Br. Mary Joseph Szwedo, Answering the Call
“Answering the Call will be a periodic series of stories describing the monastic journeys of several Mepkin monks. The series begins with one of the Abbey’s most beloved monks, Br. Mary Joseph Szwedo, who passed away on January 20, 2023, after seventy-nine years as a monk. It is hoped that the narratives of those who chose to become Trappists will demystify the many roads taken to this unique way of life. They are very human chronicles of seeking a meaningful relationship with God. The stories are an extension of those found in Between the Marsh and the Skies: The Mepkin Abbey Story, published on the Abbey’s 75th anniversary.”
– Robert Macdonald
We are all called to a purposeful life that has meaning for us and those we encounter during our life’s journey. The call can lead to life as a physician, teacher, skilled carpenter, long-haul truck driver, plumber, health care worker, and myriad other human endeavors. Contentment comes to those who answer their call. A life of unhappiness falls on those who decline to answer their call and choose a different path. Because that way denies who they are and are meant to be, it often leads to failure and disappointment.
Ten-year-old Walter Joseph Szwedo was called while attending Mass at Chicago’s Holy Trinity Polish Church. He would die 86 years later, on January 20, 2023, at Mepkin Abbey as Br. Mary Joseph. He had been a Trappist monk for seventy-nine years. The journey of a first-generation Polish boy from the rough streets of Chicago’s West Loop neighborhood to a monk at the Trappist monastery on the banks of the Cooper River forty miles outside Charleston, South Carolina, is a story of profound commitment and devotion, perseverance, and ultimately a happy life.
Walter Szwedo was born on July 11, 1927, the youngest of eight children, six boys and two girls, to John and Angelina (Anna) Szwedo. Anna and John immigrated from Poland in 1902 and 1908, respectively. They married in 1909. Anna was 41 when Walter was born.
Walter struggled for seven years to answer the call. He graduated from Trinity Parish grade school near the top of his class but had to go on to the local public high school because his parents couldn’t afford the tuition at Trinity High School, operated by the Holy Cross Brothers of the University of Notre Dame. Walter disliked the public high school’s secular ambiance and dropped out in his sophomore year. His father, who worked at a local furniture manufacturer, told Walter that he would have to get a job if he didn’t go to school. Walter found work cleaning children’s pools for the Chicago Parks Department and distributed comic books while two of his older brothers worked as drivers for the notorious gangster Al Capone.
During these seven years, the thought of a religious vocation kept nagging at him. He sought the advice of a priest at Trinity, who gave him a brochure on Gethsemani, the Kentucky Trappist monastery established in 1848 in the rolling hills south of Louisville by monks from Melleray Abbey in France’s Brittany region. Walter later recalled that he was torn. He wanted to get married and raise a family. He was discouraged reading about the Trappists’ life of prayer and work and their penitential traditions. The tipping point for Walter was the death of his fifty-nine-year-old mother, Anna, on August 3, 1944. Four weeks after his mother’s passing, seventeen-year-old Walter Joseph Szwedo packed his bags, received his father’s blessing, and was on a train for Our Lady of Gethsemani. He arrived at Gethsemani to begin his monastic life on the sweltering afternoon of August 28, 1944. The rolling green hills of central Kentucky were a stark change from the bustling streets of Chicago.
At the time, Gethsemani was under Abbot Frederick Dunn, who ran the abbey adhering to the rigorous rules of the Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance. Work, prayer, silence, and fasting were strictly enforced. Monks could receive mail only four times yearly: Christmas, Easter, and the Feasts of the Assumption and Immaculate Conception. Outgoing mail was limited to two censored pages. Monks were prohibited from leaving the monastery even for a parent’s funeral. A monk’s family was allowed to visit only once a year.
Gethsemani was organized around the traditional French social structure. There were two categories of religious: Laybrothers, the workers, and Choir Monks, priests, or priests in training. Laybrothers lived and prayed separately from the Choir Monks and were considered a lower class in the monastery.
Walter entered as a Laybrother and took the religious name, Mary Joseph, reflecting his lifelong devotion to the Blessed Mother. He was assigned to work under the monastery’s farm boss, Br. Basil Higdon, who grew up on a farm a few miles from Gethsemani. Br. Joseph also worked for the monastery’s carpenter and cut trees for the carpenter’s shop. Years later, Br. Mary Joseph recalled the harshness of the monastic life he entered. The diet was severely limited, and fasting was a frequent penance. Butter and fruit were absent from the refectory table. Wool habits were worn in summer and winter, and they were slept in. “It was hard. Everything was a penance. I would not be able to do it if I had to go back. You need to be young to accept it. We did not complain. We chose the life.”
