Thomas Aquinas Hall. O.S.B.

My monastic name is Brother Thomas Aquinas Hall (Timothy is my birthname). I am currently 28 years old, and was born in Summit, NJ, but I grew up in Union, NJ. I attended St. Benedict’s Prep for high school, the high school of our monastery. While I was in high school, I was diagnosed with cancer when I was 15. It was a difficult time for me then, but I beat cancer and was able to graduate from high school. I then moved on to college after I graduated from St. Benedict’s. I went to Caldwell University (it was still a college when I was there), where I majored in Psychology, and minored in Theology. In addition to pursuing those studies there, I also took the time then to reflect on my past life, and make sense of what happened to me in high school, as well as my past in general (almost died when I was born, and my parents were divorced when I was ten). One day, after one of my classes in college, the professor wanted to talk to me after class when she saw me wearing a St. Benedict’s Prep hoodie. She happened to be one of the nuns there (Dominican order), and she asked me about the abbey at St. Benedict’s. I didn’t know much, if anything, about it, so after graduating college, I came back to do a year of volunteering at St. Benedict’s. After the year of volunteering, I decided to start my formation in the monastery after seeing what the monastery was like, and thinking that I could try this. After four years of formation, I made my solemn profession, which means I committed to living in this monastery for the rest of my life, on August 15, 2016.