Your year with the Benedictine Sisters of Erie
What does monastic life look like for you?
Your Peacemaker Cohort
Your Peacemaker cohort will be an intentional community within the broader Erie Benedictine community. As you move through this experience, your cohort will meet weekly for communal conversation and reflection. Following your year, you will become a piece of the Peacemakers Alumni network, a means of finding continuing support for your life journey.
Life at the Monastery
Peacemakers will participate in the communal life of Mount St. Benedict Monastery through prayer, meals, liturgy, household tasks, and socialization. Participants will be encouraged to engage in monastic life through activities that are relevant to the purpose of the year and to community life, including Benedictines for Peace and Care for the Earth activities.
Your Spiritual Exploration
One day each week will be a planned study and formation day, in which the cohort will participate in a class, conversation, or immersion. Three times a year, the cohort will participate in a full retreat weekend together. Each member of the cohort will also meet with a formation mentor who will help guide them in unpacking their spiritual experience.
Your Communal Formation
Your human formation — growing towards the fullest version of yourself — is an integral part of your year as a Peacemaker. Through communal relationships, experiences, reflection, and study, this program will encourage you to become the most true and whole version of yourself.
Your cohort will have dedicated time throughout the year for classes, book discussions, immersion experiences, and community conversations. The formation curriculum is grounded in Benedictine spirituality.
Topics and themes given attention through the lens of Benedictine values include: monastic spirituality, nonviolence and peacebuilding, environmental theology and the climate crisis, humility, racial justice, monastic economy, justice for women.
The Five Pillars of Monastic Life
that will guide your year with the Benedictine Sisters of Erie:
Prayer: individual and communal prayer will challenge you to deepen your inner spiritual life and grow in outward expressions of spirituality, ritual, and community.
Lectio: meditative time with meaningful reading, art, music, and nature, both shared and experienced individually, will create space for the expansion of soul.
Study: the rich monastic tradition will provide the background for discovering new questions and seeing different perspectives. Nonviolence training is part of this curriculum.
Community: commitment to intergenerational living through sharing meals, inclusive action and language, common prayer and work, accountability, and responsibility.
Good Work: working in a ministry of the monastic community or within the wider Erie community will give you the chance to put your monastic learnings into practice.
Change Yourself, Change the World
Your Ministry Work
In the Benedictine tradition, prayer, community, and good work are deeply intertwined. Alongside your monastic formation, study, and communal life, each week will include three or four days of work outside of the monastery.
Your ministry work in the Erie, Pennsylvania community will be your way of living out the Erie Benedictine corporate commitment to be “a healing presence and a prophetic witness for peace and justice and to climate conscious living.”
Ministry placements may include work with youth, with those living in poverty, with environmental groups, peace and justice action, or community organizing. We welcome creativity in the good work that you do, and are open to conversations on how you will contribute to the Erie community during your time with us.
During your year in the Peacemakers, you will be immersed in...
- Spiritual growth and development
- Meaningful ministry experience
- Engagement with local communities
- A balanced rhythm of life, centered in monastic tradition
- A strong network of co-creators in the world
- Experience and formation in peacebuilding practices
- Thought-provoking conversation and intellectual exploration
How will you carry this experience into the world?
Who should consider this program?
We are seeking those with passions for peace and justice, feminist theology, and social change; openness to enter into the monastic way of life in prayer and community; skills, energy, and vision to contribute to good work throughout the Erie community; a longing for spiritual and personal growth; an intellectual curiosity, questions, and desire to engage with our world.
The Benedictine Peacemaker cohort is open to women ages 22- early 30s who are able to live at Mount St. Benedict Monastery in Erie, PA. Housing, food, and a monthly stipend are provided. Health insurance and local transportation are also available as needed.
