About Saint Bede Abbey and Our Monastery in Illinois
In 1861, Archabbot Boniface Wimmer sent a group of Benedictines from St. Vincent Archabbey in Pennsylvania to Illinois to help staff a church in Chicago.
Almost three decades later, the group of monks in Chicago felt the call to build a monastery in Illinois of their own away from the City of Chicago. Encouraged by Bishop John Lancaster Spalding of Peoria, they established St. Bede College. St. Bede College opened in October of 1890. Over the next two decades, students came seeking an education. As St. Bede Abbey’s numbers grew, some of these students felt called to the monastic life and sought to learn how to become a monk. By 1910, the monastic community was in a position to apply for and to receive permission from the Vatican to function as an independent abbey.
To learn more about the history of St. Bede Abbey, click here.
Now, led by Abbot Michael Calhoun, St. Bede continues the Benedictine tradition of those founding monks. But our contemporary structure and functions reflect changes in our world and the Benedictine Order.
Learn more about daily life at St. Bede, how to become a monk, and the ministry accomplished by members of our monastery.
Daily life at Saint Bede: monks’ prayer, work, and reading
There are many forms of religious life in the Church. What makes the Benedictine life different is that Benedictines are intentional about a prayer life and living in a Gospel-oriented community.
Additionally, Benedictine communities—as well as individual Benedictines—will engage in a ministry. But this ministry is often of a secondary nature to the community’s monastic observance, in general, and one’s own monastic vocation, specifically. We need to admit that other religious communities, like Franciscans or Jesuits, also stress a prayer life. However, there is not as much of an emphasis on communal living in these orders. Monasteries and communities like St. Bede Abbey provide an opportunity for members to live the Christian life alongside others devoted to following the Gospel. True to the Rule of St. Benedict, our days are centered around prayer, work, and reading.
Prayer at the monastery takes two forms: personal and communal prayer. Lectio Divina—or “holy reading”—is the monks’ primary form of personal prayer. This will look different at each monastery, but at St. Bede we set aside time after Morning Prayer for lectio divina.
Keeping in mind the personal nature of lectio divina, each monk practices it in their own individual way. Other forms of a monk’s prayer may be adoration of the Blessed Sacrament or praying the rosary. Still, other monks choose to pray on their own walking the grounds or walking in the wooded areas on the St. Bede property.
Communal prayer, on the other hand, is known as the Divine Office, also known as the Liturgy of the Hours. The Divine Office includes the recitation of Psalms and selections from the New and Old Testaments. Reading these passages together creates a sense of continual dialogue with the Scriptures. Likewise, the Eucharist is a form of common prayer.
To learn more about Prayer at St. Bede Abbey, click here.
In Benedictine life, labora manuum refers to manual work and can mean many things inside our monastery in Illinois. For some Benedictine communities, work is a means of supporting the larger monastic community in administrative duties, finances, maintenance, or work outside the monastery. At St. Bede, a monk’s primary work can involve a role in St. Bede Academy as a teacher, administrator, or staff member. There are other ways a monk can contribute to the common good of St. Bede Abbey. And these contributions require discernment and discussion.
Similarly, with the help of our laity, we engage in work that generates income for the monastery. In the past, monks at St. Bede may have worked as farmers in the fields surrounding our monastery. While that is no longer the case, we do still rent out our tillable acres to a tenant farmer. What used to be a truck garden is being converted into a wildflower area to create a natural habitat and add to the beauty of the land.
To learn more about monastic work at St. Bede Abbey, click here.
Saint Bede’s tradition of hospitality
“Guests are never lacking in a monastery”
Rule of St Benedict, ch. 53
At St. Bede, we continue this tradition of hospitality outlined in the Rule. Many who arrive at our monastery in Illinois are seeking an escape from the busyness of our world. Others have begun to ask themselves the question “how do I become a monk,” and are beginning to seek answers in their discernment
For the limited number of guests we can host at a time, there are spaces set aside for quiet reflection, rest, and spiritual renewal.
Education and Saint Bede Academy
The work of the Benedictines has always been closely intertwined with knowledge and education. In his time, St. Bede the Venerable used his skills in linguistics to make Greek and Latin writings of the Early Church accessible to his contemporaries.
True to our monastery’s patron, we also answer the call to educate young minds. Many religious communities support education through the schools that serve students from outside of their monastic communities.
The school at St. Bede has a history of a variety of transitions. For a time there was a junior college, school of theology, and a four-year, all-boys high school operating on parallel tracks. The high school population was composed of both day students from the locality as well as domestic boarding students.
The school of theology and junior college closed in the late 1960s allowing the monastic community to focus their efforts on building up the high school. In the early 1970s the high school became coeducational. The boarding program was phased out in the early 1980s. More recently, the boarding program was revived with an emphasis on drawing from a pool of international students. Bringing in students with an international perspective has helped to broaden the perspective of the day students.
Today St. Bede Academy has an enrollment of about 270 day and boarding students from around the Illinois Valley—and from around the world. While it is still owned and operated by the monks, in recent years, the size of both the lay staff and lay faculty has grown.
If you find yourself asking the question, “how do I become a monk”—and see yourself as a member of this community—we invite you to continue discerning a future at St. Bede and to get in touch with us by submitting the form at this link.
