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Every year at the beginning of January, the seminarians at Mount Angel Seminary participate in a week-long silent retreat before the spring semester begins. Although the seminarians at Mount Angel regularly practice meditative prayer and some times of silence every day, the retreat is a privileged opportunity to rest with the Lord and deepen their relationship with him.

For the 2023 retreat, Mount Angel Seminary welcomed Fr. Greg Cleveland, OMV, as the retreat director to introduce the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius. Fr. Cleveland, a Chicago native, joined the Oblates of the Virgin Mary in 1987 and received ordination to the priesthood in 1995. He currently serves as the executive director for the Lanteri Center for Ignatian Spirituality in Denver.

Each day of the retreat, the seminarians gathered in St. Joseph Chapel for the Liturgy of the Hours, Mass, spiritual conferences given by Fr. Cleveland, and exposition of the Blessed Sacrament. The theme of the retreat was “Wellsprings of Grace: The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius.” Fr. Cleveland encouraged the seminarians to engage their prayerful imagination and enter into Gospel scenes for their personal hours of meditation. By choosing to abstain from the use of cell phones, social media, Internet, and other electronic media during the retreat, the seminarians could focus their attention more readily on the Lord speaking to them in their hearts. Fr. Cleveland also taught them the Rules for the Discernment of Spirits of St. Ignatius, helping them to accept God’s consolations and to reject temptations in the name of Christ.

For Deacon Nelson Cintra of the Diocese of Boise, who is in his final semester at Mount Angel, the retreat was an opportunity to deepen his practice of Ignatian spirituality, which he has been attracted to and appreciated for some years. One challenge for Deacon Nelson during the retreat was an inability to sleep at night due to recovery from a knee surgery. He noticed discouraging thoughts surfacing frequently in that trial of restlessness. However, thanks to reviewing these spiritual tools from St. Ignatius, Deacon Nelson found “renewed attentiveness and strength to recognize and reject those temptations at their onset, choosing instead to live in the love and mercy of God.”

Patrick Mbuiyu of the Archdiocese of Seattle did not know much about Ignatian spirituality prior to the retreat, but he found the conferences helpful for learning to employ this practical spirituality in his life. He found that he can more fully “appreciate God as unchanging and ever with me aside from how I am feeling physically, mentally, or spiritually.” Being an international student with most of his family from Kenya, Patrick initially found the silence challenging, noticing his desire to check in on his family and respond to their messages. “Silence has invited me to grow in trust, seeking not to rely on my strength and wisdom in ensuring things are okay, and choosing to rely on God’s faithfulness and merciful love,” says Patrick.

Please keep our seminarians in your prayers as they continue to draw near to the Lord throughout the semester.

In the summer of 2022, the Abbey Coffeehouse at Mount Angel, located with the bookstore in the Abbey Press building, celebrated its grand re-opening after more than two years of closure. While the pandemic instigated the initial closure in the spring of 2020, the hiatus also provided an opportunity for envisioning a new design and ethos for the coffeehouse, spearheaded by Br. Alfredo Miranda, OSB.

When planning the renovation, Br. Alfredo drew inspiration from the Seven Rich Ways of Benedictine monastic life articulated by Abbot Jeremy Driscoll, OSB, especially the rich ways of hospitality and life together. Unlike coffee shops where one simply buys a coffee and departs, the Abbey Coffeehouse at Mount Angel is “designed as a space in which people can gather and be together,” says Br. Alfredo.

The Abbey Coffeehouse proudly serves coffee made with beans from Coava Coffee Roasters in Portland, Oregon, which Br. Ambrose Stewart, OSB, playfully describes as “the ‘Platonic Form’ of coffee – in other words, when God created coffee, this is what he had in mind.” According to Br. Alfredo, this emphasis on serving high-quality coffee and other specialty drinks is not for the sake of sophisticated marketing but rather for expressing Benedictine hospitality. “If we are receiving Christ through [our guests], we’re going to try to give them the best that we can,” he says.

