Sister Mary Lou Kownacki is the Blessed Among Us remembrance for January 6 in Give Us This Day daily prayer booklet published by Liturgical Press. Robert Ellsberg is the author.
Mary Lou Kownacki
Benedictine and Peacemaker (1941-2023)
Mary Lou Kownacki's entry into the Benedictine world began as a student at St. Benedict's Academy in Erie, Pennsylvania, the school run by the sisters of Mount St. Benedict Monastery. Upon her graduation at seventeen, she entered the community, making her final profession in 1965. When the community closed its school in 1988, they chose peacemaking as their "corporate commitment." Pax, after all, was the motto of St. Benedict. Sr. Mary Lou led the way in exploring the meaning of peace in all its dimensions-in the interior life, in service among the poor in Erie, in fostering a spirituality of nonviolence, and in resisting all wars.
She organized ministries in inner-city Erie, including a soup kitchen and homeless shelter; she formed the Pax Center, a Christian Community for Nonviolence; she was a national coordinator of Pax Christi and founder of Benedictines for Peace. She called the monastery a "question mark to society," but also to the institutional Church, "welcoming outcasts, identifying with the poor, treating women as equals, refusing an 'eye for an eye,' empowering the disenfranchised, speaking truth to power." She sought to "stretch my monk's robe until it embraces the suffering world." Among her projects, with Sr. Joan Chittister, was founding Monasteries of the Heart, an online community to spread the spirit of monasticism.
After a long struggle with cancer, Sr. Mary Lou died on January 6, 2023
"In the monastery we are being trained to see with the eyes of God. When that starts to happen, you become a resistance movement." —Mary Lou Kownacki, OSB
