Judith Valente's Blog: Mindfulness in the Age of Twitter - Posts Tagged "gautemala"
A Living Sermon: The Benedictine Sisters of Fort Smith, Arkansas
The best sermons aren’t spoken ones, but those we witness through the example of a person’s life. I experienced one of those living homilies when I spent four days recently with the Benedictine sisters at St. Scholastica Monastery in Fort Smith, Arkansas. Whenever I’m tempted to walk away from the Catholic Church, frustrated with its hypocrisy and faults, I need to think of these monastic sisters and the others like them.
The history of the St. Scholastica sisters represents a continuous response to various calls of need. Their example reminds me of Aristotle’s famous prescription for living a fulfilled life: “Where your talents and the needs of the world cross, there lies your vocation.”
One of the things I admire most about this monastery is that it accepted women who had physical challenges at a time when many religious orders rejected candidates with medical difficulties. To this day, those sisters continue to offer significant contributions, some by serving in leadership roles.
The truly elderly sisters are a model for us all. Sister Marcella, the oldest member of the community, is 98 and still helps in the dining room. At age 96, Sister Pierre oversees the gardens and the grounds. Not a flower buds or a tree root spreads without Sister Pierre knowing about it.
Arkansas had been a state only 43 years when the Benedictines arrived in 1878. Their mission was to teach the children of mainly German and Irish immigrants who farmed the land and worked on the railroads along the Arkansas River. The oldest of the first four founding sisters was just 34. The other three were in their early twenties and hadn’t even made their final vows yet in religious life.
The sisters eventually established a boarding school for girls as well as an orphanage. One woman I met in Fort Smith, who volunteers at the monastery, told me her father had been raised in that orphanage. “My father used to say if it wasn’t for the sisters, he’d either be pumping gas or in prison,” she said. Instead, he raised a family and had a successful career. He never forgot his debt to the St. Scholastica sisters.
The sisters are a vivid example of why Benedictine spirituality has endured for more than 1,500 years– by adapting always to the necessities of the times. As needs changed and both the boarding school and orphanage closed, the sisters kept moving forward. They turned the school into a community center. When they no longer had enough sisters to staff the community center, they arranged for a local co-educational junior high school to use that space.
And still the sisters keep adapting. Last year, in one of the toughest decisions they’ve had to face, they moved out of the six-story gothic style monastery that had been their home for 94 or their 140-year history in Arkansas. They now reside in an attractive new single-story building across from the old monastery that is easier for the elderly sisters to navigate.
They keep on going. The sisters oversee a robust training program for spiritual directors and also offer spiritual direction and counseling on an individual basis. Their Hesychia House of Prayer in New Blaine, Arkansas, set in the shadow of the Ozark Mountains, allows those seeking an immersion experience of the contemplative life the chance to spend time in one of four hermitages the sisters own there.
Their ministry now extends beyond Arkansas. With other Catholic partners, the sisters sponsor a scholarship program for Colegio San Benito, which educates high school age girls in Guatemala. The ministry recently expanded to include scholarships for Colegio graduates who want to go on to university studies.
The Fort Smith community is also the home of one of my favorite spirituality writers, Sister Macrina Wiederkehr, whom I call a modern-day mystic. If you admire the writing of Thomas Merton, you will also love Sister Macrina’s books including: "Seven Sacred Pauses;" "Song of the Seed"; and "Abide." Her most recent book, "The Flowing Grace of Now", will be out later this year.Macrina Wiederkehr
The Arkansas sisters could use our help now to help pay down the debt on their new monastery. If we are looking for somewhere to place our Lenten alms, may I suggest helping these Benedictine women who have given so much. You can contribute via PayPal on the monastery’s website here: stscho.org
Thanks to Sister Hilary Decker, Oblate Director at Fort Smith, for inviting me to give two talks to the lay associates of the monastery based on my book "How To Live: What The Rule of St. Benedict Teaches Us About Happiness, Meaning and Community," How to Live: What the Rule of St. Benedict Teaches Us about Happiness, Meaning, and Community and to Sister Madeline Bariola, my fellow Italian, with whom I laughed until I cried).