Br. Mary Joseph worked for seven years learning farming under Br. Basil Higdon. He acquired knowledge about cultivation, drove the farm equipment, and helped bring in the harvest. Gethsemani grew to almost 250 Choir monks and Laybrothers during these seven years. Many were drawn to monastic life after experiencing the trauma of World War II. Others were inspired by Thomas Merton’s autobiographical Seven Story Mountain, which describes the Catholic writer and mystic’s journey to Gethsemani.
Because of the overpopulation, Gethsemani sent monks around the country to establish new monasteries called Foundations. Our Lady of the Holy Ghost (later Holy Spirit) was established in Conyers, Georgia, outside Atlanta, in 1944. Our Lady of the Holy Trinity was founded in Huntsville, Utah, three years later. Our Lady of the Immaculate Heart of Mary (later Mepkin Abbey) was founded in 1949, and Genesee Abbey in Upstate New York in 1951. Getsemani’s final new Foundation was New Clairvaux Abbey in Vina, California, established in 1955.
Br. Basil Higdon, Br. Mary Joseph’s farming teacher, was part of a group of twenty-nine monks, the “Pioneers,” sent to South Carolina in November 1949 to establish what was to become Mepkin Abbey on a former rice plantation donated to the Trappists by Henry Luce, founder of Time and Life magazines, and his wife, Clare Boothe Luce. Br. Higdon was unhappy in his new home and soon returned to Gethsemani, eventually leaving the Trappists.
This left the South Carolina Foundation without someone who knew farming, threatening the survival of the new monastery. Gethsemani’s Abbot, James Fox, realizing the new Foundation was facing a crisis, sent seven Gethsemani Laybrothers, “The Seven Sacraments,” to Mepkin. Among the seven was Br. Mary Joseph.
Br. Mary Joseph became the driving force in directing the abbey’s farming from planting to harvesting. He oversaw the sawmill and milking parlor, drove the bulldozer clearing the land, and planted trees. He unsuccessfully urged Mepkin’s scholarly Abbot Anthony Cassagne that Mepkin’s depleted fields needed fertilization. All this while maintaining a Laybrothers’ prayer life, continually repeating the Our Father and Hail Mary. He served daily Mass for the Choir Monks and began his lifelong habit of feeding the squirrels that roamed the monastery. When Mepkin inaugurated the new egg production industry, Br. Mary Joseph directed the preparation and distribution of the feed for the abbey’s thousands of chickens.
In his twenty-second year as a Laybrother, Br. Mary Joseph faced a crisis. On December 27, 1966, Ignace Gillet, the Trappist Abbot General, declared the Decree of Unification. There is to be only one class of religious in the Order. All are monks: monastic formation is given on the same lines, and rights and duties are to be the same. Those who have already made profession for the class of “Conversi” (Laybrothers) are free to remain in that state which they have chosen. Br. Mary Joseph had chosen to be a Laybrother with a different prayer life than that practiced by the Choir Monks. He had worn the Laybrothers’ brown tunic and brown scapular for twenty-two years. He was now asked to wear the white tunic and black scapular of the Choir Monks and follow their prayer routine. Several of his fellow Laybrothers were unhappy with the changes and resisted, and many left the Trappists. Br. Mary Joseph decided to stay and continue his dedication to prayer and work. He did agree to wear the white and black habit of the Choir Monks. However, for many years, he declined to join the monks in their Liturgy of the Hours, praying seven times daily. He eventually did join the monks, lending his beautiful tenor voice to the singing of the Psalms.
By the time Mepkin Abbey’s thriving egg business ended, Br. Mary Joseph was eighty. He could no longer do the heavy manual labor he had done in the past. His squirrel feeding continued, and he began making rosaries composed of berries from plants growing on Mepkin Abbey’s beautiful grounds. Quiet and unassuming, he drew admiration from his fellow monks and Mepkin’s supporters and visitors. He greeted you with a smile on his weathered face worn by years of laboring in the South Carolina sun. Br. Mary Joseph’s simplicity reflected an inner peace and happiness of one who answered his call to monastic life. It was his true calling.
