A musician traded rock for a vocation — and then found music again.
Father Maximilian Mary Dean spends his days as a hermit in the hills of southern Pennsylvania celebrating Mass, praying the Liturgy of the Hours, reciting the Rosary — and recording rock music.
“My primary vocation is prayer. And then flowing from that is the music,” Father Dean told EWTN News In Depth.
A hermit with the Diocese of Harrisburg, Father Dean averages more than 500,000 streams per year from more than 60,000 listeners. At the inaugural “Catholic Music Awards” at the Vatican this summer, he was a finalist for the best rock song category, and his Song to Mary, Queen of All Hearts, won “Best Marian Song.”
He writes and records his music layer by layer in the St. Joseph Hermitage, where he has a recording booth and a digital audio workstation.
“Whether it’s the keyboard parts or the vocal parts or the drum parts or the bass or the guitars or getting out a tambourine or whatever it happens to be, it all happens right here,” he said, sitting in his studio.
His latest release, The Lord’s Will is Most Beautiful, typifies his vintage sound, inspired by the popular music of the ’70s and ’80s.
“I haven’t listened to secular pop music, rock music since 1988,” Father Dean said. “Without any effort, my music sounds vintage because all my influences are pre-1988, the ’70s and ’80s. I just run with it.”
Father Dean found music early in life, learning piano at the age of 9 and guitar at the age of 10. He played lead guitar in a rock band in the 1980s and later went to DePaul University in Chicago on scholarship for classical guitar performance.
It was there, during his freshman year, that he experienced a major conversion back to the Catholic faith from which he had fallen away in high school.
“Towards the end of high school, I had this big void in my life, this emptiness,” Father Dean said. “And that was the beginning of my conversion, was just recognizing that sin and success and good grades and good friends, they’re out there, but they don’t fill a deeper need. I knew there had to be something more.”
Feeling God was calling him to the priesthood following his conversion experience, Father Dean transferred to Franciscan University of Steubenville, Ohio, to study philosophy. He graduated in 1991 and was ordained a priest with the Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate in 2000.
Though he never put down his guitar completely, he moved away from rock and roll when he began to study for the priesthood. He played and recorded sacred music during his time with the Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate, recording his first album, Christmas Vigil With St. Francis of Assisi, in 1998.
“I associated the rock music with the pagan, hedonistic culture,” Father Dean said. “And so I put away the electric guitar and the drums. I continued to play guitar and sing, and I learned a lot of beautiful songs while I was at Franciscan University.”
When he became a diocesan hermit in 2017, Father Dean said he thought his days of recording music were over. Then he started waking up with complete songs in his head at 3 a.m.
“They were like ’70s pop-music songs,” Father Dean said. “It’s hard to explain. It was just like I could hear horn sections and the drums and the guitar. And I thought, ‘Oh, that’s neat.’ So I would sing these songs in my head. And after I received two or three of them, I realized that I think Our Lord might be calling me to record again.”
Record he did. Father Dean has now released five albums from the hermitage and occasionally travels to perform his music. The music, he says, is the work of his religious vocation.
“Monasteries and hermits alike, they have to be self-sustaining,” he said. “So they have to do some work that can also help them sustain their way of life. I make music, and that’s my work — period.”
He said he hopes the music helps people on their spiritual journeys.
“If I can quote Mother Angelica, we have to do the ridiculous for God to do the miraculous,” Father Dean said. “It’s pretty ridiculous for a hermit to be playing guitar and drums and singing pop-rock songs — but doing the ridiculous because God can do miracles in the lives of others.”
