Nass­er Khan

In this fes­tive and holy Christ­mas sea­son, the Sun­day Guardian sought out the qui­et-spo­ken and re­flec­tive Fr John Pereira, ab­bot of Mount St Bene­dict Monastery in St Au­gus­tine, for the last in this 'Get­ting Per­son­al' se­ries for 2014.

Ab­bot Pereira's path is an in­ter­est­ing one which he shares with us as he gives his Christ­mas re­flec­tions from the Mount: He en­tered the monastery at Mount St Bene­dict in Sep­tem­ber 1985. He made his first pro­fes­sion on De­cem­ber 12, 1987, his solemn pro­fes­sion on No­vem­ber 25, 1990, and was or­dained a priest June 27, 1993. Ten years af­ter his priest­ly or­di­na­tion, on No­vem­ber 15, 2003, Fr Pereira was elect­ed by his peers as ab­bot of the monastery of Our La­dy of Ex­ile. Some read­ers may re­flect on their Abbey board­ing school days at the Mount which once boast­ed of be­ing one of the fin­er schools in T&T.

Q: Tell us about your ear­ly years and your fam­i­ly.

A: I was born on Ju­ly 12, 1955. I grew up in St Ann's, Port-of-Spain, with­in a stone's throw of the Rosary Monastery, a group of con­tem­pla­tive Do­mini­can nuns. My par­ents had six chil­dren and I am the fourth. My el­dest broth­er, Ms­gr Chris­t­ian Pereira, is a Ro­man Catholic priest, cur­rent­ly the re­gion­al epis­co­pal vic­ar for the South­ern Vic­ari­ate. There are three girls and three boys. My fa­ther was one of the founders of the Catholic Ev­i­dence Guild, an or­gan­i­sa­tion which pro­mot­ed the teach­ings of the Catholic faith through lit­er­a­ture and pub­lic de­bate. My moth­er was al­so quite ac­tive in the church. I was an al­tar serv­er at the Rosary Monastery from the age of eight, un­til I was 18.

What schools did you at­tend, start­ing with the pri­ma­ry lev­el?

I at­tend­ed St Bernadette's Prep School in St Ann's, for my pri­ma­ry ed­u­ca­tion. This school was found­ed and man­aged by Holy Faith Sis­ters. My sec­ondary school­ing was at St Mary's Col­lege, Port-of-Spain, run by the Spir­i­tan (Holy Ghost) Fa­thers.

Tell us about your 'jour­ney' to em­brace your vo­ca­tion/join the priest­hood. When did you have your call­ing?

On leav­ing CIC (Col­lege of the Im­mac­u­late Con­cep­tion), I worked in the ac­count­ing field, first at Trinidad Match Fac­to­ry and then for sev­er­al years at Carib Brew­ery. Dur­ing this time, I did sev­er­al com­put­er and ac­count­ing cours­es to en­hance my work­ing skills.

Af­ter many years of soul search­ing, I left Carib Brew­ery in Au­gust 1985, and joined the monastery of Mount St Bene­dict in Sep­tem­ber 1985, at the age of 30. In ad­di­tion to my monas­tic for­ma­tion at the monastery, I at­tend­ed the Sem­i­nary of St John Vian­ney and the Mar­tyrs of Ugan­da, where I stud­ied phi­los­o­phy and the­ol­o­gy. I was award­ed a BA de­gree in The­ol­o­gy from UWI. I did cours­es in monas­tic stud­ies and pa­tris­tic the­ol­o­gy at St John's Uni­ver­si­ty in Min­neso­ta, USA, and I par­tic­i­pat­ed in pro­grammes on monas­tic for­ma­tion and lead­er­ship in Rome.

At this Christ­mas time what mes­sage would you like to give to T&T?

I of­fer a mes­sage of hope. If God has be­come hu­man, then we hu­mans have been touched in a spe­cial way by the Di­vine. This hasim­pli­ca­tions for the man­ner in which we re­late with each oth­er. The pos­si­bil­i­ties for good are le­gion. We can­not be de­fined sole­ly by the man­ner in which we re­late with each oth­er to­day. Be­cause we each have a spark of the di­vine in us, then good is our des­tiny and good is our course. The present ap­pear­ance of evil in our land with the ram­pant es­ca­la­tion of sense­less crime can­not be our des­tiny. There is a good that is wait­ing to be tapped. This is the good which fol­lows as a con­se­quence of the in­car­na­tion. Good will on­ly tri­umph over evil, how­ev­er, if we would wake up to the re­al­i­ty of the fact that God has in­deed tak­en flesh and has come among us.

What ad­vice would you give to a young per­son who is con­tem­plat­ing a vo­ca­tion such as yours?

I would ask the young per­son to con­sid­er whether he/she is will­ing to for­go self and live for the oth­er. Life as a monk is one of ser­vice to God and to the oth­er. One has to aban­don a life cen­tred on self and live a life cen­tred on God and the oth­er. If he/she is not will­ing to do so, then I would dis­cour­age him/her from em­bark­ing on this way of life. A monas­tic way of life is one of ded­i­ca­tion and ser­vice, and one can­not live such a life un­less one is tru­ly seek­ing God.

What are some of the chal­lenges you face in your "job"?

