A little more than 13 years ago, Patrick Kokorian would have
described himself as a “nominal Catholic” who put his own
desires ahead of his faith.
After making a vow to put God’s will first, he eventually
became a Maronite monk at Most Holy Trinity Monastery in
Petersham, Mass. Today, Brother Patrick is counting down the
days until his ordination to the priesthood in October. It’s
a life he never expected, but one that has brought much peace
and joy.
Born and born again
The son of Lebanese parents, he was born in 1975. Because of
the conflicts going on in Lebanon during his childhood, he
spent his youth living in Saudi Arabia, where he attended a
British school until he was 9 and his family returned to
Lebanon for a year.
His father was a civil engineer, which gave the family enough
money to travel and see the world. When he was 10 years old,
the family moved to the United States and settled in Miami.
Brother Patrick attended a Jesuit high school there and went
to Embry Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach –
the so-called “Harvard of the sky” – where he earned a
bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering. Soon after
graduation, he accepted his first aerospace job at a
satellite phone company in Leesburg.
“That got me to where I consider is the best state,” he said.
“To me, everything that was right about America was
summarized by Virginia. I consider Virginia to be Americana
at its best.”
He then took a job at Lockheed Martin and began attending
Mass at St. Lawrence Church in Alexandria. At the time, he
was a “very lukewarm Catholic,” he said.
“I was a person who went to Mass on Sundays and did whatever
I wanted the rest of the week,” he said. “I was probably a
scandal to those who knew I was Catholic.”
Still, he was impressed by the faithfulness of the community
and priests at St. Lawrence.
“There were really great priests over there at the time,”
Brother Patrick said. “What really impressed me was they
always preached confession and there were always lines around
the confessional, with young people in it too, which really
shocked me. Florida is a very liberal crowd where you don’t
really get that, so this was something kind of new to me.”
Brother Patrick recommitted to his faith at age 25 after a
particularly life-giving moment in the confessional.
“It was after I thought I had finally blown it and lost God
once and for all,” he said. “I was at the very lowest point
and thank God I remembered confession. I came out of there
and for probably the first time, I felt really forgiven. I
was so happy.”
That night, St. Lawrence was having eucharistic adoration,
which Brother Patrick had never heard of before. After
spending some time in prayer before the Blessed Sacrament, he
made a promise to God.
“Driving home, I promised God that I would try doing things
His way, because with my way look how it ended up,” Brother
Patrick said. “I changed my life and decided, I’m going to
take God seriously and going to actually try to live as a
good Catholic and basically get rid of bad habits and acquire
some new ones, have a good prayer life, go to Mass more
regularly and so on and so forth. It was a very big turning
point.”
In his mind, this meant finding a good Catholic girl, getting
married and having children.
“I didn’t know what God had in mind for me,” he said.
A new direction
That December, Brother Patrick went home for Christmas.
There, his mother pointed out a book at Barnes & Noble –
Thomas Merton’s The Seven Storey Mountain, which details
Merton’s conversion to Catholicism and his entry into a
Trappist monastery. Brother Patrick couldn’t stop reading.
“I read it all the way back to Virginia, and when I came to
his description of life in a monastery, I had this scary
interior feeling that, ‘Yes, that’s the life for me,'” he
said. “It scared me to death and I was thinking, ‘No that’s
not what I had in mind at all.'”
For weeks, Brother Patrick went back and forth on what he
should do with his life – whether he should enter a monastery
or pursue marriage. After seeing an advertisement for the
Trappist monastery in Berryville in the Catholic Herald, he
decided to see what it was like for himself.
After seeing the monastery in person, he was even more
conflicted.
“They didn’t really seem to fit what I had in mind and then I
was really confused,” he said.
A few days later, Brother Patrick visited the Jesuit retreat
house in Faulkner, Md., with a friend. There, he found a book
about religious ministries in the gift shop. While flipping
through the pages, he found a listing under the Eastern-rite
communities for the Most Holy Trinity Monastery. Maronite
Monks are a traditionally Lebanese order and Brother Patrick
was shocked to find they had a monastery in Massachusetts. He
visited the monastery in May 2001.
“I thought, ‘This place feels like home,'” he said. “It was a
great place and even though I didn’t get all my questions
answered, when I was leaving I already started to miss it. By
the time I got back to Virginia, I really missed it and the
feeling kept growing.”
Brother Patrick had found the place where he belonged. Over
the next two years, he made preparations to join the
monastery – paying off his student loans, selling his stuff
or giving it away, and quitting his job. On Feb. 1, 2003, he
entered the monastery as a candidate.
Life as a monk
After spending four years in the monastery as a postulant and
then a novice, he took his final vows Aug. 15, 2007. As a
monk, most of his time is spent in prayer. He attends daily
Mass, prays the morning, midday and evening offices according
to the Maronite Rite, and spends two hours in eucharistic
adoration a day. Much of the rest of the day is spent doing
manual labor, spiritual reading or attending classes.
Brother Patrick serves as a subdeacon – a position in the
Maronite rite that is one step below a deacon. That was
enough for him, but more and more, retreatants and other
visitors were encouraging him to become a priest.
“I thought, ‘If I were to become a priest, I wouldn’t have
any time at all,'” he said.
Though he was unsure of a priestly vocation, he enrolled in
the classes for the priesthood to learn more. After a while,
Brother Patrick decided to pursue it and was ordained to the
transitional diaconate Oct. 6, 2012. He will be ordained to
the priesthood Oct. 27.
After his ordination, he will be in charge of ministering to
all monastery visitors. He is most looking forward to
celebrating Mass, hearing confessions, and giving spiritual
direction to the retreatants and members of his community.
Since coming to the monastery, Brother Patrick said he has
learned a lot about the religious life, especially that a
monastery is not a place of rest and relaxation.
“There is the peace of being with God, the silence of the
monastery, but it is certainly not a place you come to
retire,” he said.
Today Brother Patrick works hard and keeps a tight schedule,
but he knows he is in the right place.
“Realizing this path for myself was the most rewarding part
because there’s a great peace in knowing where you belong,”
he said. Sometimes you get some peaceful moments, when you
are just so happy to be here, happy to be with God. It’s a
great joy that the world can never give.”
For other people discerning a call to the religious life,
Brother Patrick’s advice is “so simple it becomes kind of
annoying,” he said.
“Over and over, pray to the Holy Spirit,” he said. “Maybe
sometimes we feel that if you pray enough, an angel will
appear and tell you, ‘Oh yes, you belong in such an order,’
but that’s not really how it works. It comes down to
attraction: Where God wants you is where you’ll be
attracted.”
Bahr can be reached on Twitter @KBahrACH.
