by Father Bernard Sheehan , O.S.B.

    On August 11, 1989, the Mount Michael Community, joined by nine visiting priest and a small crowd of family members and friends, accompanied on foot the body of Father Thomas Allen to its final resting place in the monastic cemetery. The crowd was small because Father Thomas did not have many contemporaries. When he died on August 8 in the Mercy Care Center in Omaha, where he had spent the last few years of his life, he was 86. He had been a monk for 64 years and a priest for 60.

When I think of Father Thomas, I am reminded, in some vague way, of three things: chapter 72 of Saint Benedict’s Rule, and probable the most beautiful; The Nun’s Story, an autobiography published in 1956 by Katherine Hulme; and the Old Testament prophet, Elijah.

In chapter 72 of his Rule, Saint Benedict points out eight ways in which a monk is to be zealous in his relationship to God and to others. It was in this spirit of zeal that Father Thomas undertook everything he did during his years at Mount Michael. He was twice superior of the monastery before Mount Michael became an abbey in 1964. For many years he was Director of the Secular Oblates, as well as a religion teacher in the high school.

We can be sure Father Thomas brought the same zeal to the position he held at Conception Abbey, Missouri, which he entered as a novice in 1924, and in whose shadow he had been born in 1903. Holding a higher degree in theology from the Catholic University of America, he was Rector of Conception Seminary and, later, Director of Studies.

In The Nun’s Story, an account of her years in a Belgian convent, Katherine Hulme speaks of certain nuns who were called “living rules”; sisters whose observance of the rule was so exact that, should the written rule be lost, it could be rewritten by studying one of them. Father Thomas was perhaps a “living rule,” and we may be certain he passed on his zeal to the Conception Abbey novices whose novice master he was in the 1930’s. Two of his former novices, each a monk for more than 50 years, were present at Father Thomas’ funeral.

Unknown to many, if not most people, is the shrine and park dedicated to the Blessed Virgin on the bluff behind the high school. This was uniquely Father Thomas’ project, and he spent many hours of many days of many summers in planting, mowing and generally keeping the site beautiful.

In his zeal, Father Thomas could be, and sometimes was, stubborn. He could, likewise, be demanding of others, and sometimes was. But the saints were most likely stubborn, and Father Thomas was no more demanding of others than he was of himself.

The Old Testament prophet, Elijah, fleeing from the wrath of Queen Jezebel, arrived at God’s mountain, Sinai, where he encountered God himself. Before God could say anything, Elijah exclaimed: “I have been most zealous for the Lord, the God of Hosts!” Perhaps those were Father Thomas’ first words to God on August 8. If so, the words of Elijah addressed to the God of the Old Testament were surely answered by these of the God of the New: “Well done, good and faithful servant, because you have been faithful in a few things, I will place you over many. Enter into the joy of your Lord.