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An interview with Father Daniel Mary of Jesus Crucified, M.Carm.

by Elizabeth Hansen

Something intense is brewing at Mystic Monk Coffee’s Wyoming monastery: and it’s not just the dark roast. 

Just under the northern border of Wyoming, in the high desert plains at the foot of the awe-inspiring Rocky Mountains, 15 Carmelite monks are enclosed within their cloister walls, interceding for the world and seeking profound union with God. It’s a life of poverty, sacrifice and, most importantly, intense prayer – eight hours a day of it.

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Beds are a small mat. Fasting is the norm. Sleep is interrupted at midnight for the first of eight rounds of the daily Liturgy of the Hours.

Conversation occurs an hour a day – during “recreation time.” The rest of the time not spent in prayer is likely dedicated to manual labor, whether roasting coffee beans or working the monastery grounds. Far from undemanding, the monastic life is anything but an escape from life’s travails.

“To attain union with God requires radical sacrifice,” said Father Daniel Mary of Jesus Crucified, M.Carm., prior of the Carmelite Monastery in Clark, Wyo. 

“We’re not afraid to do the penances that our saints have done,” the Carmelite priest continued. “When you unite prayer and penance together ... that’s where the power is.”

Founded less than six years ago, the monastery has gained attention in Catholic circles with its claim of being the only Carmelite monastic community living a strictly cloistered life, its ardent pledge of fidelity to the teachings of the Church and the flood of young men from around the world seeking to enter its walls.

But what has drummed up perhaps the most publicity in both Catholic and secular press is the Mystic Monk roasted coffee – an idea that started with one monk’s musing question of “what if...?” and is now the primary way the community supports itself.

“This is something we can do out here in the sticks,” Father Daniel Mary said. “We can go roast our coffee during our work hours and then go to prayer ... it’s very simple work that (melds) with our way of life.”

While the physical and spiritual life of the Carmelite monastery is intense, it’s in no way dour – “the spirit here is one of the greatest joy,” according to Father Daniel Mary.

In their shared sacrifices, he said, there is a real sense of unity among the brothers, “a charity in our midst.”

“Together we grow in holiness, we become stronger together,” Father Daniel Mary said. “Our life is so full.”

There is charity, and also a sense of good-natured camaraderie that comes from over a dozen young men living, working and praying together.

With no TV, the brothers entertain themselves during their period of recreation, playing instruments, regaling the group with stories or – weather permitting in this expanse of the Wyoming wilderness – partaking in a rousing game of football within the monastery’s cloistered grounds. 

There are hints of creativity and monk-ish humor on the monastery’s business website, www.mysticmonkcoffee.org, where the “About Us” section proudly describes the precision and passion for coffee of the monastery’s master roaster ... “Brother Java.” And for the monk struggling to stay awake for nighttime prayers, there’s the Midnight Vigils Blend – a dark roast.

Despite the monastery’s demands of sacrifice (good luck finding it on Google Earth), men are flocking to enter – in fact, Father Daniel Mary believes that it is because of the strict regimen of work and prayer, and an unapologetic embrace of the Church’s Magisterium, that he receives hundreds of phone and letter inquiries each year from young men around the world. In each of their stories, he sees an intense longing for greater union with God.

“Young men are really searching for something higher,” he said. “They’re looking for something that’s authentic – a religious life that’s orthodox.”

“If you’re going to sacrifice your whole life,” he continued, “you want ... the whole thing.” And not just “Father Daniel Mary’s thing,” he added. “They want to follow the saints of Carmel.”

What isn’t appealing to a 21st-century man considering a monastic vocation?

“They don’t want anything watered down anymore,” Father Daniel Mary said with a convinced tone. And in what he sees as an emasculating culture, “they want a manly life.”

Those high expectations from aspiring applicants are met by high demands in the monastery’s screening process.

“We’ve very staunch in our discernment of vocations,” Father Daniel Mary said. “We expect the highest caliber type of guys – very virtuous, very wholesome and balanced young men. We only take the cream of the crop.”

As prior, and with more than a decade of previous experience as a hermit before coming to Wyoming, Father Daniel Mary knows that a strictly observed, cloistered way of life isn’t for everyone.

“You’ve got to be a very strong young man to do well in this,” he said. Monks must be willing to “really sacrifice themselves for love of Our Lord,” absolutely dedicated to seeking a deep spiritual life.

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For Father Daniel Mary, that call to sacrifice was a slow, but persistent calling – and in one sense, it was a calling to come back home. He’s a Wyoming native and grew up on his family’s ranch, very close to where the monastery now stands.

