 St. Joseph's Abbey: Spencer, MassachusettsSt. Joseph's Abbey is a monastery of the Catholic Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance (O.C.S.O.), popularly known as the "Trappists", located in Spencer, Massachusetts. The monastery became known internationally as the origin of the Centering Prayer movement in modern Catholicism and Christianity, whose leading proponents were monks at the monastery: Fr. William Meninger, Fr. M. Basil Pennington and Fr. Thomas Keating. Since the 1950s, the Abbey has been supported in part by the monks' production of Trappist Preserves, their popular line of 30 flavors of jams and jellies. St. Joseph's Abbey was founded in 1950 by Belgian and French Trappist monks from the monastery of Our Lady of the Valley in Valley Falls, Rhode Island, which had burned to the ground. In the rustic hills of central New England, they established a new home in which to follow an age-old contemplative way of life. 
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