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Father Lawrence Swartz entered the monastery in 1926.

Entered Gethsemani Abbey in 1926
Father Lawrence Swartz dies at age 98

Funeral Mass will be held Wednesday, September 28th at 7:00 am

       Fr. Lawrence Swartz, OCSO, the tall, stalwart Texan who entered Gethsemani Abbey in 1926 at 19 years of age died peacefully in the Lord on Monday, September 26, 2005 in the infirmary of Our Lady of the Holy Spirit Monastery. He was 98 years of age.

       Father Lawrence lived under nine abbots during his 79 years in monastic life and is noted to have lived the longest in the USA as a Trappist monk. He entered Gethsemani Abbey when Edmond Obrecht (d. 1/4/35) was abbot at a time when the Cistercian-Trappist life was defined by a strict and rigorous penitential aspect of monasticism—little food, no meat, hard manual labor, and strict silence. In August 1945, Abbot Frederick Dunne (d. 8/4/48) asked Father Lawrence to help at Our Lady of the Holy Spirit Monastery in Georgia, founded March 21, 1944. He stayed for 60 years until his death, during which time seven abbots served the community: James Fox (d. 4/17/87), Robert McGann (10/3/57), Augustine Moore (d. 6/5/02), Armand Veilleux (current abbot of Scourmont Abbey in Belgium), Bernard Johnson, Basil Pennington (d. 6/3/05), and Francis Michael Stiteler (current abbot).
        Father Lawrence Swartz, O.C.S.O., was born Thomas Joseph Swierc on April 30, 1907, to Joseph and Salomea Kyrish-Swierc.  He grew up in the predominantly Polish-American settlement of Falls City, Texas, a city founded along a railroad and named because of the nearby natural waterfalls. In 1902, Holy Trinity Catholic Church was erected and a parish school opened in 1911. Thomas Joseph first attended the parish school before spending four years in the local public school. In September 1920, he went to St. John’s Diocesan Preparatory Seminary in San Antonio, established by Bishop John Shaw in 1915. Two years later, in the fall of 1922, he attended St. Mary’s College, founded by the Marianist order in 1852. He attended St. Mary’s for three years.
       It was in the classroom of Father Sullivan at St. John’s Diocesan Preparatory Seminary that Father Lawrence first learned of the Trappist monks. In a talk given in 2001, on the occasion of his 75th anniversary of entrance, Father Lawrence recalls the incident. “It was 1922, and I was 14 at the time. There was a very talkative boy in the class, so Fr. Sullivan—jocose or not—brought up the silence observed by the Trappists. Of course, questions were asked, ‘Who are the Trappists?’ Father Sullivan gave a somber and, perhaps, an exaggerated picture of the Trappists. They do not speak but three words: penance, penance, penance. I thought they were strange and gave them no other thought till my late teens. Then it was time to decide what I will do with my life. The Trappists came to mind.”

       Thomas Joseph Swierc entered Gethsemani Abbey on July 28, 1926, but it was not without effort. In an interview with Drs. Dewey and Victor Kramer on March 5, 1983, Father Lawrence described how he came to the then 68-year-old Gethsemani Abbey. “I wrote the letter about vocation at 17 and went to the post office with it. I did not have the nerve to mail it for a year and a half. Finally, I mailed it and received a favorable response, and I kept putting it off for six months. I started out, got as far as St. Louis, Missouri, got cold feet and came back. And I reached home. I said that’s a defeat. I’ll try it again. Next morning, I took another train and made it.”

       Upon entrance into the novitiate, Thomas Joseph took the name Lawrence after Saint Lawrence, one of the deacons of the Roman Church martyred in 258. It was the strictness and regularity in monastic observances that he remembered of those years. “Every movement was prescribed,” he said in the Kramer interview.
       The work at Gethsemani Abbey entailed farming, gardening, and building. “We were building an enclosure wall, it was a mile—a mile long. We did every bit of it, even the looking for the stones and digging the foundations and everything. It took about three years. I was there from beginning to end.”
       Father Lawrence made solemn profession on the feast of the Immaculate Conception (December 8) in 1931, and was ordained on February 24, 1934.
       Father Lawrence eventually became sub-master of the novices, helping those coming to the monastery learn the monastic way of life. His most famous novice was Thomas Merton ,who entered on December 10, 1941.
       “I used to take him to work, show him how to work, teach him the sign language, and how to serve Mass, things like that. I had no idea we had a famous man until I read, Seven Storey Mountain (first published in 1948 when Father Lawrence was at Our Lady of the Holy Spirit Monastery in Georgia).
       “He was humorous,” Father Lawrence continued. “He had plenty of humor, used to laugh heartily at little incidents.”

