Brother Christopher was born Aug. 4, 1954, and grew up near Chicago. While attending the University of Southern California and Georgetown University, where initially his interests were diplomacy and foreign affairs, he was drawn increasingly toward theology and some kind of religious vocation. So he transferred to St. Francis University in Loretto, Pa., where he earned his bachelor's in philosophy in 1977. After graduation, he immediately entered monastic life at New Melleray Abbey, a Trappist monastery near Dubuque, Iowa. He spent over four years there, but his deep attraction for the Christian East led him to leave the abbey in 1981 and join New Skete, an Eastern Orthodox monastery in Cambridge, N.Y. He has been at New Skete ever since, and made his life profession (officially making him a monk) in 1983.

Once at New Skete, Brother Christopher began helping with the monastery's dog training program, one of the many businesses the monks are involved in to help keep the monastery running. Then one day, the head of the dog training program left suddenly and the abbot asked Brother Christopher to take over. For the next six months, he read everything he could get his hands on about dogs and worked overtime to make sure that the dogs that were enrolled were trained. Often he felt as though he was only a couple of steps ahead of the clients he was trying to help! But, after about six months, he discovered he had an aptitude for training dogs. Although it's a far cry from his formal studies, Brother Christopher believes that his experience with dogs has revealed much about the scope of God's mysterious presence in the world and helped him to think about spirituality in an inclusive rather than exclusive sense. Brother Christopher has now been running the dog training program for many years and has helped author several of the monastery's dog books.

In 1995, he was asked by the monastery to serve as a priest and was ordained in October of that year. For many years he has been involved in the formation of novices, and has more recently been active in spiritual direction of guests and pilgrims who visit the monastery. Brother Christopher was also the principal author for the community's book on the spiritual life, In the Spirit of Happiness (1999), and Rise Up (2005). He has also written a number of book reviews, primarily for St. Vladimir's Theological Quarterly and Cistercian Studies Quarterly. On occasion he's also been invited to speak on aspects of the spiritual life in conferences and seminars outside the monastery. At the monastery he cares for two dogs: Astro and Quanja.