Located right at the entrance to the monastery on route 31 North, the Abbey Gift Shop is your first point of contact with the Trappist monks of St. Joseph’s Abbey. In addition to the full range of Trappist Preserves – every flavour we make – we also carry a variety of fine quality food products from Trappist communities across the country – including handmade chocolates and caramels, fruitcake and fudge, biscotti and honey.
We also carry a large selection of Catholic books with the accent on monastic theology and spirituality that provides a particular insight into the centuries-long tradition of monastic life and contemplative spirituality.
We are also pleased to offer a wide range of religious art and devotional objects.
We are pleased to carry a selection of soaps, hand creams and balms made by our Cistercian nuns in Norway. The community was founded in 1999, not far from the ruins of a medieval Cistercian monastery, on the island of Tautra in central Norway, by nuns from Our Lady of the Mississippi Abbey, located in Iowa, not far from Dubuque. Today the community in Norway numbers 15 nuns and they are able to support themselves by the production and sale of these fine, hand-made soaps and creams. They sisters make all of them by hand and use only the finest raw ingredients, many of which are organic. Queen Sonia of Norway, who laid the foundation stone for the present monastery, has taken a keen interest in the community and allowed the sisters to call their one of their soaps “The Queen’s Soap”.
167 North Spencer Road • Spencer, MA 01562 • 508.885.8700
