More About Me

I am Dom Lawrence,OSB, a Solemnly Professed Roman Catholic Benedictine monk brother of the Monastery of Christ in the Desert, Abiquiu, New Mexico USA.
My monastery is member of the English Province under the Subiaco Congregation, one of the numerous Benedictine Congregations in the whole world that follows the Holy Rule of Saint Benedict, our Patron Saint, the founder of the Order of Saint Benedict (OSB).
My baptismal name is Alberto.  After entering my Novitiate in September of 2002, I was named Dom Lawrence, OSB.

My monastic life follows a strict observance of Vows of Obedience, Stability and Conversion of Life.
As monk,  I am focused with the daily routine of my day inside the monastery. I live one day at a time, attending to the daily work of God, prayers, chants and the manual work of the day.

Prior to coming to the monastery here in United States, I spent my life for twenty years as elementary school teacher in San Beda College Grade School Department, Mendiola, Manila, Philippines, an exclusive Catholic school for boys ran by the Benedictine Monks of the Monastery of Our Lady of Montserrat.

I started with my monastic formation as Postulant for six months. It ended on August of year 2002. Immediately after the sixth month, the capitulars voted for me to continue with my monastic formation for one year as Novice which started in September 2002 and ended in September 2003.

In September 8 of 2003,  the  monks, celebrated the consecration and Profession of my Temporary Vows or Simple Vows. The temporary vows which I accepted needed to be served for three consecutive years in which after every year, I had to renew it until the last year of it, then I professed my Solemn Vows in August 15th of year 2006.

When I went back to the Philippines after the celebration of the Profession of my Simple Vows in September 2003, I had a chance to reunite myself with my family and friends in the province. One friend asked me why I  joined monastic life and I told her that I was  attracted to live a simpler life. I  became spiritually restless and weak, hungry and thirsty, after all those years of spending life with the  world.


Indeed, it was due to the weakness in the disciplines of my life in the world that I found the strength to give myself over to interior life through a monastic vocation in the confines of a contemplative monastery.

Do you know what were my first expectations and impressions about monastic life before I came over to the monastery? A romantic notion of flowing habits, candle-lit cloisters, awesome plainchants of an ancient Gregorian music echoing among dimly lit Gothic arches in the cloister corridors inside a monastery.

But all of these romantic thoughts soon gave way to the reality of doing laundry for my community brothers, washing dishes after the main meal of a good number of monks and their guests, scrubbing floors and toilets for a good four and a half years of monastic formation (remember: a monk starts as ‘postulant’ for six months, ‘novice’ for a year, and then a ‘Professed monk in Temporary/Simple Vows’ for three years), and the unbearable mistakes we make during our chants of 150 Psalms for the week to the embarrassments of our Novice Master, Junior Master, the Prior and the Abbot himself, not to mention the whole congregation.

Eight times a day, including the Celebration of the Sacrifice of the Holy Eucharist, my community gathers to pray, praise God and read the Holy Scriptures. This structure and discipline inside the monastery leads us to a greater awareness of God’s immediacy and our utter dependence on His grace in every moment, and to specifically remember that Christ is present at our side in each of those moments.

As monks, we strive diligently to combine prayer with work, and anything that is harmonious with prayer is thereby dignified especially when it is consciously offered as a gift to GOD.

From Monday to Saturday, we spend three hours and-a-half of daily work, that is, from 9:10 Am to 12:40 Pm. We have various works inside the cloister, work at the accounting office, kitchen, pantry, laundry, guesthouse, garbage, giftshop, guesthouse and gift shop, cleaning at the Abbey Church and Convento, computer works on the community‘s website, guests reservations,crafts, guestmaster's work and business correspondence.

Monastic study inside the monastery is also a kind of work as well. Our minds needed to be exercised along with our body and spirit. Historically, monks have often been considered as among those who have acquired an advanced intellectual and cultural life of the Catholic Church and also that of the secular society.


Our postulants, novices, and monks in Temporary Simple Vows, normally called as Junior monks, attend monastic classes everyday as part of their monastic formation. The rigid thirty-minute a day monastic class with our monk-professors, is what makes us, (monks who are under formation), made ready to face the challenges of monastic life inside the cloister.

We take audited courses in Philosophy, Holy Rule, Monastic Practices, Gregorian Chants, Vows, Introduction to Latin, Liturgy, Sacred Scriptures, Monastic History, New Testament, Patristics, Christology, and Church History. 


The Credited courses will only come after a junior monk is consecrated with his Perpetual Vows, that is, after finishing his three years of Temporary Simple Vows. He will then be sent to do formal schooling in a Benedictine School here in the US or in Rome for a Theology Course as requirement in receiving his Priestly ordination.

But there is no college degree required in entering our monastery. Instead, only a heart that is willing to serve, to pray, to work, to grow, and to do all for the glory of God. So, my monastery encourages and provides opportunity for each of us to better ourselves intellectually as well as spiritually, hence the Lectio Divina (Sacred Readings) inside the own cells of Senior monks.

It’s all up to the senior monk to really observe this opportunity and avail of such chance to grow himself spiritually in the pursuit of his monastic vocation with the observance of the one-hour daily Lectio Divina inside his cell.

The monks in formation: postulants, novices and junior monks take their one-hour Lectio Divina in common, at the Chapter room, and again, this gives them a chance to grow in spiritual maturity and strengthen their monastic observance.

What I’ve come to realize also, is that, when you come to live in the monastery, in GOD’s house, you make a contract with Him. He pays the bills, feeds you, clothes you, gives you place to sleep, and every other form of sustenance.

But on the other hand, all you have to do as part of that contract with GOD is to love; that is, to really love faithfully and sincerely the ones He sends to live with and share this way of life with you in the cloister.

An easy thing to do? Well, it’s not. It is not an easy one. With our multi-racial, cultural type of community, the monks can’t do anything but to experience from time to time and every now and then, a rub of each other’s elbows in seven days a week, in thirty days a month, and in twelve months a year.

Monastery of Christ In the Desert is comprised of Americans, Europeans, Irish, Vietnamese who arrived at the monastery as non-English speaking monks, Indians, Mexicans, Koreans, Africans, Madagascar and Filipinos. So, you can just imagine how difficult it is to get a possible smooth communications between the brothers with  these diverse languages.

Only GOD really knows why the time of His ‘calling’ is indeed different on each of us as we are diverse in age and personality and character, educational attainments and scholastic backgrounds, religious motivations and spiritual goals.

What we have indeed in common is that we want to give ourselves away, to be witnesses to God’s love in prayer and worship, in service to God’s people and the larger world, in companionship and fellowship with one another in the silence and solitude of the four walls of our monastery atop the rock mountains in such a deserted place miles away from the civilizations of the modern world.