Fr. John Bayer, O.Cist
Vocations Director, Teacher, Webmaster
Our Lady of Dallas Cistercian Monastery
Fr. John Bayer was born in Texas in 1984. He entered Our Lady of Dallas in August, 2007. He made his first temporary vows on August 20, 2008, and he made his solemn profession on August 19, 2012. He was ordained priest on August 10, 2013. He is Form Master for Class 2025 and he teaches English Lab, Latin and Theology at Cistercian Preparatory School. He is also an adjunct professor of theology at University of Dallas.
Fr. John’s father worked as a professor of theology, and his mother, who immigrated to the United States from Germany, first worked as a teacher and then later as a nurse practitioner. Growing up, Fr. John spent time in California, Connecticut and New York. He attended both public and private (Catholic) schools as a child. Fr. John spent most of his childhood in a suburb of Putnam County, New York, but he spent several summers visiting his father and stepmother in New York City, where they had their own business in career counseling and outplacement services.
After spending one year at College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, Fr. John transferred to University of Dallas. He began college as a drama major, and then switched briefly to math, before his studies at University of Dallas brought him finally to settle on philosophy.
Fr. John’s studies in philosophy, along with important friendships in college, a semester studying abroad in Rome, and at first only occasional contacts with the monastery, encouraged him to consider priesthood and religious life. He worked in different law firms during and after college, and was preparing to apply to law school, when he realized that it was necessary to enter the novitiate at Our Lady of Dallas and discover whether he had a vocation there. It was essential to give such an important question due time and space before making other commitments.
Soon after joining the monastery, Fr. John began teaching at Cistercian Preparatory School and studying for the priesthood at University of Dallas. In 2012, he traveled to Rome to continue his graduate studies at Pontifical Gregorian University, where he defended his dissertation on St. Anselm of Canterbury in 2019. In addition to good philosophy and theology, Fr. John loves athletics, hiking, camping and marveling prayerfully in nature.
Our Lady of Dallas
Our Lady of Dallas was started by Cistercian monks of the Congregation of Zirc fleeing communist Hungary in the late 1940’s and 50’s. The exodus began immediately after the Second World War and the Soviet takeover of the country, when several monks went abroad in search of a suitable place to found an abbey capable of carrying forward the tradition of the Hungarian Cistercians.
Soon after coming into power, the Communist authorities disbanded the then-flourishing Cistercian mother-house of Zirc (pronounced “ZEER-ts), seizing control of its land, schools, and parishes. Of the two-hundred-fifteen displaced monks, more than thirty successfully fled the country, seeking refuge in other European abbeys. Some escaped alone, others in small groups. Not a few, tragically, were arrested during the attempt.
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One large group managed to leave before the formal suppression of the Abbey of Zirc in 1950 and another left upon the failure of the anti-Communist revolution of 1956. The community of Zirc was able to continue a clandestine existence in Hungary during the suppression, and many of the remaining Cistercians lived lives of heroic fidelity, routinely enduring harassment and intimidation. More than a few received imprisonment and torture for their efforts.
The refugee monks spent several years in dispersion, scattered across Western Europe and in the United States. In 1954, several of them were invited by Thomas K. Gorman, bishop of the Dallas-Fort Worth Diocese, to come to Texas to help found a new Catholic university, the University of Dallas. This initial group was later joined by younger refugees who came to Texas after finishing their studies and formation in Europe. In 1961 the community formally established an independent monastery under the local patronage of Mary: Our Lady of Dallas. In 1962, the community founded Cistercian Preparatory School, modeled after the Cistercian schools of Hungary.
In the 1970’s the abbey received its first American-born vocations. Between 1970 and 1992, six Americans joined and persevered in their lives at Our Lady of Dallas, thereby ensuring that the sacrifices endured by the first generation to establish a Cistercian presence in Texas would bear fruit. In recent years, God has blessed the Abbey with an inspiring number of young vocations, including several alumni of Cistercian Prep School and the University of Dallas. Over ten young monks have made solemn profession since 2008, and several more are currently in formation.
The monks assemble in the sanctuary five times a day to pray the divine office and celebrate their conventual mass. During the school year mass is celebrated several times daily for the various classes of Cistercian Preparatory School. On Sundays a congregation of approximately three-hundred gathers for the abbey’s conventual mass, which the monks accompany with Gregorian chant. Our Lady of Dallas is popular for its Easter and Christmas liturgies, and for its morning mass during the week.
The monks work at both their own secondary school and at the University of Dallas, serving at both institutions as teachers and priests. Members of Our Lady of Dallas also provide pastoral assistance at various parishes in the Dallas and Fort Worth dioceses. By God’s gracious Providence, today the monastery enjoys much life and happiness in its vocation to live a monastic life in service of the Church in Texas.