Saying “yes” to God’s will THE SOLEMN P R O F E S S I O N O F BR. KAREL SOUKUP, OSB What brought you to St. Benedict’s Abbey? I grew up in a small town, Lakin, in Southwest Kansas. I discovered St. Benedict’s Abbey almost completely by chance while studying Linguistics at the University of Kansas in 2004. At that time Benedictine College was a little more than half of the size it is today – and I had no clue there was a college or a monastery up here. One Sunday I was serving Mass at the St. Lawrence Center at KU and Abbot James, then Prior and Vocations Director, showed up out of the blue. He invited me to visit the Abbey. I spent about three weeks here split up over the course of a semester in the Spring of 2005, and I sort of got hooked. I entered in the Fall of 2005 with Br. Leven Harton.
The first time, you discerned that it wasn’t the right time to enter the monastic life; what was it like going back out into the world? As a novice you don’t take any vows and you’re free to leave whenever you want – I left after about nine months. It was a hard thing to do at the time. Afterward I studied at Mount St. Mary’s Seminary in Emmitsburg, Maryland. After two years I came to the conclusion that diocesan priesthood wasn’t for me. Seminary is supposed to be a temporary situation, the whole point is to get you trained and get you formed and then go off into that pastoral work, but I really enjoyed the camaraderie, the brotherhood at the seminary in a way that disclosed to me that being on my own out at a parish wasn’t going to be a good fit for me. Leaving the seminary, I had no idea that I would come back to the monastery. I didn’t know what I wanted to do, so I spent a few years living and working odd jobs down around Wichita, Kansas, and it was at that point that I really discovered the need that I had for community life. The life that I was living wasn’t very glamorous, I was working at a grocery store trying to make ends meet, but I realized that the life that I was living was still a very selfish life – it was all centered around me and what I wanted. I knew that I needed something to draw me out of that and that’s where the idea of returning to the monastery first sprouted.
You’ ve become quite the artist, where did you learn your craft? I grew up in a artistic family, though I don’t know that anyone would consider themselves an artist. My dad paints and does woodworking and my mom does lots of different crafts. I grew up with the mentality that if you want to do something you figure out how to do it and then you do it. Immediately after leaving seminary I was sitting on my parents couch filling out job applications, which you can only do for so long, when I stumbled on a Youtube video about bookbinding. And I was sort of hooked onto this craft with a long tradition of craftsmanship that’s seeing a revival. Coming to the monastery I was encouraged by superiors to continue binding books. I’ve had the opportunity to participate in a few workshops with a local iconographer, Elizabeth Zeller, so I’ve taken up iconography and egg tempera painting in general. I’ve also been taking art courses at Benedictine College and am just trying to hone my skills. 12
Kansas Monks
