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
- Live within the Benedictine community and share tasks of daily living
- Engage in volunteer service with the sisters
- 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 Internet, monastery library, Oratory and Sacred Heart Chapel
- Room and board provided
- Possibility to continue employment outside the monastery
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
Participant Reflections
Cheryl Cyert, our very first volunteer, 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.
Contact
Mary Catherine Holicky, OSB
Coordinator of Live-In Experience
(320) 363-7028
liveinex@csbsju.edu