Br Edward Paul Shivell, Answering the Call

by Robert Macdonald

Br. Edward Paul Shivell, “Br. Eddie,” was an impatient man on a mission, driven to seek a deeper relationship with God. His fervent longing led him to join the Trappists and continue his quest for fifty-seven years. Br. Eddie’s call to a religious vocation was not impulsive: it evolved during his early twenties.

Edward Paul Shivell was born on November 11, 1928, in Hudson, Pennsylvania, a small village four miles north of Wilkes-Barre. Edward was the youngest of four children, two boys and two girls, of Stanley and Sophie Shivell. Edward’s grandparents were born in Poland and Austria, and the family’s name was changed from Przybylowski to Shivell in the 1930s.  Many Hudson residents were of Polish descent, reflecting the influx of immigrants who came to work in the area’s anthracite coal mines in the late nineteenth century. Stanley and Sophie operated Shivell’s Tavern on Hudson’s Miner Street, catering to local coal miners for thirty years. The Shivells lived above the bar and attended the village’s St. Joseph’s Polish Catholic Church, where Edward went to the parish school operated by the Benedictine Sisters. He then attended Sacred Heart High School in the adjacent town of Plains, graduating in 1946. Edward enrolled in Wilkes-Barre’s King’s College, where he spent two years before dropping out. Growing up, he enjoyed hunting and fishing with his family and friends, participating in school plays at Sacred Heart, and earning merit badges as a member of the St. Joseph Parish Boy Scout troop.    

After leaving King’s College, twenty-year-old Edward Shivell enlisted in the Navy and was selected for the Navy’s Supply Corps. He trained at the Great Lakes Navy Station near Chicago and the Supply Corps School in Bayonne, New Jersey, achieving the rank of Seaman Second Class. He was assigned to the destroyer USS Compton, part of the Navy’s Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean. While on board the Compton, Edward Shivell received his call to a religious vocation.

Br. Eddie later recalled how he would climb to the ship’s crow’s nest at night and look out on the Mediterranean and the almost infinite expanse above and around him. He was overwhelmed by the quiet night, the beauty of the stars and sea, the rhythm of the waves, the moon, the reflection on the water, and the waves as they were breaking, like diamonds being scattered. It was an indefinable presence. He asked himself, who am I in all this vastness? He wanted the powerful emotion he was experiencing to remain with him. It was the beginning of Edward Shivell’s contemplative journey. He wrote Fr. Andrew Bocianski, the pastor of his parish church in Hudson, telling him about his encounters with the transcendent and his increasing thoughts about a religious vocation.  

To his fellow Mepkin monks, Br. Eddie was now at peace. His feverish quest for an intimate relationship with God had ended on the banks of the Cooper River, where he would remain the rest of his life. He was assigned to be Mepkin’s cook and actively participated in the monastery’s life. Beyond the kitchen, Br. Eddie energetically advocated for placing Mepkin’s new church on the site of the old church. He was not shy in sharing his thoughts and concerns at the monks’ chapter meetings and became an important member of the Schola, lending his voice to the Abbey’s music liturgy.  He was an untiring worker, particularly in emergencies like the cleanup after Hurricane Hugo that devastated Mepkin’s grounds. Br. Eddie befriended Mepkin volunteers, encouraging some to convert to Catholicism. He greeted everyone with a smile and a kind word.

In 2003, Br. Eddie was diagnosed with prostate cancer. Cancer had taken his mother and would take his two sisters and brother. He underwent 42 radiation treatments and hormone therapy, which made him suffer hot flashes. He quit treatments in 2006, and the cancer spread. As his health deteriorated, Br. Eddie’s longing to return home increased, not home in Hudson, Pennsylvania, but home to God.   A few months before he died, he wrote,