ABOUT US
Looking Toward the Future

Serving Our Mission, Sustaining Our Monastic Life
Someone wondered aloud recently why so few nuns needed so much property. The bluntness of the questions perhaps might startle outsiders to this community, but it is the sort of straightforwardness we appreciate. We are well advanced in a discernment process that will indeed help us decide how best to use our land and its buildings to serve our mission and sustain our life as a monastic community. It is a process change we choose not to avoid.

Change is never easy. We grow accustomed to familiar surroundings and to familiar ways of doing things. Religious women are no exception. Since 1965 this particular location has been our home and a place of welcome to many. We did not come from St. Benedict's to St. Paul in 1948, however, to create a kingdom for ourselves but to advance the Kingdom of God. We were led by bold, courageous women who received the call to service with joy and with determination to be faithful to the end.

As a community, we take pride in our record of service to this local church and to the wider world beyond the Twin Cities. It is not boastful pride but the deep satisfaction of staying true to what we believe in and what we have been called to do.

That satisfaction doesn't disappear because we are aging or are smaller in number than in 1948. We still operate out of a profound sense of mission that is expressed in the individual service of our sisters to parishes, schools, and other organizations.

That mission also flows through the work of our Benedictine Center that supports through its programs the spiritual growth of women and men seeking to lead holy lives in the world as it is. Most importantly, perhaps, our mission continues in the prayer life of the community especially among our older sisters whose daily work is to pray for the Church, for the world, and for all those who ask us for prayer.

Continuity Through Change
We fully expect to make changes in our land and in the use of our buildings. We will still be here in Maplewood. We will continue to call ourselves to an accounting for our commitment to mission. We will continue to pray, for it is from that great work that we draw our hope, our confidence in God's leading hand, and our belief in what we have been called to be in this place at this time in history.

We are grateful for all those who support us in so many ways. You are our companions and friends. On this journey we make, we do not travel alone but in your good care and affection.