       In August 1945, Father Lawrence arrived at Our Lady of the Holy Spirit Monastery, founded just a year before on March 21, 1944. At the time, the monks were living in a temporary monastery called the Pineboard Monastery. It would house the monks until 1960 when a permanent structure was ready for occupancy. Besides helping with the construction of the new monastery, Father Lawrence was novice master for two years.
       Father Lawrence’s work details after the current monastery was complete are representative of the monastic life of work and prayer. Father Lawrence worked in the bakery and greenhouse. He arrived at work promptly and left the same, so he could arrive at church early for Vespers. His prayer life was regular and exemplar, and the importance of the Divine Office evident in his expressed concern that the chanting of Psalms be done correctly.
       Lectio divina (spiritual reading) was important to Father Lawrence. His time before the morning work period, and in the evenings after Vespers was spent at his desk in the scriptorium where he would take copious notes from books and retreat talks.
       The contents of his desk in the scriptorium holds the extent of his belongings, besides the few work clothes at his place in the common monastic dressing room. Father Lawrence kept a prayer card of St. Therese of Lisieux  with an attached relic in his desk drawer along with an envelope addressed to Dom Obrecht by Mother Agnes, sister of St. Therese. His notes from his lectio divina are typed on letter-size paper and complete with the author, book and page number.
       His own writings include a piece on Advent in 1982 published in The Georgia Bulletin on November 25, 1982 [See www.georgiabulletin.org/local/1982/11/25/c/].
       On July 28, 2001, Father Lawrence spoke to his brother-monks at a celebration of his 75th anniversary of entrance into monastic life. [See www.trappist.net/newweb/enews_04_30a_05.html.] He concluded his talk with the following words. Underlining and exclamations have been retained from his handwritten copy.

      “For some years I had the honor of being one of the tour guides. In the beginning the question most frequently asked was, ‘What is the purpose behind a monastic life?’ I was once asked the questions three times within an hour. In connection to this is another quote that keeps me here. “God created you and me to do Him a definite service.” Our Lord has committed a definite service to me which He has not given to another. I have my mission.
      “St. Benedict placed a tool in our hands to help us fulfill this mission. Monasteries have the reputation of being “houses of prayer”! A couple of quotes will help to convince us of the value of that tool.”
      St. Chrysostom said, “No one is more powerful than the person who prays.”
      And Fr. Faber, “The cloistered life can cover the earth with its activity.”
      Had St. Stephen not prayed, the Church would not have had a St. Paul. Christ himself said, “The harvest is great (plentiful) but laborers are few” (Mt. 9:37). One would have thought he would say, “Get out and work.” But no! He said, “Pray!” (Mt. 9:38)
     “ If upon reaching eternity I learn that my prayers saved one soul, or obtained one zealous worker for the vineyard of the Lord, or prevented one mortal sin, I will rejoice forever.
      “If I am asked, “Would you do it again?” I would answer, “If done with sincere good will, work in the service of the Lord gives a real genuine satisfaction worldly ones cannot give.”
      “Thanks for your patience. If some of us never meet again on this side of eternity, it is my hope and prayer that we meet where there are no more 50 or 75 year jubilees, but an eternal jubilee or jubilation in Paradise because of the goodness and mercy of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit whom we hope to love, adore, and that eternally with Mary and all the angels and saints. Amen.”

       The story is told of Father Lawrence working in the bonsai greenhouse when two visitors approached him and asked how long he had been a monk. He replied, “One day.” Such was his approach of focusing on today and his daily walk with the Lord. On this day of his death—Monday, September 26, 2005—let us pray that Father Lawrence’s “one day” will be an eternity with Our Lord Jesus Christ, His Mother Mary, St. Therese, the angels and saints, and all the faithful departed.

NOTES

1. Reference used for information about Falls City, Texas: Robert H. Thonhoff, “The Handbook of Texas Online,” [www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/FF/hlf4.html]

2. Father Lawrence legally changed his last name from Swierc to Swartz in 1963.

3. Drs. Victory and Dewey Kramer, An Oral History of Our Lady of the Holy Spirit Monastery [unpublished, copyright 1985].