Workers in the Vineyard | Abbot Patrick

Abbot Patrick

Maronite Monasticism in Massachusetts

by Brandon Shulleeta

At 25 years old, Patrick Kokorian had an ordinary life plan: continue advancing in his aerospace engineering career, find a nice woman to marry, and raise a Catholic family. 

But while reading a book about a monk, Kokorian felt called to become a monk.

“It totally took me by surprise,” Kokorian said. “I closed the book and said: ‘That’s not what I had in mind at all,’ but at that moment, I had to figure out if this was what God was calling me to.”

Nineteen years later, Kokorian, 44, is now the head monk for Most Holy Trinity Monastery in Petersham, Massachusetts. Kokorian was elected in September to become the abbot – the spiritual leader of the monastery – after almost 17 years as a monk.

The monastery was founded by Father William Driscoll, who served as the abbot for more than 40 years. Due to his age and health, Driscoll, who is 87 years old, said he was anxious for a new abbot to take over.

“He’ll make an especially good abbot. That’s why we elected him,” Driscoll said, adding that Kokorian has the right demeanor and character. 

“They picked exactly the man I was voting for,” Driscoll said with a laugh. “We both have the same ideals but different ways of doing things.”

Prayer is at the heart of the Maronite Catholic monastery, which has 19 monks.

“The whole center of the day is God,” Kokorian said. “If you wanted to invent something for yourself that would focus your mind on God all the time and give you the best possible chance of union with him in this life, this is what you’d invent.”

The monks begin prayers at 5:20 a.m. daily and continue through the day, following the Maronite Liturgical cycle. They also pray for individual causes, some of which come from prayer requests that are submitted by people to their monastery’s website, maronitemonks.org.

While Kokorian said it’s a misnomer that monks take a vow of silence, they do at least try to minimize unnecessary talking.

“You only talk when you need to talk. Now, obviously, some people need a little more (talking) than others,” he said with a laugh.

Kokorian said monks at some monasteries spend much of the day with each other. However, he said Most Holy Trinity Monastery is designed to give monks a little more alone time for praying and meditating. While no electronics are used for entertainment (they don’t watch TV or play games on smart phones), they do have a recreation period three times a week that’s largely spent talking.

Each day, the monks spend two hours adoring the Blessed Sacrament exposed.

At 44 years old, Kokorian is a relatively young abbot. While he oversees the monastery, he says his most important leadership role as abbot is providing spiritual guidance to the other monks as needed.

Kokorian’s path to becoming an abbot was unforeseen compared with some others. Driscoll, for example, said that he knew since he was in grade school that he wanted to become a priest.

Kokorian, on the other hand, had no plans of becoming a Catholic cleric during his youth. When he read a 1940s book about a monk, The Seven Storey Mountain, he wasn’t even sure at the time if monks still existed.

Kokorian laughed as he recalled his thoughts when he was a 25-year-old: “I didn’t know if monks still existed. Maybe they all disappeared! You never hear about monks at all.”

However, when he felt connected to Most Holy Trinity Monastery after a retreat, he got rid of all of his belongings, paid off his college debt and became a monk.

Over the years, he’s learned how prayer often transforms for people as their spirituality grows.

“Typically, as you grow spiritually, as the spiritual authors tell us and monks can attest to this, your prayer gets simpler,” Kokorian said, “and it becomes less about talking to God and more about listening to God and more about being with God.

“As you get closer to God, you start to take on a little bit more simplicity as He works in you,” Kokorian said. 

Kokorian said that being a good abbot, in part, means continuing the traditions established by his predecessor.

“My great hope is to be faithful to what I’ve been given … hopefully deepen it,” Kokorian said. “For me, success would mean that when I die in this monastery it’s at least as good as I found it when I arrived almost 17 years ago.” 

Kokorian described Driscoll as “a very gentle abbot. … He’s a very humble man. God used him to bring about something very wonderful.”