Saint John’s Abbey Organ Builders Celebrates Blessing of First Organ

Musical instruments are living things. Organs, which skilled hands embed into the walls, the rituals, and the spiritual lives of churches around the world, are especially alive.

This is how the monks and lay craftsmen at Saint John’s Abbey Woodworking and Organ Builders approach their craft. The group itself is nearly two centuries old, first established in 1856, but the tradition of Benedictine monks building organs dates back to the 9th century.

Committed to maintaining the artistic and manual labor traditions of the denomination, the monks have tried to find ways to reignite the presence of organ making on campus for decades.

That dream came to life when the Abbey dramatically expanded its woodshop, now with organ-building capabilities, in 2023. The new 30,000-square-foot facility — double the size of the previous workshop — is led by legendary master organ builder Martin Pasi, who wishes to pass the knowledge of organ building down to new generations of organ builders and craftspeople.

Now that the Abbey’s first organ is blessed and active as of May 2026, the tradition has officially begun.

Opus 1 was commissioned by St. Michael the Archangel Catholic Parish in Kansas. Seeking to welcome a musical instrument to enhance worship and act as a new voice for the spiritual community, those at St. Michael called upon Pasi and the Saint John’s team to bring this new community member to life.

Step by step, this organ came together, then apart, then together again over the course of two years.

“The thing about building an organ,” said Fr. Lew Grobe, O.S.B., “is you really build it twice.”

Fr. Lew is referring to the process of building the organ, or, as much of it as possible, at the Abbey, tearing it down, transporting it to Kansas, then, finally, assembling it in the new space.

“The acoustics of the room the organ will live in are half of the organ,” said Fr. Lew. “We can imagine what it will sound like before we voice it, but there’s no way to really know how it will sound until the instrument is voiced in the space.”

The process of “voicing” (put in simple terms, shaping the voice of each pipe so it produces the right sound within the who instrument) can take weeks to complete. In this case, it took three months.

“I like to think of it as revealing the sound in the space,” said Fr. Lew. “To voice the organ, the craftsperson must treat the instrument pipe by pipe, carefully cutting away wood or metal from the mouths of the pipes and positioning the tongue inside the pipe so that the pipe speaks with clear articulation and as efficiently as possible.”

The Circle of Creation

While organ building is the newest venture for Saint John’s Abbey, Abbey Woodworking has spent decades building furniture for Saint John’s campus (Saint John’s University, LitPress, HMML, Saint John’s Prep, and Abbey).

Their expansive repertoire includes crafting custom display cases for The Saint John’s Bible Heritage Editions. According to Fr. Lew, crafting these cases represents the “height of woodworking,” allowing the woodworkers to use all of their skills to create something truly remarkable.

For most projects, the woodworkers use wood harvested directly from the Saint John’s Abbey Arboretum. By planting the seeds, growing the trees, then harvesting and hand-crafting art using wood that they raised, the Abbey lives their values of sustainability and manual labor.

“For us Benedictines, manual labor is a big deal,” said Fr. Lew. “Manual labor is a spiritual friend for us Benedictines and one of its fruits is that at the end of the day, you see what you did in a real, tangible way. This idea comes full circle, when the tress we planted are crafted into something we use. The furniture crafted in the Woodshop builds a sense of reverence for materials and a sense of place here at St. John’s.”

In fact, the new woodshop was created in part to increase the efficiency and sustainability of the space and work.

Today, there are nine organ builders, five woodworkers, two apprentices, two student workers and around 15 regular volunteers. Multiple new organs are already underway, with additional commissions scheduled for as far out as 2032.

To stay up to date with Saint John’s Abbey Woodworking and Organ Builders, visit https://www.sjaorgans.org/ and https://www.sjawood.org/.

The Saint John’s Bible: Ancient Traditions, Modern Techniques

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