A thoroughly monastic atmosphere pervades the whole Abbey Bookstore and Coffeehouse. Visitors frequently enjoy their coffee and reading while Gregorian chant or other sacred music plays in the background. The main coffee drinks are served in the sizes of novice, junior, and senior, reflecting the stages of monastic formation. Some drink specials include monastic terms found in the Holy Rule of St. Benedict, such as cenobite and sarabaite. Of course, the most monastic element in the Abbey Bookstore and Coffeehouse is the presence of the monks themselves, some of whom serve as baristas. For some visitors to the Hilltop, ordering their coffee may be their first interaction with a monk at Mount Angel. This casual, welcoming environment can lead to interesting discussions about the monastic way of life and an introduction to the Hilltop.

For more information and hours, please visit the webpage for the Abbey Bookstore and Coffeehouse.

On Saturday, December 10, 2022, the monks of Mount Angel Abbey welcomed Archbishop Alexander K. Sample to the Abbey church to ordain Br. Charles Borromeo Gonzalez, OSB, to the diaconate during the celebration of Mass. Abbot Jeremy Driscoll, OSB, and Abbot Austin Cadiz, OSB, current abbot of Our Lady of Montserrat Abbey in Manila, Philippines, served as the principal concelebrants. Family and friends of Br. Charles and other guests filled the Abbey church while others followed the liturgy on livestream.

After the proclamation of the gospel, Abbot Jeremy presented Br. Charles to Archbishop Sample as a candidate for ordination. The congregation applauded to voice their support for his ordination as a deacon. During the homily, Archbishop Sample preached on the sacred duty of the deacon to proclaim the Word of God and to evangelize. Turning to Br. Charles, the archbishop prayed that “the Lord touch your lips today to place his words there so that you may boldly proclaim Jesus Christ to the world.”

Following the homily, Br. Charles stood in front of Archbishop Sample and made the promises of a deacon, after which he prostrated himself on the floor while the monastic schola chanted the litany of the saints. His classmate, Deacon Sylvester Chanda of the Archdiocese of Seattle, then assisted Br. Charles as he put on the stole and dalmatic, the vestments proper to the deacon. After receiving the book of the gospels, Br. Charles exchanged the sign of peace with Archbishop Sample, Abbots Jeremy and Austin, and the other deacons assisting with the liturgy. From there, Br. Charles exercised his sacred duties as a deacon during the rest of the Mass.

The monastic community gives thanks to God for the gift of Br. Charles’s diaconate ordination and asks for prayers for him as he begins this new ministry of service.

–Ethan Alano

On October 26, 2022, four Mount Angel seminarians were received as candidates for Holy Orders during Mass in the Abbey church. The monastic community welcomed Archbishop Alexander K. Sample of Portland, Oregon, as the principal celebrant for the Mass. Other bishops concelebrated the Mass together with Abbot Jeremy Driscoll, OSB, seminary chancellor, Msgr. Joseph Betschart, president-rector, vocation directors, visiting priests, and priests from the seminary and monastery.

During the homily, Archbishop Sample encouraged the four candidates to continue their final preparation before ordination to the transitional diaconate and later priesthood. “We rejoice with you today, that the Lord has called you to labor in his harvest out of the compassion of Jesus for the crowds, and that God, like Jeremiah, has been forming you from all eternity for this vocation,” he said. After the homily, Archbishop Sample, on behalf of his brother bishops, received the seminarians’ declaration of intent to complete their preparation for Holy Orders and “to give faithful service to Christ the Lord and his Body, the Church.”

Those received as candidates included Anthony Shumway, Diocese of Salt Lake City; Maximiliano Muñoz, Archdiocese of Seattle; James Ladd, Archdiocese of Portland; Michael Williams, Diocese of Las Vegas. The rite of candidacy “makes all these years of praying to follow the will of God in my life come to a point where I can say, yes, I truly want to give my life to the Church if she will have me,” shares Shumway. For Muñoz, the liturgical rite “takes up the ministries we have been exercising in past years, synthesizes them, and puts them in relationship to our dioceses, to the Churches we hope one day to serve with our whole lives.”