A ma­jor chal­lenge is that of jug­gling lim­it­ed per­son­nel re­sources in meet­ing the pas­toral de­mands laid up­on us. Mount St Bene­dict is a cen­tre of pil­grim­age for peo­ple of all re­li­gions. To be faith­ful to this cen­tre we need to be faith­ful wit­ness­es of ded­i­cat­ed com­mit­ment to Je­sus. An­oth­er ma­jor chal­lenge is that of pre­serv­ing the monas­tic el­e­ment of our wit­ness. Be­fore be­ing a cen­tre of pil­grim­age, Mount St Bene­dict is es­sen­tial­ly a monas­tic com­mu­ni­ty. The monas­tic val­ues of prayer, si­lence and con­tem­pla­tion can be erod­ed if we are not faith­ful to our dai­ly round of prayer and re­flec­tion. In oth­er words, the bal­ance as­so­ci­at­ed with a life pleas­ing to God must be main­tained if we are to pre­serve our iden­ti­ty as a monastery on the moun­tain top.

Who were the peo­ple who have in­flu­enced you the most?

My par­ents and my sib­lings...my fam­i­ly. It was in my fam­i­ly that I learnt the val­ues which pre­pared me for life's jour­ney.

Most peo­ple will not know what life as a priest is like, what would you say to them? What is your typ­i­cal day like?

The life of the priest is one which re­flects the life of Je­sus. It is one of to­tal ser­vice to God and the oth­er. It can be de­scribed as a life of self­less giv­ing.

A typ­i­cal day in the life of a priest con­sists of prayer, work and re­flec­tion. My day is punc­tu­at­ed with in­ter­vals of prayer (both pri­vate and com­mu­nal). Our com­mu­ni­ty meets five times a day to pray. In ad­di­tion to this, I have qui­et times when I com­mune with God in pri­vate. With­out these times of prayer, then our life of ser­vice be­comes hol­low and we can no longer of­fer to oth­ers what is up­lift­ing and prayer­ful. At the Mount, a por­tion of my day is al­so spent meet­ing with pil­grims who are in need of some sort of spir­i­tu­al guid­ance and coun­sel. As ab­bot of the monastery, I make time to meet with the monks, both at a per­son­al and com­mu­nal lev­el. Reach­ing out to peo­ple in need of God's mer­cy as in the Sacra­ment of Rec­on­cil­i­a­tion is al­so a pri­ma­ry func­tion. Each day, I put aside time to read the scrip­tures and oth­er sa­cred writ­ings so as to find res­o­nance with God and al­so to be able to of­fer some spir­i­tu­al food to those in need. To study the works of the spir­i­tu­al writ­ers help to ground my own spir­i­tu­al­i­ty and to be of greater ser­vice to oth­ers. My work al­so in­cludes some ad­min­is­tra­tive tasks that nec­es­sar­i­ly go along with any lead­er­ship role.

Can you give me an ex­am­ple of one such ad­min­is­tra­tive task?

Sure. One which many peo­ple may be able to iden­ti­fy with has to do with our pop­u­lar Pax Yo­gurt. It is sold in most of the recog­nised su­per­mar­kets in T&T. It is al­so in great de­mand in our own shop at the Mount: The Pax Abbey Shop. This lat­ter is an­oth­er one of my ad­min­is­tra­tive tasks as the monastery owns the shop and is ul­ti­mate­ly re­spon­si­ble for what is sold there.

With re­gard to Pax Yo­gurt, it is the brain­child of our most se­nior priest at the abbey, Fr Cuth­bert van der Sande, who grew up on a farm in the Nether­lands and at the abbey was al­ways ex­per­i­ment­ing with im­prov­ing the di­et of the monks us­ing milk prod­ucts. He is now 90 years of age and still re­ports for du­ty at the yo­gurt fac­to­ry each day. He start­ed mak­ing goat cheese for the monks. Even­tu­al­ly, he in­tro­duced the pro­duc­tion of yo­gurt as a small cot­tage in­dus­try, pri­mar­i­ly for the monks. We start­ed shar­ing it with our em­ploy­ees and with some of the em­bassies in Port-of-Spain. Lit­tle by lit­tle, the word was spread­ing that the monks were mak­ing yo­gurt. The de­mand in­creased dai­ly and so on March 14, 2003, the Pax Yo­gurt Com­pa­ny Ltd was es­tab­lished at the Mount. The man­ag­er, Mr Maxime De Co­mar­mond, is a for­mer stu­dent of the abbey school. In ad­di­tion to the yo­gurt, the com­pa­ny al­so pro­duces a yo­gurt spread and a yo­gurt drink, both of which are now very pop­u­lar.

What goals and as­pi­ra­tions do you still have?

I as­pire to con­tin­ue wit­ness­ing to the monas­tic charism and to al­low the con­tem­pla­tive face of the Caribbean church to shine out in the midst of our Caribbean peo­ple. It means as well recog­nis­ing the thou­sands of anony­mous monks who make up the mem­ber­ship of an in­vis­i­ble monastery.

What do you con­sid­er your most sig­nif­i­cant ac­com­plish­ment?

My most sig­nif­i­cant ac­com­plish­ment is re­main­ing faith­ful to the monas­tic jour­ney in spite of my own fail­ings.

If you had an op­por­tu­ni­ty to meet any­one in the world to­day, who would it be and why?

Pope Fran­cis. I am in­spired by the man­ner in which he lives out the joy of the gospel.

What ad­vice would you give to the lead­ers of our coun­try, sep­a­rate and apart from our ear­li­er ques­tion about ad­vice to the na­tion?

I would ad­vise the lead­ers of our coun­try to rise above par­ty pol­i­tics in the na­tion­al in­ter­est and al­ways to seek the way of col­lab­o­ra­tion.

De­scribe your­self in two words, one be­gin­ning with J, the oth­er with P, your ini­tials.

I de­scribe my­self as jagged and patchy, yet seek­ing joy and peace.