Benedictine Novice Aelred Senna OSB
to Profess First Vows September 14
Release Date: September 6, 2008
COLLEGEVILLE, Minn. -- Brother Aelred Senna OSB, a novice of Saint John's Abbey, will make his first profession of monastic vows during a Eucharist and Rite of First Monastic Profession at 10:30 a.m., Sunday, September 14, at Saint John's Abbey Church in Collegeville.
The public is invited to join the monastic community in the celebration.
When he entered the novitiate last September after three months in formation as a candidate, Johnnie Haynes Senna received the name of Aelred, after Saint Aelred of Rievaulx, a twelfth-century reformer of Cistercians who authored "The Mirror of Charity." Novice Aelred was born 44 years ago in Austin, Texas, but grew up in Dallas.
September 14, the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, has become the usual date for Saint John's novices to make first profession of monastic vows. After professing his first, or temporary, monastic vows, Novice Aelred will become a junior monk of the Saint John's community. After a minimum of three years of vowed life, junior monks can apply to make their final vows.
Novice Aelred brings to the Abbey community a wealth of gifts and abilities. As a teen, he cultivated a love for music and the theater and developed proficiency as a singer and cellist, and soon was performing and touring professionally as an actor and singer. He earned a bachelor of arts degree in Classics from the University of Dallas, majoring in Latin with a minor in Greek. He is also fluent in Spanish.
Novice Aelred taught English as a Second Language at the elementary level, then consulted and eventually became engaged in product management for a Carmel, CA-based publisher of bilingual and ESL materials. He was a member of -- and sang in the choir for liturgies at -- San Carlos Borromeo de Monterey Cathedral parish in nearby Monterey, Calif., a mission church founded in the 18th Century by Father Junipero Serra, namesake of the Serra religious vocations ministry.
As early as high school, Novice Aelred said, he had pondered the possibility that "there was a vocation to the priesthood inside me somewhere." He was accepted as a priest candidate for the Diocese of Dallas but during his fourth year as a college seminarian he began wondering if he was more suited to religious life in a community -- a Benedictine community, for example.
"I had gotten very busy around the seminary itself, involved in the life of the seminary community, and discovered I loved community life," Novice Aelred said. "I realized that kind of life was not what I was to expect from the diocesan priesthood."
After leaving the seminary, Novice Aelred decided to put his vocation on hold for a time, feeling a personal responsibility to be available to his family of origin. As he reached his 40s, Novice Aelred said, his family responsibilities became less pressing, "and the idea of a religious vocation reentered my head -- the working of the Holy Spirit, to be sure."
Using the Internet as his primary research tool, Novice Aelred began to look for communities. He found Saint John's Abbey online, made contact, and was invited to Collegeville for a visit.
"I was smitten with the place and the community from the first," he said. "The monks were very welcoming. I seemed to fit in, and there are so many things here at Saint John's that have been, and are, important in my life -- music, education, and publishing.
"So now, here I am at Saint John's, getting ready to profess first monastic vows. And what will my first job be as a junior monk? I am to begin work shortly at the Liturgical Press in the area of product management. I guess God wanted to have me well-trained before bringing me here!"
The Mass and ceremony of profession will be broadcast live on the Internet via Real Media.
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