Thanks be to God, once again this year during the first Vespers of the feast of St. Bernard of Clairvaux (August 19th), the Cistercians of Our Lady of Dallas welcomed new monks into the Abbey. This year God blessed us with three young men: Br. Sebastian Kelly, Br. Pascal Graves, and Br. David Andrews. They are beginning a year-long novitiate, in which they will pray, study, and enter into the life of our community.

Br. Sebastian Kelly was a student at the University of Dallas, where he took classes with Frs. James Lehrberger O.Cist. and Robert Maguire O.Cist. But he first learned about the Abbey through his parents, who were married by Fr. James and were themselves UD students. He enjoys Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, basketball, and playing guitar and banjo. Some of his brother monks are especially happy to have another musician and singer in the monastery for their Irish jam sessions. During the novitiate, Br. Sebastian hopes to deepen his prayer life through the Liturgy of the Hours.

Br. Pascal Graves is from Austin, Texas and joined the Church while at Texas State University. He discovered the Abbey as a diocesan seminarian at Holy Trinity Seminary. He loves playing the drums and enjoys powerlifting. The patronage of his religious name comes from St. Pascal Baylón, but he was also moved by the story of our Fr. Pascal Kis-Horváth, a monk of the monastery who passed away in 2013. Fr. Pascal was imprisoned in communist Hungary after a failed attempt to flee the country and suffered great physical and psychological torture in prison because he was the nephew of the Cistercian Abbot of Zirc. Even so, lying weak and battered in his cell, he renewed his religious vows by writing them on the wall in his own blood. Our new Br. Pascal looks forward to seeking God in the novitiate life of prayer and study.

Br. David Andrews was nearly left on the Abbey’s doorstep as an infant. His older brothers were already attending Cistercian Preparatory when he was born, and his parents are University of Dallas Alumni. He graduated from our school in 2021 and from UD in 2025. He studied Politics, writing a groundbreaking undergraduate thesis on the French Romantic philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Though Br. David has known the monks for years as their student, now he is excited to get to know them in a far more profound way as their brother.

Please pray for these three young men! May they enjoy a fruitful novitiate and reach conviction about God’s will for their lives. And may we continue to be blessed with new monks at Our Lady of Dallas, so that our size and fervor as a community might grow further, and so that we might serve the Church in all the ways that God has in mind.