Brother Ephrem Arcement, OHC

Originally from the bayou region of south Louisiana, faith and family formed an integral part of my early years. Food wasn’t far behind! While I participated in various athletic activities as a teenager, (tennis was my favorite) it was my love of music, especially the piano, that occupied most of my time. My love for classical music continues to this day. My faith became the central force of my life during my high school years and a vocation to ordained ministry soon became apparent. Although I was raised in the Roman Catholic tradition, during my college years I began to explore other Christian paths and spent my subsequent years matriculating through both Roman Catholic and Protestant seminaries and divinity schools. I am very grateful to my diverse background in faith and consider it to be one of the greatest blessings of my spiritual life. My latest book, the Shape of the Church, is largely a fruit and expression of my eclectic, spiritual background.

In 2010 I entered St. Joseph Abbey in Louisiana and spent eleven years there as a Benedictine monk before transferring to Holy Cross Monastery, an Anglican Benedictine community of monks in the Episcopal Church in West Park, New York, where I now serve as the community’s Guestmaster and Junior Master. I have thrived most in the ministries of leading retreats, chaplaincy work, and preaching and teaching and have a particular interest in helping make the vitality of the Christian spiritual tradition understood and made accessible to all who are interested in deepening their spiritual lives. I hold a PhD in Spirituality from The Catholic University of America. My three books are Intimacy in Prayer: Wisdom from Bernard of Clairvaux, In the School of Prophets: The Formation of Thomas Merton’s Prophetic Spirituality, and The Shape of the Church: The Seven Dimensions of Ecclesial Wholeness.

In recent years, having moved to the Hudson Valley region of New York, I have become an avid hiker and have developed a deep love for The Catskill Mountains. Besides, hiking, I enjoy reading (both fiction and nonfiction), and good film. 

Spiritually, I find the Christian mystical tradition to be of special interest and benefit. I wrote my doctoral dissertation on Thomas Merton and have been greatly influenced by his life and writings. I am also drawn to other contemplative writers, from deep in the tradition like St. Gregory of Nyssa and St. Isaac of Nineveh to contemporary writers like Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and Ilia Delio who have done so much to help break open the created world as a sacramental reality revealing the divine. I also find special interest in ecumenism and ecumenical theology and hope that my recent work The Shape of the Church, may help serve the ecumenical cause. It is my prayer and hope that we can see the giftedness of the other and embrace the other as an integral part of the whole, whoever that other may be. This, I believe, is the path toward greater wholeness. This spiritual truth, I also believe, has great resonance in the civil world in which we inhabit.