Palmyra native, Benedictine Brother Pachomius Meade, to be ordained deacon at Conception Abbey

By Jay Nies
Catholic News Service
 
A man who learned to paint icons as a monk and seminarian is about to practice the art of being a deacon.
 Brother Pachomius Meade, a Palmyra native who has been a member of the Benedictine community at Conception Abbey in Conception since 2001, will be ordained to the diaconate on Thursday, May 15, in the abbey’s Basilica of the Immaculate Conception.
Next year, he hopes to be ordained to the Holy Priesthood.
 “I realize the seriousness of the calling and the responsibility that it entails, and that has set the fear of God in me,” said Brother Pachomius.
“But a friend of mine who is a deacon this year says there’s also a commission with it, an authority. And there’s grace in that.”
Brother Pachomius, formerly Matthew Meade, a son of Thomas and Karen (Wenzel) Meade of St. Joseph parish in Palmyra, is a graduate of St. Thomas Aquinas Seminary in Hannibal and Conception Seminary College in Conception.
He discovered monastic life while studying at Conception and considered whether God was calling him to be a diocesan priest. When he said he wanted to try being a Benedictine monk, the community agreed that if he stayed in the seminary until he turned 20, he could enter the order as a postulant and begin formation.
He persevered through formation, becoming a novice for a year, then taking simple (temporary) vows of obedience, stability and conversatio morum.
“Conversatio basically means poverty and chastity, though it’s broader than just those,” Brother Pachomius noted. “Stability is very important because it means we belong to one monastery as opposed to a province where you move around.”
At his first profession, he asked for and received the name Pachomius, in honor of the fourth-century Christian monk whose experiences in the Roman army helped inspire him to draw men and women together into monastic communities bound by a codified rule for living.
“I grant you that it is an unusual name,” he said. “If you can say ‘Napoleon’ or ‘America,’ you can say ‘Pachomius.’ The idea is that I am a consecrated person. Part of my witness is that I do stand out in the world.
I’m not ‘Brother Bob.’ And it does give me at least 10 minutes of conversation material when I meet people.”

Working and praying
 
Members of the Order of St. Benedict, known as Benedictines, are monks or nuns who take vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, combining a life of community, contemplation and apostolic service. They follow the rule of their founder, St. Benedict, who established the order in the sixth century as an answer to the increasingly immoral lifestyle that was becoming commonplace at that time in history.
Then as now, men and women join the Benedictine order to pray for and serve as witnesses of the Gospel in the Church and the world, and to grow in love and knowledge of God as a member of a community explicitly focused on that objective.

Deciding to be a monk
 
While in formation, Brother Pachomius completed his degree in philosophy and served as assistant vocation director at the Abbey.
He also worked in the abbey’s Printery House, doing some graphic design and writing catalogue copy, icon descriptions and greeting-card captions.
The summer before he was to profess simple vows, a crazed gunman entered the monastery and randomly shot two monks to death before turning the gun on himself.
Brother Pachomius had not taken any vows yet. Several other monks wondered if the senseless tragedy would be enough to make him leave.
“I told them, ‘I’ve seen the community come together today. I feel like members of my family have been killed. I don’t want to leave. This is like home to me,’” he said.
He noted that since then, the events of that day did help to draw the monks at Conception into an even tighter community.

“I shall live”
 
Brother Pachomius professed final vows on Aug. 28, 2005, making him a Benedictine until death. Any doubts he had were gone by the time he knelt down before Benedictine Abbot Gregory Polan and three times echoed the Psalmist: “Receive me, Lord, as You have promised, and I shall live; Let me not be disappointed in my hope.”
 He then lay prostrate on the floor and a black burial pall was placed over him. Abbot Gregory then performed the rite of consecration over him, thanking God for all creation and asking for Brother Pachomius to be used as an instrument of salvation and be counted among the Communion of Saints in heaven.
Brother Pachomius then stood up as a song of resurrection was sung. He received his hooded monastic garment and a sign of peace from all the other professed monks.
“On that day, I gave myself over completely,” he said. “I was really happy - happier than most people had ever seen me - and I hope I don’t ever lose sight of that.”

