2025 Vocations Awareness Supplement
Monk finds his Benedictine vocation through prayer, community and art
Benedictine Brother Jean Fish works on Oct. 10 on a piece of woven art on the grounds of Saint Meinrad Archabbey in St. Meinrad. (Photo courtesy of Saint Meinrad Archabbey)
By Sean Gallagher
ST. MEINRAD—Benedictine Brother Jean Fish was a teenager growing up in southern California in 2007 when his father Michael Fish woke him up early to drive him to Prince of Peace Abbey near San Diego so his son could experience and take part in the monks’ Vigils and Lauds, two parts of the Liturgy of the Hours prayed at the start of the day.
His father had previously been on retreat at the monastery as a deacon candidate for the Diocese of San Diego and wanted his son to experience the quiet early morning prayer of the monastic community. He was ordained a deacon in 2010. (Related: Long journey of faith leads deacon from atheism to service in the Church)
“The liturgy starts and immediately I kind of get this feeling of, ‘Where’s this been my whole life?’ ” recalled Brother Jean. “It was something special and my first experience of something like this spiritually. The second thought was, ‘I wish I could do this all the time.’ ”
That desire turned into reality seven years later in 2014 when he entered Saint Meinrad Archabbey in St. Meinrad. He became a novice there the following year, professed temporary vows in 2016 and solemn vows in 2019.
‘There was an immediate sense that this was home’
The groundwork for his openness to his Benedictine vocation was prepared in part during the two-year program he took part in as a teenager at his parish to be formed for the sacrament of confirmation. His parents were also helpful in supporting him in his discernment.
After being confirmed, Brother Jean was active in his parish’s youth group and helped to lead it. This led to thoughts of a possible priestly or religious vocation.
“I knew that I wanted to dedicate my life to the Church in some way, possibly,” Brother Jean remembered.
In an interview with The Criterion, the father and son recalled the moment when Brother Jean told his parents his thoughts.
“It was after dinner,” said Brother Jean.
“We were sitting at the table and he says to us, ‘I want to be a priest.’ He was in tears,” said Deacon Fish.
“I remember that,” added Brother Jean, looking at his father.
His parents were supportive of his discernment but asked him to earn an undergraduate degree first, which Brother Jean did at Sonoma State University in Rohnert Park, Calif.
“If it was an authentic calling, it would still be there,” said Deacon Fish. “And I said I would do everything I could in my power to help him achieve that.”
“The openness of him supporting me in any way was completely the truth,” Brother Jean said, recalling that his father helped him “not be afraid of who I am.”
Brother Jean also saw things he desired in his own life when his father discerned his own calling as a permanent deacon when Brother Jean was a teenager. He also witnessed it in his father’s participation in the San Diego Diocese’s deacon formation program.
“Being a young adult, the main thing that you’re seeking is purpose—purpose in the relationships that you have with other people,” Brother Jean said, “but also kind of the trajectory of my life and what am I aiming toward.”
He also appreciated the “sense of joy” and “sense of purpose” he saw in his father in his life and ministry as a deacon.
“The sense of joy had an energizing quality that came with that vocation,” Brother Jean said. “It was very attractive to me as a young person trying to figure out where was I going.”
He ended up going to lots of places, physically and virtually, in his discernment of a possible religious vocation, taking trips to monasteries in California. But viewing a video on Saint Meinrad Archabbey’s website attracted him more than anything had prior. He noted that he was “impressed by how genuine everyone was in that video.”
Brother Jean first visited Saint Meinrad in May 2014.
“There was an immediate sense that this was home,” Brother Jean recalled.
‘We were on our journey together’
After his first visit, Brother Jean soon started the application process to join the monastery. He moved in five months later in October.
And in the home he had discovered in May, he soon found a family. There were other men around his age in formation in the monastery. Although they did not know each other before coming to the monastery, they supported each other well in the months and years to come.
“We were on our journey together,” Brother Jean said. “On Wednesday nights, we’d either just sit around and talk about how things were going or we would play board games. We were also hanging out on Saturday nights and Sunday nights. We really got along.”
They also prayed together with the rest of the monastic community several times a day in the Archabbey Church of Our Lady of Einsiedeln in the kind of prayer that had been such a draw to Brother Jean as a teenager.
He described the Liturgy of the Hours that the monks pray together at different points of the day, from morning to night, as “opportunities to breathe.”
“It’s a place of rest and peace,” he said. “Despite everything else that is going on, it’s a place that we come to together that has a sense of peace and rest. It really is kind of this refuge that we kind of return to.”
Bring peace to daily life through art
In addition to the community life and prayer leading him closer to God in his Benedictine vocation, Brother Jean has also found art as a pathway to holiness.
In college, he took an interest in creating geometric patterns as a hobby.
“I forced myself to draw straight lines freehand,” Brother Jean said. “That meant that I had to control my breathing. The process of creating these patterns was greatly meditative. It brought a profound sense of peace when dealing with the business of full-time studies.”
After professing solemn vows, he studied art at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, earning a bachelor’s degree in fine arts, focusing in particular on sculpture. At Saint Meinrad, he creates woven basket sculptures and teaches others the craft.
“Art was one of the ways that I navigated my own monastic identity,” Brother Jean said. “It created a space where I could be introspective. But it was also a way to share something with others as a sign of love and gratitude.
“Because art had been a great source of peace for me, there was that desire to share that peace with others. So, I began to see art as being something that could be a ministry, too. Similar to what initially impressed me about Benedictine liturgy, art was profoundly personal, but also communal.”
He shares his art not only with his fellow monks. It’s also available to the many visitors who come to Saint Meinrad.
“A common comment from guests is that Saint Meinrad’s quiet atmosphere and prayer can be a place to find peace and recharge,” Brother Jean said. “Art is something that guests can take back with them to continue that experience. One of the joys of teaching art has been showing others that peace can be accessible during their daily lives.”
Brother Jean seeks out that peace in his own daily life as a monk, including in his artistic work. For him, it’s a process that takes a while to come to fruition and requires patience.
“When making art, there is a phase of imperfection, where the zeal of starting has passed and the beauty of a finished artwork seems distant,” he said. “There is the need to trust the process.”
The process, whether in creating a work of art, or cooperating with God’s grace in his ongoing creation of himself as a work of art of God in his life, requires faith and hope.
“The artist has a vision of the artwork in completion, but there has to be the faith and hope that such a vision is truly attainable,” Brother Jean said. “When speaking of beautiful art, its creation becomes a sign of both gratitude and love.
“If the goal of monastic life is to provide opportunities of conversion so as to prepare us for heaven, then artwork can draw our attention to that goal. To live a life of faith, hope and love is the way of Christ. Art provides an opportunity to ask how those values are being lived.”
(To learn more about a vocation as a Benedictine monk of Saint Meinrad Archabbey in St. Meinrad, visit www.saintmeinrad.org.) †
