On June 6, 1944, better known as D Day, a young Benedictine monk named Paul looked up to the skies and out to the Solent that leads to the English Channel, where he saw the greatest invasion force of ships and planes ever assembled. From his vantage point, Quarr Abbey on the Isle of Wight, he witnessed a show of modern military force that could not have contrasted more sharply with the ancient peace of monastic life..

At that point, this young man seemed highly unlikely to figure in a love story that would carry him far beyond monastery walls and eventually to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he now lives. Paul was the name he had taken in religious life and has kept ever since. But his original name was Jeffrey, and last year, when he published a memoir of his life’s journey, he called it Jeffrey’s Story. .

His becoming a monk when still a boy was largely driven by his mother. She was an Englishwoman who had separated from her husband; she brought up her only son to be a priest, to the exclusion of all other vocational choices.

A bizarre photograph reproduced on the cover of the book shows the author, at perhaps six years old, dressed in a chasuble and the other vestments of a Catholic priest, his right hand raised in blessing. His mother also arranged to have the boy receive letters “from Jesus,” ghostwritten by Carmelite nuns whom she knew.

Jeffrey’s father, Fernand Meyvaert, was Belgian, a merchant marine sailor. After the death of the boy's mother in 1938, his father wanted him to become a Belgian citizen and therefore give up his cherished British passport. The young boy, terrified, fled to England.

Fernand died at sea in 1942, much to his son’s bitter regret later on. He dedicates his book to “the father I so wish I had known better.”

Paul stayed in the monastery for twenty-five years, committed to a life of prayer and increasingly distinguished scholarly work. But during much of this time, he suffered tension and fatigue that, in retrospect, might have raised doubts about the genuineness of his vocation to that life and to the priesthood.

In 1957, he met an American woman, Ann Freeman, a young scholar specializing in medieval history. Ann made several visits to the Isle of Wight and Quarr monastery where she discussed her research with Paul.

Over a ten-year period, they exchanged some sixty letters, at first focused on scholarly issues but gradually becoming more personal. Looking at the letters he wrote to Ann when he was a monk, the author remarks that by the end of 1963, “a note of deep affection becomes discernible.”

Of course, he felt torn between his monastic commitment to God and his growing attachment to Ann. She also felt this tension because of her respect for the life he had chosen.

In his memoir, Paul describes how it felt: “There is a chasm between thoughts on the one hand, thoughts that I must stay on the right path, and feelings and emotions on the other.”  

Gradually, however, they were to understand their love as compatible with the religious ideals they professed. Both came to see how their intense personal feelings for one another could be reconciled with the ideals to which Paul had been committed for a quarter century.

In his latter years at Quarr, Paul enjoyed the good fortune of having as abbot a compassionate man who interpreted monastic rules humanely. Dom Aelred Sillem recognized Paul’s dilemma and enabled him to leave the monastery at a crucial time.

That happened in 1965 when the abbot approved Paul traveling to London so that he could see Ann, a reunion that─contrary to the abbot’s expectation─led to the couple’s traveling together to the United States and later marrying.

Given Paul's unfamiliarity with the “real world” and the short time between his departure from the monastery and coming together with Ann, their chances of becoming happily married might have appeared slight. Yet, their enduring love has held and brought them much happiness. Of their relationship Ann has written: “We grow closer and closer together in deepening oneness.”

Similarly, Paul’s prospects of professional success appeared limited. However, though without even a college degree, he went on to a remarkable scholarly career, and served as director of the Medieval Academy of America for ten years. His wife, too, has had similar success as a scholar and they have collaborated on various projects and raised a beloved daughter.

Now in his 85th year, Paul Meyvaert looks back with gratitude to the way his life has turned out. Referring to the father whom he knew too little, he writes:  “I like to think that many of the qualities that make up my temperament, a temperament that has enabled, and still enables me, to live a deeply committed and affectionate family life, as well as a productive scholarly life, I owe to the genes my father has bequeathed me.”

Richard Griffin