Fr. Mark Stengel O.S.B.

My roots go back to the German colony of Rhineland, Texas, where my parents Ed and Christine (Brown) were married in 1934. By the time I came along as the third child in 1944, the family had moved to the far west Texas town of Pep, lured by the prospects of cheap land and profitable farming. Several years of drought drove the family from the land to a factory job in Racine, Wisconsin. Labor unrest ended that job, and Dad signed on as a sharecropper at a farm in Illinois. By 1948, another migration brought the family to Arkansas and to a parish (St. Anthony in Ratcliff) staffed by Benedictines from Subiaco Abbey. Here the family grew to nine children, five boys and four girls. All the living siblings still live within 30 miles of Subiaco.

My family was regular in Catholic life and practice. We had a nightly family rosary, and there was full involvement in all parish activities. Two of my Dad’s sisters were Benedictine Sisters, and visits with these wonderful women were always treasured times. The monk pastors and Benedictine Sisters in the parochial school modelled a disciplined and happy religious life. So, it was natural that I came to Subiaco Academy for high school, as part of the Scholasticate Department, geared toward those who were considering a religious vocation.

I just “stayed with the program,” and the one decisive incident that I recall was my father’s affirmation as I wrestled with the looming date of reporting to the Abbey as a Candidate, at the age of 21. He said something like “We all will be happy and proud of you if you go to the Abbey, but if you don’t, I will still be very proud of you.” What liberating and loving words!

I easily fell into the monastic routine. There was no culture shock since I was already well-formed in religious practice, in regularity of life, and in community living. My innate talents were put to use, and latent gifts were brought forth, such as classroom duties, seminary studies, administrative roles in the Academy and Abbey. I was able to do missionary work in Belize for some years, and now am pastor of the local parish of St. Benedict. Always I appreciated the structured, stable, and balanced life of prayer, work, and holy leisure. The call to holiness, to an ongoing “conversatio morum,” remains an attractive element of monastic living.

I like the instructions given to the Abbot in Chapter 64 of the Rule of St. Benedict. He is told to “arrange things so that the strong have something to strive for and the weak have nothing to run from.”

We are all sometimes strong and strive with good zeal for the heights. We are all weak at times and can expect that the brethren will be patient with our weakness, praying, encouraging, and modelling a renewed zeal, so that we “all together, may come to everlasting life” (RB 72).