“That’s where I spent all my summers, up in the cow camp running cattle for my dad,” he said. In his opinion, the region surrounding the tiny hamlet of Clark, Wyo., is “one of the most beautiful areas of the Rockies.”

“That’s the kind of place where my vocation was born, being alone in the mountains,” Father Daniel Mary said. “That’s where I felt God beginning to speak to me.” 

His heart was set on sports, though, and while at Helena College in Montana, he was a football player and a boxer. When a priest approached him one evening in the chapel and said, “Dan, I really believe you’re called to the priesthood,” young Daniel Schneider’s shocked response was, “You’ve got the wrong guy, Father.” 

Eventually, though, the priest’s gentle, relentless encouragement to consider the priesthood won out. After minor seminary in Boston and a later encounter with the works of some of the spiritual giants of the Carmelite Order – St. Therese of Liseux and St. John of the Cross – Father Daniel Mary joined the Hermits of the Most Blessed Virgin Mary of Mount Carmel in Lake Elmo, Minn.

He was ordained there and eventually became subprior and novice master of the community, but after 11 years he felt that God was calling him to leave and found a new community of monks in his home state. His bishop in Minnesota gave his blessing, and the idea was immediately embraced by an enthusiastic Bishop David Ricken of Cheyenne. 

The Wyoming monastery officially began on October 15, 2003 – the feast of St. Teresa of Avila, the great Spanish mystic and Carmelite reformer who, with St. John of the Cross, founded the Discalced Carmelite way of life that Father Daniel Mary and his monks would embrace.

Their first monastery was a tiny, four-bedroom, two-bath house that eventually held 11 occupants.

Despite literally running out of beds, “it was like bliss, Heaven to us, living in that little house,” Father Daniel Mary reminisced. “Bishop Ricken would visit us and say, ‘I can feel the power flowing from this little monastery.’”

Although the monks have since moved into a larger building – with eight bedrooms now – they’ll be faced with the issue of space again. There are about 10 young men preparing to enter the monastery within the next year.

“I think there’s going to be a whole new revival of vocations to (religious) communities that are solid and orthodox,” said Father Daniel Mary, who admitted he was at first intimidated by a radical, cloistered way of life – much less founding a monastery centered on it. “That’s my message to the whole world and to the Church – if you’re doing what’s authentic ... you’ll never have a problem of vocations.”

Pending the approval of Bishop Paul Etienne, who recently succeeded Bishop Ricken in the Diocese of Cheyenne, two of the monks currently in seminary will be ordained to the priesthood in October. 

The new priests will be diving into the monastery’s rich liturgical life. Along with praying all eight prayers of the Liturgy of the Hours and two hours of individual mental prayer, the monks offer daily Mass in Latin accompanied with Gregorian chant. They were given approval by Bishop Ricken to celebrate the ancient Carmelite usage of the Roman Rite, which looks very similar to the liturgy used before the Second Vatican Council. One difference is that, right after the consecration of the Eucharist, the priest holds out his arms cruciform, like Jesus outstretched on the cross. Also, the Salve Regina is prayed at the end of the Mass, right before the Last Gospel, which is taken from the first chapter of John.

Father Daniel Mary remembers that when the monks were given approval to celebrate Mass in this way, Bishop Ricken had said solemnly that their whole lives “will flow from this liturgy.”

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“That is what makes our monastery very strong,” Father Daniel Mary said, adding that men new to the monastery very quickly adapt to the Latin prayers. “There’s something beautiful that feeds our soul during this liturgy.”

“We love the new (post-Vatican II) rite and we believe it’s from God,” Father Daniel Mary stressed. “We support it, but we also see a place for Latin to be retained in the Church, and monasteries are the primary place where Latin should be retained.” 

In a modern context centuries apart from the golden age of monasticism – when monks kept alive the flame of European civilization in monasteries dotted across the continent – Father Daniel Mary adamantly believes that the monastery is no less significant to the Church today.

“Monastic life is the heart of the Church,” he said. “If monastic life is weak, it’s like the heart is weak ... When monks are strong, they’re living a life dedicated to holiness and sacrifice, (and) it’s like the power goes out from the heart and strengthens all the missionary work of the Church.”

“Right now, more than ever, the Church needs strong monasteries,” Father Daniel Mary said. “All those parish priests, all the bishops of the Church, the Holy Father, the cardinals – everyone down the line, the laity – they need monks dedicated to God because we’re like a channel of grace to the world.” 

 

Editor's note: This profile is part of an ongoing series for the Year for Priests.

More information on the Carmelite monks of Wyoming can be found at www.carmelitemonks.org