About
We are a small community of Benedictine Nuns who try to seek God in this “school of the Lord’s service” known as St. Emma Monastery. Each of us has experienced Jesus in a personal way that has drawn us to this particular Benedictine Monastery with its own history, particular setting, in this local church of Greensburg. A vocation is to a particular community—just as marriage is to a particular spouse.
Following the centuries old wisdom of the Rule of St. Benedict, we desire to have our lives become more Christ centered, to have the Gospel as our guide. Benedict has made the Gospel practical, lived, for a particular group of people.
The sanctification of time, The Liturgy of the Hours throughout the day, places us in our “choir stalls” in the Cor Jesu Chapel and there we sing God’s praises, offer up petitions, give thanks and express sorrow for not loving God more fully — using the psalms to express these realities—in our name and in the name of the Church and the whole world.
Benedict directs us “to seek peace and to pursue it.” Allowing the peace of Christ to change our hearts is the task and gift day by day. If peace were easy, the headlines on the newspaper would be different! Pax (peace) greets visitors to each Benedictine monastery; peace is the fruit of the struggle to let Christ change our lives and hearts like unto His.
Our ministry is our monastic life: the search for God lived here within St. Emma’s; we are a spiritual center where people come rather than our taking Christ into the world. We strive to see Christ in the superior, the other nuns, the guests, the sick. The eyes of faith see the tools of the monastery as the sacred vessels of the altar. Whatever it is we are doing, it is the means at that moment by which we offer our lives to God.
