Our Lady of the Holy Trinity

4:56pm, pacific standard time, apartment in Chandler, Arizona, USA, Saturday evening, July 9, 2022. I was excited was to see the conservation easement on the monastery land in Huntsville, Utah has been finalized. I have written about Our Lady of the Holy Trinity Trappist Monastery a couple of times. It is such a sacred place for so many people in the area I grew up (Southwest Wyoming/Northern Utah). Though the monks are no longer there (except for those in the cemetery) the powerful energy they created remains to this day.

Monastery mornings

7:05am I checked the Salt Lake Tribune and noticed there was a new book coming out called “Monastery Mornings: My Unusual Boyhood Among the Saints and Monks.” The Author is Michael O’Brien. An attorney in Salt Lake City. The book is about his trips to Holy Trinity Abbey in Huntsville, Utah. I have written about the monastery before. (Side note: I need to start adding tags to posts) I often visited the monastery with my mother and on my own when I was a hospice chaplain in Utah. It closed four years. I still cry realizing I can’t go to the chapel and sit in contemplation.

Monastery

One of my favorite places in the world is the Holy Trinity Abbey in Huntsville, Utah. Holy Trinity Abbey was a Trappist Monastery that closed in 2017. I would often drive out there and sit in the chapel. The silence of the place was powerful. When it closed I felt a piece of me die. This morning in the Ogden paper I read a group is raising money to purchase the land and place a permanent conservation easement on it. I texted my mom. She was the one who showed me the monastery back in the days when they made their own honey and bread to sell in the gift shop.

On another note. The pews at the chapel were bought by a Greek Orthodox Church in salt lake. I want to go visit that church to see them again.

I always planned to do a weekend retreat in Huntsville but never did. My first job at the state hospital doing clinical pastoral education we did a field trip and met with the brothers. Lots of great memories of the monastery.