Our country is experiencing a surge of interest in spirituality and in monasticism. Whether this is being driven by a culture disappointed with the shallowness of rampant consumerism or a tidal wave of aging baby boomers dealing with typical mid-life issues of their own morality, it remains for the historians to record.

At Saint Meinrad Archabbey we see an increasing desire from those outside the monastery to connect with the monastic community in a variety of forms. One form of this desire has surfaced in a request for and a positive response to a casket modeled after the traditional monastic casket. It is often this "extended Saint Meinrad family" -- people who resonate with the values of our monastic community -- who are reserving an Abbey Casket for themselves or ordering one for a loved one.

Through Abbey Caskets individuals can share in a most sacred and profound way one of the deepest values that they have in common with the monks of Saint Meinrad: their expressed belief in the Christian's ultimate poverty before God. In death, as in life, friends of Saint Meinrad may now demonstrate their spiritual kinship with our monastic community. What more powerful symbol to express this kinship than a casket? What more solemn occasion than death?

In life we walk by faith, in death we sleep in hope. The body, its work now ended, is laid to rest with honor... a temple of the Holy Spirit, now for a while empty, waiting to be filled once more with Divine Life when God raises it up again. .