Please pray for these new candidates and all the seminarians studying at Mount Angel Seminary. “May God who has begun the good work in [them] bring it to fulfillment.”

– Ethan Alano

During Sunday Mass on September 25, three monks of Mount Angel celebrated their Jubilee of Monastic Profession. Abbot Peter Eberle, OSB, and Br. James Bartos, OSB, who served as principal celebrant and deacon for the Mass, respectively, both commemorated 60 years of monastic profession. Br. Simon Hepner, OSB, observed 50 years of profession.

After the homily, the jubilarians stood before Abbot Jeremy Driscoll, OSB, who prayed a blessing over them for their continued perseverance in monastic life. Each jubilarian then read his profession document anew and laid it on the altar. Standing before Abbot Jeremy again with arms outstretched, they sang the Suscipe as they did for their solemn professions many decades ago.

After Mass, the monastic community and other attendees congratulated the jubilarians in a reception outside the Abbey church.

On Tuesday, September 13, the monks of Mount Angel Abbey gathered in the Abbey church for a Pontifical Mass of Solemn Profession. A number of visiting priests, seminarians, family, friends and other guests joined the monks to witness Br. La Vang Nguyen, OSB, profess solemn vows during the centuries-old ceremony.

The monastic schola led the congregation in chanting the entrance antiphon from Psalm 122: “I was glad when they said to me; let us go up to the house of the Lord.” The text set a joyful tone for the solemn celebration. Br. La Vang served as lector, reading the Scriptures which highlighted the profundity of his lifelong consecration to God as a monk. During the homily, Abbot Jeremy Driscoll, O.S.B., turned to Br. La Vang directly and reminded him that “solemn monastic vows is a bountiful reaping, and there is much promise in this for the one who does it.”

As he did three years prior for his profession of simple vows, Br. La Vang read his profession document out loud to those gathered and signed it on the altar, making permanent his vows of obedience, conversion of life, and stability at Mount Angel Abbey. After receiving the cuculla, the pleated choir robe worn only by solemnly professed monks, Br. La Vang exchanged the kiss of peace with all of the permanent monks of Mount Angel as the monastic schola chanted from Psalm 84: “How lovely is your dwelling place, Lord, God of hosts.” During the entire Eucharistic prayer, he prostrated himself on the sanctuary floor, covered with a black pall in an act of “mystical burial,” dying to the old man and rising in Christ.

Mount Angel Abbey is a Benedictine community founded in 1882 from the Abbey of Engelberg in Switzerland. Situated on a hilltop overlooking Oregon’s Willamette Valley, the monks of Mount Angel weave together a place of prayer, hospitality, education, and reflection deeply rooted in the Rule of St. Benedict.

On the evening of September 8, the Feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the monks of Mount Angel Abbey gathered in Mount Angel Abbey’s church to celebrate the Mass of Simple Profession for two novices, Brody Stewart and Fr. Jack Shrum. The novices professed vows of obedience, stability, and conversion of life for a period of three years.

At the beginning of the Mass, the novices processed in with the altar servers, concelebrating priests, and Abbot Jeremy Driscoll, OSB, principal celebrant. The congregation filled the church and joined the monks in song and prayer, interceding for the men about to profess monastic vows.

During the homily, Abbot Jeremy addressed Br. Brody and Fr. Jack, saying that “what you do shows us with clarity and as a witness
of what we are all meant to be in Christ Jesus.”

After the homily, the two novices knelt before the Abbot and made their first monastic vows, signing their profession documents on
the altar, and displaying them to all gathered as witnesses of their promise. The newly professed monks also announced their new monastic names, signifying putting on the “new man” in Christ. Brody Stewart is now Br. Ambrose, OSB, while Fr. Jack Shrum is now Fr. Michael, OSB. After the conclusion of Mass, everyone gathered for a reception and to congratulate the new junior monks.

Seminarians and students, faculty, staff, and other guests gathered with the monastic community in the Abbey church on August 22 to celebrate the opening of the new academic year at Mount Angel Seminary with the Mass of the Holy Spirit.