Windows to the divine
 
Early in his monastic life, shortly after professing simple vows, Brother Pachomius spent a week at Mount Angel Abbey in St. Benedict, Ore., where Benedictine Brother Claude Lane, a prominent iconographer, gave him a crash course in how to paint icons.
Icons are an ancient form of sacred Christian artwork that draw upon an extensive lexicon of religious symbolism depicting Christ, Mary and the saints with haunting clarity and simplicity.
For centuries in the Church in the West and up to this day in Eastern Orthodox Churches, the faithful see the work of the iconographer’s brush a true but imperfect reflection of God’s own glory, echoing St. Paul’s words of encouragement to the Christians in Corinth: “At present we seeindistinctly, as in a mirror, but then (we shall see) face to face. At present I know partially; then I shall know fully, as I am fully known.” (1 Corinthians 13:12)
Creating an icon is an intensely prayerful experience, calling the artist into a regimen of deep contemplation and fasting. That prayerful mindset is what enables the Holy Spirit to turn what otherwise would be a simple religious picture into a window to the divine.
The theology of the icon is rooted in the Incarnation: the core Gospel truth that Christ, the Son of God, became fully human while remaining fully divine.
“Iconography can help people pray and get in touch with the mystery of God and of our own incarnation,” said Brother Pachomius. “We are embodied souls - soul and body. Iconography gives witness to the fact that God became man so man can become like God. As we look at the subject depicted in an icon, that’s part of our transformation.”
Monsignor Louis McCorkle had taught Brother Pachomius how to paint while he was at St. Thomas Seminary. Benedictine Father Roland J. Carbone - who later would serve as pastor of the Kahoka, Wayland, and St. Patrick parishes - helped Brother Pachomius build on that foundation as a freshman at Conception.
 “I needed to find a way to put the art to work for God,” recalled Brother Pachomius, who had turned down scholarships to several prominent art schools to go to Conception as a seminarian.

An awakening artform
 
Using techniques Brother Claude taught him at Mount Angel, Brother Pachomius painted several icons at Conception before returning to Oregon to study theology and consider whether God was calling him to be a priest.
“Painting icons has been one of my greatest joys,” he said. “On one level, it makes me feel like I’m doing something productive and beautiful, and helping people pray. And on a deeper level, it helps me be a better monk, because of the constant prayer, the fasting, the focusing on the spiritual life.”
His master’s thesis reflects his drive to reawaken in Western Christianity, specifically in the Roman Catholic Church, an appreciation for iconic spirituality that began to disappear during the Renaissance.
“We’re Catholic; we don’t need to copy the Orthodox,” he said. “We have our own saints, our own different feast days that are without precedent in the Orthodox Churches. We can look to other forms and find something new. It’s a challenge, but I think it’s important for the Church.”

What became
of the monk?

Brother Pachomius wasn’t sure God was calling him to be a priest when he left for Mount Angel to obtain a master’s degree in systematic theology three years ago. But in ongoing discussions with Abbot Gregory at Conception, and through his own studies and work in various kinds of active ministry, he concluded that God does want him to be both a monk and a priest.
He prays each day that he can live out what God is calling him to do as a monk and a deacon, and eventually as a priest.
His course load as a graduate student at Mount Angel has been massive. He has had to be vigilant about balancing that with communal life and personal prayer that are hallmarks of the Benedictine order.
 “Part of what they expect us to do here in theology is ‘faith seeking understanding,’” he said. “Many of the teachers will say, ‘You’re not just here to be opening a mind and filling it with knowledge. We expect theology on your knees.’ It’s certainly expected that you’re to spend time in prayer here.”
He understands that when ordination does come - first to the diaconate, then to the Priesthood - he will always be first and foremost a monk.
 He still works on icons for a few hours each Sunday afternoon. An icon of Our Lady of Guadalupe that he painted in Oregon now hangs in the student chapel at Conception.

Greenhouse effect
 
Looking ahead to the diaconate, Brother Pachomius also looks back to the time he spent walking around in the Conception Abbey cemetery. Part of what attracted him to monastic life is the silent witness of the priests and brothers whose earthly remains rest in the abbey cemetery, awaiting the Resurrection.
“Everything is built on those who went before us,” he said.
Brother Pachomius will serve as a deacon at Conception in any way Abbot Gregory deems necessary for the good of the community.
After his priestly ordination next year, he may end up teaching seminarians - future priests - for his home diocese and many others at Conception Seminary College. He might also get a mission assignment away from the abbey. In any case, the Benedictine community at Conception will always be his spiritual hub.
 “Our life is modeled on St. John the Baptist: calling out from the desert to ‘prepare the way of the Lord,’” he said.
 He acknowledged that the world tends to see monks as “trapped” in a prison.
 “But it’s much more like a greenhouse,” he said. “We’re not shutting out the world. We’re trying to develop the best things we can to bring back into the world. And we realize that doesn’t happen unless we’re praying.
Everything else we do hinges on it.”

Reproductions of several of Brother Pachomius’ icons can be seen and
purchased online at:
www.printeryhouse.org