday, 7 August 2009 at 5:30 p.m., at the Abbey Basilica of the Immaculate Conception. Vespers of the Faithful Departed were celebrated on Friday, 7 August 2009 at 7:15 p.m., and the Mass of Christian Burial on Saturday, 8 August 2009 at 10:30 a.m. We ask your prayerful remembrance of our beloved confrere. May his soul rest in the eternal peace of Christ.