Abbot Jeremy Driscoll, OSB, chancellor of Mount Angel Seminary, served as the principal celebrant for the Mass, which included seminary priest faculty, monks and other visiting priests as concelebrants. Reflecting on Jesus’ gift of the Holy Spirit given to the Church through his passion, death and resurrection, Abbot Jeremy preached that “when [Jesus] puts his Body and Blood into our bodies and blood, he puts Spirit into us so that we may go and announce the Gospel by our lives.”

Later that same morning, the seminary and monastic communities gathered in the Abbey church to listen to Dr. Joseph T. Papa, associate professor of philosophy at Mount Angel Seminary, deliver the inaugural address titled, “Christian Humanism: An Oxymoron?” Drawing on the teaching of the Second Vatican Council, Dr. Papa emphasized that “everything human, the whole range and scope of human activity, falls under the concern [and] the intense interest of the Son of God.” He affirmed that “the priest is called to appreciate, and in some way, to enter into this engagement. A robust, humanistic development will allow him to do so.”

After the Mass and the inaugural address, attendees gathered outside to talk, laugh, and share their excitement to begin the new academic year. The seminarians cheered as Abbot Jeremy joined them for a group photo in front of the Abbey church.

Mount Angel Seminary, established in 1889 by the pioneer monks of Mount Angel Abbey, is the oldest and largest seminary in the western United States. It is the only seminary in the West that offers full college, pre-theology, and graduate theology programs, and one of only a few in the nation that offers degrees at all levels, baccalaureate through doctorate. Students experience exceptional academic instruction in a deeply spiritual, prayerful, and formative environment.

In the mid-twentieth century, Luigi DeSantis came to live at and care for the gardens and orchards of Mount Angel Abbey, where he became known as a man of faith and piety. Little did he know that his work of caring for the land and environment at Mount Angel would be continued decades later by his great-grandson Dean and the now family-owned company, DeSantis Landscapes.

Born in 1881, a year before Mount Angel Abbey’s founding, Luigi grew up in Montefortino,
Italy, a rural town nestled in the hills and mountains of the Province of Fermo. Along with his brothers Tony and Anibale, Luigi immigrated to the United States in 1905, passing through Ellis Island. Hearing about work on the railroads near Portland, Luigi and Tony traveled by train to the West Coast and married the two daughters of an Italian woman who ran a boarding house in Portland. Luigi and his wife, Margherita, started a family in Portland but later moved to rural Silverton, where they developed a commercially successful strawberry
farm. After the death of Margherita in 1947, Luigi briefly lived with some of his adult children before receiving the permission of Abbot Thomas Meier, OSB, to take up residence at Mount Angel Abbey.

Fr. Vincent Trujillo, OSB, recalls that Luigi’s room was next to the biology and chemistry labs in what is now the Abbey museum. He remembers Luigi as a “very saintly man” who joined the monks for prayer and spent hours at the Abbey’s grotto in prayer to the Blessed Virgin Mary. According to Abbot Peter Eberle, OSB, Luigi was great friends with Br. Fidelis Schoenenberger, OSB, who designed the grotto and completed it in 1922. Abbot Peter fondly remembers the piety of Luigi, who liked to sprinkle holy water wherever he went, so much so that, recalls Abbot Peter, “the first pew [in the church] was really water stained.”

The descendants of Luigi DeSantis say they feel humbled to take up the mantle of their great-grandfather in caring for the landscape of the Hilltop. Dean DeSantis adds that, “our team is looking forward to taking an active role in keeping the Abbey’s extensive green space an optimal setting for prayer and meditation, as well as furthering the role well-tended gardens play in monastic life.”

– Ethan Alano
Mount Angel Letter, Summer 2022

Mount Angel Seminary’s 33 graduates concluded the academic year with both the Baccalaureate Mass and Commencement Exercises celebrated on April 30 at 8 am and 10 am, respectively, in the Abbey church. In addition to graduates, many friends and family with smiling faces filled the church as a hopeful sign of better days ahead.

