Benedictine Nuns of Walburga - Catholic Youth Networking VOCATIONS

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Benedictine Nuns of Walburga

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The Benedictine community at Walburga Abbey

We are a community of twenty women from the United States, Germany, Canada, the Philippines, and Switzerland. Our oldest member is eighty-seven, our youngest twenty-seven.

We are drawn together by God's call to live a common life of prayer and work under the guidance of the Gospel lived according to the Rule of St. Benedict.

The Rule is oriented around these main principles: humility, obedience, silence, order and balance, and discretion...for it is through these practices that St. Benedict better came to know Christ. Central to the Benedictine vocation are the words from the letter to the Philippians: Christ "emptied Himself and took the form of a slave.... He was known to be of human estate, and it was thus that He humbled Himself, obediently accepting even death, death on a cross!" (Phil. 2:7-8) St. Benedict took this humble, obedient Lamb of God as the archetype of our monastic lives, calling his own teachings a "little rule for beginners" who are "hastening to their heavenly homeland". (RB 73:8) It is to this that the woman who desires to become a Benedictine nun grafts herself.

As contemplative nuns, we seek in all the aspects of daily life to deepen our attentiveness and our response to the presence of God at work in the world. St. Benedict urges us to "attend with the ears of your heart" to the voice of God speaking in our prayer, in our community life, in our work, and in our surroundings. Quoting Psalm 95, he warns: "If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts."

Because the task of contemplative attentiveness is difficult and demanding, we choose to maintain a certain distance from the clamor that can tear at the edges of our inner silence. One of the traditional disciplines that serve to protect our focus is cloister or enclosure. The Roman Catholic Church maintains two types of cloister for contemplative religious: papal enclosure and constitutional enclosure.

We observe constitutional enclosure, which allows us a certain latitude for mixing with the public, while still preserving our contemplative way of life. We delegate certain members of the community to receive guests and retreatants; we go to town to shop and do whatever other business life requires; we answer the telephone, read newspapers and news magazines, make judicious use of the Internet, and try to stay aware of the needs of the world for which we pray daily.

However, we ordinarily do not accept work outside the confines of our monastery and valley; we do not watch television or listen to the radio; we limit our conversations with family and friends by letter, telephone and e-mail; we do not go out for social or entertainment purposes; and we visit our families only under very limited circumstances, though we welcome them to visit us once a year.

About the Benedictine Nuns | A Day With the Benedictine Nuns | Contact the Nuns

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