Fr. Meinrad Miller is a way beyond six feet of Benedictine monk. In his forties, originally from Leoti, Kansas, a passionate scholar of Theology and reader of everything, he is also a brilliant organist. Currently, he serves as Subprior of the Atchison Abbey, with its sixty monks, and as a professor in Benedictine College’s Theology Department. He is a great friend, the person who made Fr. Giussani and the Movement at home in Atchison.

Fr. Meinrad, how did you discover Fr. Giussani?
I had a college friend here at Benedictine, BJ Adamson, who, having attended a course on Ethics his senior year (this was 1987) and read Aristotle, went around with a great question about the need for friendship and happiness. When he returned to Denver after his studies, he encountered CL members. Later, he moved to California, and there as well he found the Movement waiting for him. From 1987 to 2002, every time I saw or heard from him, BJ would tell me about Communion and Liberation. I sincerely thought to myself that he was exaggerating, that it was too good to be true.
Having now encountered the friendship and the thought of Fr. Giussani, I, too, have become someone who often seems to exaggerate…

You met Fr. Giussani through books. What struck you?
I’ve found that Giussani is a man able to respond to many of the questions I carry around. We’re often told that the fundamental choice in life is between a sterile rationalism or a pietistic moralism. In Giussani, instead, I’ve found someone who understands the human and the encounter with God in a living, new way, yet profoundly rooted in the tradition of the faith.

And the people you’ve encountered?
An attractive life. They have a friendship and a freedom that corresponded to something deep down in me. I was talking with a new graduate of ours, a brilliant young man. He told me a story similar to mine. He had been writing poetry for years, searching for the meaning of things, and then discovered that what he had been thinking and writing corresponded to the encounter with CL.

And with the other monks?
Monks are not famous for their propensity for change. When you’ve been on the field for 1,500 years, it may seem that there’s no need to hurry. I invited the monks to the presentation and shared Giussani’s judgments and Albacete’s reflections. The posters are also beautiful instruments for educating the heart to what the Movement is. Many of them receive Traces and read it regularly. In addition, parts of the PerCorso are used as study texts.

And how have they responded?
As in all things, some are enthusiastic, others less so. In general, there’s interest in the Movement and the love for Saint Benedict that Fr. Giussani has always shown.

What does Fr. Giussani have to do with your life as a Benedictine today?
One of the mortal vices identified in ancient monastic thought was sloth. The way I interpret the descriptions of Evagrius and John Cassian, it is the capital sin of “the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence.” Before meeting the Movement, I day-dreamed of being in the perfect monastery, in the perfect university. I believe that the Movement has helped me recognize that, here and now, with this group of monks, with these students, these friends of the Abbey, I encounter Christ who makes me free.

How did the “sons” of Benedict arrive here?
The first to arrive was Fr. Peter Lemcke, a Lutheran who had converted to Catholicism. I was re-reading his diary, where he spoke of his rejection of the Enlightenment thinking of many and the pietism of many others. Lemcke felt “at home” with Bishop Sailer, in Regensburg, just as Cardinal Ratzinger did 140 years later. He was then assigned as chaplain to the household of Friederich Schlosser, the son of Goethe’s daughter. One evening, the Romantic poet Clemens Brentano and Andreas Raess–who would later become the Bishop of Strasbourg–told him that Bishop Kendrick of Philadelphia was in great need of priests. Brentano made fun of him, saying that, staying comfortably in Germany, he was becoming a “luxury chaplain, big and fat.” And Lemcke set out. If he hadn’t done so, there would be no abbey, monastery, or college. Just like Abraham who picked up and moved out, or Fr. Giussani with his act of faith to throw himself into teaching high school, this Lutheran ex-pastor’s choice is what brought me here.


Photo by Randy OHC from West Park, New York, USA [CC BY 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons