Benedictine Live-In Experience

Take a break from your regular routine to live and volunteer with us! Our Benedictine Live-In Experience offers an opportunity for women to refresh their lives by sharing in the prayer and work of a monastic community. You are invited to consider:

  • Deepening your spiritual growth in the Benedictine tradition
  • Taking time for a change of pace
  • Fostering friendship and support with community members and other volunteers

Guidelines

  • A woman out of high school and beyond
  • Of any Christian faith
  • No dependents
  • Willing to commit to one to three months, with a possibility of renewing the commitment
  • Willing to live within the Benedictine community and share tasks of daily living
  • Willing to engage in volunteer service, including manual labor, with sisters and staff
  • Responsible for personal expenses
  • Provide own medical and hospitalization insurance

Benefits

  • Participation in offerings at the Spirituality Center•Studium and in other cultural activities
  • Opportunity for a spiritual companion
  • Liturgical and community celebrations with the sisters
  • Access to the internet, monastery library, Oratory, and Sacred Heart Chapel
  • Room and board provided
Volunteers working with Habitat for Humanity building a home

Daily Opportunities

  • Offer your talents and skills in volunteer and/or work opportunities
  • Build community with sisters and other volunteers
  • Break three times a day to pray Liturgy of the Hours with the sisters
  • Join in the celebration of the Eucharist
  • Participate in liturgical ministries
  • Enjoy time for reflection, reading and leisure
Participants working in the garden

Participant Reflections

Cheryl Cyert has participated in the Benedictine Live-In Experience five times and reflects on some of her favorite elements of this program.

  • You gain knowledge of what it means to be Benedictine and appreciate the commitment the sisters have made.
  • It’s rewarding to provide volunteer service to the sisters who have spent their whole lives providing service to others.
  • You experience a very powerfully peaceful atmosphere: time to relax, be still, and not feel pulled in a million different directions.
  • You have time to reflect and reconnect to your own faith on a more meaningful and consistent level.
  • You establish positive relationships with many of the sisters.
  • It feels like coming back home to the College of Saint Benedict.
Read More About Her Experiences

For more information, contact:

Mary Catherine Holicky, OSB
Coordinator of Live-In Experience
(320) 363-7028
liveinex@csbsju.edu