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Contact Information:

    For opportunities to spend
  time with us in our monastery,
          please contact:

    Sacred Heart Monastery
         1005 W. 8th
     Yankton, SD 57078
        (605) 668-6000

     monastery@mtmc.edu
Once upon a time, a preacher ran through the streets of the city shouting, "We must put God into our lives!" Hearing him, an old monastic rose up to say, "No sir, you are wrong. God is already in our lives. Our task is simply to recognize God's presence." Benedict, who lived in the sixth century, wrote a Rule to show women and men what it means to seek God and how to recognize God's presence in our lives.

Emerging from the Rule of Benedict is a spirituality that challenges people to live the ordinary life extraordinarily well, reflecting the reverence resulting from seeking and recognizing God. The following are aspects of reverence that characterize a Benedictine's life.

Community -
In community we realize our connectedness to God, to one another, to ourselves, and the reverence due all people. We are helped to become everything we can be. We listen and we are heard. We are supported and encouraged.

Prayer - Bendictines highly value prayer, both communal and personal, recognizing it as a proper reverence for God and a sustaining force in the personal lives of those who follow the Rule.

Stewardship - What can today's Benedictines offer a world that fails to recognize the sacredness of all creation? Our answer is stewardship: a mindfulness and reverence for the environment, as well as awareness that creation is the Lord's, and we are its keepers.

Work - We support ourselves by the work of our hands, our minds, and our hearts. Our work reflects reverence for our individual talents. As co-creators, we place our mark on what we do.

Leisure - Leisure is essential to personal growth and quality of life. Because we reverence our own personhood, we understand the need for time and space for play and rest. No matter how valuable our work, only an integrated life will keep us whole.

Stability - Stability anchors us in a specific community where we are rooted and centered. Stability reflects our reverence for "home" and fulfills our human need for belonging.

Hospitality - Hospitality of the heart fills our world with potential friends. It reflects our reverence for each person, bringing our own sense of home to others and receiving each person as Christ.
 

Listening - LISTEN, the first word of the Rule, is key to our Benedictine life. To listen is to reverence the word of God in all of its contexts, with our ears as well as with our heart.

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