Benedictine Peacemakers program director Michelle Scully invited sisters and the three women who are completing their year living in the monastery (Emily, Erin, and Melissa) to an evening reflection on prayer and community using collage (and some storytelling and laughter, too). The evening was the official end to their year-long formation curriculum that has included regular study of the Rule of Benedict, sessions offered for the Peacemakers and sisters, and programs planned at the monastery and open to the public, either on site or on Zoom. The most recent such event was the webinar "Leading Monastic Lives in theWorld Today" (watch the recording here).
"We were quite intentional in designing this sort of tiered formation curriculum when we were developing the framework for the Peacemakers Program," said Sister Linda Romey, communications and development coordinator for the Benedictine Sisters. "Communications is about more than publishing a magazine and creating web posts. Development is about more than raising money. This department supports everything we do as a Benedictine community because we do not exist in isolation, we are all part of a greater whole. We created this program and hosted events at the monastery because we recognize that today more than ever we need human-to-human connection, we need to be about building relationships that enable all of us to see God in us and in the world around us and to choose to live accordingly. Facilitating these relationships is a major role of a monastery. The Peacemakers Program has helped us create new relationships and strengthen existing ones."
The Peacemakers Program is intentionally immersed in the monastery and the monastery must be intentional about its place in the city of Erie and the city Erie has a responsibility to the larger world. We are one cosmic whole where community is created at each of those levels and is mutually reinforcing and formative. We have a role to play in cosmic well-being. The women in the Peacemakers program extend the relationships of the Benedictine community in Erie in new ways by bringing their unique gifts in ministry to our city. They create new relationships and invite people to the monastery who have never been here before. The ripples spread as the values we hold, the hospitality and service we offer, are introduced to others. And when this first cohort of women in the program: Erin, Melissa, and Emily, move out of the monastery, they will take all their new relationships, new insights, and new questions with them wherever they go. Benedictine spirituality will be a lens now available to them as they look at the world around them and make the choices that will shape their future lives. And so we contribute to the cosmic whole.
The community will miss this first cohort of Benedictine Peacemakers and at the same time are grateful for the opportunity to share life and learning with them in the Benedictine tradition for this past year. We bless them and look forward to the flowering that continues from Benedictine roots.
