Fr. Matthew was one of the community's most prominent members, who touched many retreatants over the years with his compline talks, and many more people around the world with his writings.

Fr. Matthew was a proud Bostonian with the accent to prove it. He was born there on the 25th of November, 1915. As a young man, he felt the call to be a missionary and joined the Society of the Divine Word, the SVD. He was ordained a priest on the 15th of August 1946. In 1947, he was sent as a missionary to New Guinea, and later worked on a magazine for the SVD. He entered the Abbey of Gethsemani on the 26th of February, 1960, was dispensed from simple profession, and took his final vows on 24th of June, 1962.

In 1970, he was sent to a small, experimental monastery near Oxford, North Carolina. When that was finished, he wished to explore a life of solitude, and received permission in 1973 to live in a hermitage in New Guinea, a place and whose people he loved. He returned to Gethsemani in 1982.

He was an Irishman with, as he put it, the "gift of the gab." He once said, "I can talk and I can write," which he considered nothing special. They were gifts, but he used them to reach and help other people. He was unfailingly interested in people, his brothers in the monastery, his family, and his wide circle of friends. He had the healing talent of making others feel at ease.

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Photo Credit Peter Jordan

Fr. Matthew's books include, My Song is of Mercy, Gethsemani Homilies, Call of the Wild Geese, Sermons in a Monastery, and Singing for the Kingdom, all of which are still in print. He is also the subject of a documentary made by Morgan Atkinson, The Poetry of a Soul.