Bishop Peter Smith of the Archdiocese of Portland served as the principal celebrant for the Baccalaureate Mass, telling the graduates during the homily that they “have arrived at the starting line. Now the real race begins.” As the graduates processed into the Abbey church for Commencement, an organ fanfare echoed throughout the building, highlighting the exuberance of the day. Msgr. Joseph Betchart, president-rector, welcomed those gathered and led the invocation. In his address to the graduates, Msgr. Betschart encouraged the graduates to “open even wider the doors of your hearts to Jesus Christ.”

Deacon Adrian Sisneros, of the Archdiocese of Santa Fe, gave the Senior Farewell address. Referring to the original pioneer monks of Mount Angel Abbey, he spoke about the virtue of “holy grit,” which he described as “a noble and holy quality of character that will elevate us toward the heights of heaven.”

Mount Angel Seminary’s College of Liberal Arts conferred the Bachelor of Arts degree upon seminarians Thomas Cooper Johnson, Diocese of Great Falls-Billings; Rico Daniel Landavazo, Archdiocese of Santa Fe; Patrick Gitau Mbuiyu, Archdiocese of Seattle; Br. Ignatius of Antioch Olivarez, O.S.B., Mount Angel Abbey; Eric Joseph Wunderlich II, Archdiocese of Portland in Oregon; and Jesus Jose Zapien Quezada, Diocese of Fresno.

Seminarians receiving the Pre-Theology Certificate of Completion included Joseph Soria Anaya, Diocese of Fresno; Erik Andrew Morris, Archdiocese of Portland in Oregon; Julio de Jesus Oliva, Diocese of Fresno; Richard John Ordos II, Archdiocese of Seattle; and Brian B. Schumacher, Diocese of Salt Lake City.

The following seminarians received their Master of Arts (Philosophy): Br. Oscar Avila Rodriguez, M.Sp.S., Missionaries of the Holy Spirit; Sylvester Vijay Rozario, Archdiocese of Seattle; Br. Matthew Sislow, O.S.B., Mount Angel Abbey; Zachary John Sturm, Diocese of Sacramento; and Br. Helmer Vargas Llamas, M.Sp.S., Missionaries of the Holy Spirit.

The Seminary’s Graduate School of Theology conferred the Master of Divinity degree upon Deacon Tristan Peter Alec Dillon, Diocese of Salt Lake City; Deacon Agustín Rajan Henderson, Archdiocese of Santa Fe; Deacon Chad Kirwan Hill, Archdiocese of Seattle; Deacon Juan Carlos Reynoso Lozano, Diocese of Fresno; Deacon Dalton Scott Rogers, Diocese of Fresno; Deacon Darrell James Segura, Jr., Archdiocese of Santa Fe; and Deacon Adrian Julian Sisneros, Archdiocese of Santa Fe.

Andrew Cummings; Deacon Tristan Peter Alec Dillon, Diocese of Salt Lake City; Ian Michael Gaston, Diocese of Orange; Josué David Jiménez; Deacon Dalton Scott Rogers, Diocese of Fresno; Timothy Josef Segert, Diocese of Boise; and James Joseph Tasy, Diocese of Fresno, each received their Master of Arts (Theology).

The following graduates received their Doctor of Ministry degree: Deacon James Michael Browne, Archdiocese of Philadelphia; Rev. David Leo Xavier Jaspers, Archdiocese of Portland in Oregon; Rev. Timothy J. Kelly, Diocese of Tyler; Deacon Joseph O’Donnell, Diocese of Sacramento; and James Arthur Tabor.

Deacon Tristan Peter Alec Dillon, Diocese of Salt Lake City; and Deacon Dalton Scott Rogers, Diocese of Fresno, each received their Baccalaureate in Sacred Theology.

Before giving his blessing to conclude the Commencement Exercise, Abbot Jeremy Driscoll, O.S.B., chancellor of Mount Angel Seminary, offered some final lessons to the graduates from the life of St. Benedict, reminding them that “there’s a cloister in every heart and a stairway leads to heaven.”