The history of the St. Scholastica sisters represents a continuous response to various calls of need. Their example reminds me of Aristotle’s famous prescription for living a fulfilled life: “Where your talents and the needs of the world cross, there lies your vocation.”
One of the things I admire most about this monastery is that it accepted women who had physical challenges at a time when many religious orders rejected candidates with medical difficulties. To this day, those sisters continue to offer significant contributions, some by serving in leadership roles.
The truly elderly sisters are a model for us all. Sister Marcella, the oldest member of the community, is 98 and still helps in the dining room. At age 96, Sister Pierre oversees the gardens and the grounds. Not a flower buds or a tree root spreads without Sister Pierre knowing about it.
Arkansas had been a state only 43 years when the Benedictines arrived in 1878. Their mission was to teach the children of mainly German and Irish immigrants who farmed the land and worked on the railroads along the Arkansas River. The oldest of the first four founding sisters was just 34. The other three were in their early twenties and hadn’t even made their final vows yet in religious life.
The sisters eventually established a boarding school for girls as well as an orphanage. One woman I met in Fort Smith, who volunteers at the monastery, told me her father had been raised in that orphanage. “My father used to say if it wasn’t for the sisters, he’d either be pumping gas or in prison,” she said. Instead, he raised a family and had a successful career. He never forgot his debt to the St. Scholastica sisters.
The sisters are a vivid example of why Benedictine spirituality has endured for more than 1,500 years– by adapting always to the necessities of the times. As needs changed and both the boarding school and orphanage closed, the sisters kept moving forward. They turned the school into a community center. When they no longer had enough sisters to staff the community center, they arranged for a local co-educational junior high school to use that space.
And still the sisters keep adapting. Last year, in one of the toughest decisions they’ve had to face, they moved out of the six-story gothic style monastery that had been their home for 94 or their 140-year history in Arkansas. They now reside in an attractive new single-story building across from the old monastery that is easier for the elderly sisters to navigate.
They keep on going. The sisters oversee a robust training program for spiritual directors and also offer spiritual direction and counseling on an individual basis. Their Hesychia House of Prayer in New Blaine, Arkansas, set in the shadow of the Ozark Mountains, allows those seeking an immersion experience of the contemplative life the chance to spend time in one of four hermitages the sisters own there.
Their ministry now extends beyond Arkansas. With other Catholic partners, the sisters sponsor a scholarship program for Colegio San Benito, which educates high school age girls in Guatemala. The ministry recently expanded to include scholarships for Colegio graduates who want to go on to university studies.
The Fort Smith community is also the home of one of my favorite spirituality writers, Sister Macrina Wiederkehr, whom I call a modern-day mystic. If you admire the writing of Thomas Merton, you will also love Sister Macrina’s books including: "Seven Sacred Pauses;" "Song of the Seed"; and "Abide." Her most recent book, "The Flowing Grace of Now", will be out later this year.Macrina Wiederkehr
The Arkansas sisters could use our help now to help pay down the debt on their new monastery. If we are looking for somewhere to place our Lenten alms, may I suggest helping these Benedictine women who have given so much. You can contribute via PayPal on the monastery’s website here: stscho.org
Thanks to Sister Hilary Decker, Oblate Director at Fort Smith, for inviting me to give two talks to the lay associates of the monastery based on my book "How To Live: What The Rule of St. Benedict Teaches Us About Happiness, Meaning and Community," How to Live: What the Rule of St. Benedict Teaches Us about Happiness, Meaning, and Community and to Sister Madeline Bariola, my fellow Italian, with whom I laughed until I cried).
Mindfulness in the Age of Twitter
In my blog, I focus on thoughts based on my new book (published from Hampton Roads) How to Live: What the Rule of St. Benedict Teaches Us About Happiness, Meaning & Community as well as from my previ
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