Mepkin Abbey
Trappist monastery offers blessed sanctuary from the modern world.
BY LIZ FERSZT
Outside Moncks Corner, in the heart of rural Berkeley County, lies
Mepkin Abbey, a Trappist monastery. For retreatants like Dick and Jerry,
Mepkin exists "to leave the profane world behind." For Father Richard,
prior of the monastery, Mepkin is a microcosmic model of God's home on
earth. It serves the clerics, a mixture of ordained priests and brothers,
as well as the lay community, which may seek a sanctuary for reflection
and respite.
To be sure, Mepkin has served various other roles, some unsavory, some
glamorous. Originally a prosperous rice plantation owned by colonial giant
Henry Laurens, the Mepkin property used West African slave labor.
Laurens was a planter, statesperson, diplomat and slave trader. The
Charleston aristocrat commuted from his mansion on the Battery by boat
during the heady mid-18th century, using Mepkin as a country getaway and
source of income. He and his family are buried on a plot overlooking the
shores of the West Cooper.
Mepkin was then owned by the philanthropists Henry and Clare Booth
Luce, of the Time/Life publishing empire. Clare "fell in love with the
trees," and the couple promptly built bungalows for guest hunting parties.
Many prominent, powerful and affluent figures of the 1930s and 1940s spent
time at Mepkin, including industrialist Bernard Baruch and the popular
Catholic Bishop Futon Sheen.
The Luces were the height of pre-jet-set society; enabled by their
wealth to sponsor whatever pleased them. Thus the tradition of
paternalism, although exculpated by Yankee largess, continued. Bishop
Sheen handled Clare Luce's conversion from Episcopalianism, and the
Cisterian Trappist monks were the ultimate beneficiaries of her new
Catholicism. Mepkin land was donated to the monks in 1949.
Clare Luce, with her remarkable career as a congresswoman and
ambassador to Italy, an Eisenhower appointment, never fully divested
herself of Mepkin. When he first met her, Father Richard was a young
seminarian, newly out of Saint Louis University, a Jesuit institution,
which he had entered at age 18. He remembers her more for her wit and
intelligence than for her deportment and looks, although she was a famous
beauty. Father Richard would have been drafted during World War II
had he not enrolled in the seminary.
Today, however, the holy order does not accept novices under age 22.
"People are not mature enough [these days]," Father Richard explains. The
average age of a Mepkin monk is mid-forties. The formation program, a sort
of spiritual curriculum, takes six to 12 years to complete. Novice monks
wear the white scapular during their first three years, after which they
make a temporary commitment, and are voted on by the elder monks for
fitness to continue the faith process. They are judged mostly on how well
they "live the life," or what in today's parlance would be termed "walk
the walk."
It's a tall order. Monks must ingest the psalmic crypticism "I am a
worm," (Psalm 22:6) in imitation of Jesus. They must strive toward the
suffering servant role of Jesus. They enact this paradigm by way of
deprivation: the Benedictine Rule is a strict methodology of work and
worship governed by the hours. They may not smoke, drink, watch television
or eat meat; they must follow the Benedictine clock and bells, which
deprive them of standard sleep patterns. But as Father Richard says, "you
get used to it."
The monks' day begins at 3 a.m., followed by mass at 4:15, meals,
subsistence farming and egg collection, interspersed with the latinate
system of counting hours of prayer: vigils, lauds, terce, sext, none,
vespers, and compline. The monks retire at 8 p.m. Because the Benedictine
Trappists unlike other clerical orders such as the Franciscans, Dominicans
or Jesuits are not mendicants (beggars) the egg farm supports them.
Saint Benedict, founder of western monasticism, in the 5th century
established an order on the hills of Monte Cassino in Italy. Membership in
the vocation meant living under semiprivate conditions, with the main
precept being "obey now." It was a rigorous, and sometimes severe, ascetic
lifestyle. The abbot of a Benedictine monastery was not unlike a
benevolent despot who could commandeer and consume a novice's packages
from home, if he saw just cause. But the present Mepkin Abbot, Father
Francis, while firm, is no task master. He is truly father ("abba"). He is
also an accomplished organist and evenhanded spiritual leader to the
cloister on the Cooper River.
Benedictine Trappists are a contemplative order, which emphasizes
individual study and meditation. The monks wear robes and cowls; some
brothers wear sandals; some have clipped beards. They quietly farm eggs,
selling them to major retailers. They sell the old hens to Campbell's for
chicken soup.
The monks live in simple, ranch-style dormitories, ride bicycles to
and from the roost and chapel, an understated structure built in 1993. A
bell tower as stiff and geometric as a hollow rocket dominates the chapel
courtyard. It is dedicated to the seven spirits of Mepkin: the Native
Americans, the Laurens, the African-American slaves, the Luces, dead
friends, extant monks and monks to come.
The architecture is not the must-see feature at Mepkin. The grounds,
a beguiling blend of devotional statuary, formal gardens and trees are
what make Mepkin worth the pilgrimage. The grounds are covered with
massive live oaks, palmettos, cedar, camellias and crepe myrtle dripping
with Spanish moss.
There is a sense of comfortable separateness which permeates Mepkin,
where authentic self-esteem, or Christian self-love, is introspective,
rarely articulated and comes from the profound realization that one is
saved. The so-called outside world does race by. On the Cooper, speeding
fishing boats, overloaded with Mercury outboards, leave their wake of
noise and waves. High on the bluffs, Mepkin endures.
The Mepkin Guestmaster greets visitors daily from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. There is no charge but donations are accepted. For information, call 761-8509.
Liz Ferszt is a writer and teacher who lives in Goose Creek.
