Monks and Students Meet the Monks - St. John's Abbey

FEATURE
Two Brothers Profess Final Vows
“Receive me, Lord, as you have promised,
and I shall live;
do not disappoint me in my hope”
(Psalm 119:116).
Brothers Christopher
Fair, OSB, and Xavier
Schermerhorn, OSB,
made their solemn, fi nal profession
of vows on July 11, the
Feast of Saint Benedict, in the
presence of the monastic community,
relatives and friends.
Christopher and Xavier began
their monastic life as novices
in September, 1999, and made
their original commitment to the
Benedictine way of worship and
work the following year.
Christopher, 34, the youngest
of the six children of Donald and
Joan Fair of Omaha, Nebraska,
attended Archbishop Daniel
J. Gross High School and the
page 16 The Abbey Banner Fall 2003
University
of Nebraska.
He was active
in the
Knights of
Columbus
Squires Council and is a third-degree
member of the Belleville, Kansas,
Council.
Xavier Schermerhorn with his mother Beatrice and sister Susan
Stoughtenger, July 11, 2003
photos by Robin Pierzina, OSB
After college, Christopher worked as
an inventory supervisor for a heating
and air conditioning company in Omaha
and later in custom cattle operations in
western Nebraska and Kansas where, as
he puts it, “I learned both the business
and duty ends of a cow.”
Christopher serves the community
by assisting the director of novices in
assigning
work for the
abbey’s newest
members.
He also
continues his
work in the
woodworking
department.
His creativity
as a toymaker
was featured
in the winter
2002 issue
of The Abbey
Banner.
Christopher Fair with his mother Joan and
father Don, July 11, 2003
Xavier, 44, the son of William (deceased)
and Beatrice Schermerhorn
of Hammond, New York, earned a
bachelor’s degree in elementary education
from Plattsburgh State University in
New York. He worked as a bank teller
and as a cook at the rectory of Sacred
Heart Parish, Massena, NY. He moved
to Denver, did clerical and switchboard
work, and was a supervisor in the housekeeping
department at the Brown Palace
Hotel. While living in Denver he served
as sacristan, eucharistic minister, lector
and acolyte at the Cathedral of the Immaculate
Conception.
Continuing his work in the retirement
center of the abbey, Xavier also serves
as assistant sacristan and accompanies
Bishop John Kinney as master of ceremonies
for the conferral of confi rmation
throughout the Diocese of St. Cloud.
His care of a pair of parakeets in the
retirement center was noted in the spring
2003 issue of The Abbey Banner.