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
Experience Life With Us!
Participant Reflections
Anna Taylor volunteered with us from July through October 2022. She spent three months immersing herself in the way of life at Saint Benedict’s Monastery and living, praying and working among us and was a delightful presence in the community. She also wrote a series of blogs about her time with us, which we will share here as they are posted. Until next time, Anna!
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
