I came to teach in the department of theology at the University of Dallas in 1991 at the age of twenty-eight. I remain today immensely grateful to the Cistercians for putting their trust in a virtually untested layman. I had already at that time published an essay in German on Hans Urs von Balthasar’s concept of the baroque, which undoubtedly caught the attention of the European-trained faculty, but there was still a considerable leap of faith involved in asking me to replace Fr. Robert Dionne, the recently deceased and erudite priest who had trained with David Tracy at the University of Chicago. Looking back, I now also wonder if Fr. David Balás, O.Cist., the chair of the department, had quietly set his sights on fashioning me into a novice for Our Lady of Dallas, the only full-fledged Cistercian Abbey in the United States.

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