Our Differences

Benedictine monks are men of prayer seeking God in community under an Abbot and a Rule. In general, most Benedictine monasteries follow the same monastic principles in liturgy, community living, prayer, meals, and common life. This is largely because we live under an Abbot and the Rule of St. Benedict in the one Benedictine Confederation where monastic law and practices are generally regulated. We are also part of a Congregation (in our case the Swiss-American Congregation) that has each own habits, customs, constitution, and statutes. One feature of our congregation is that we allow for greater autonomy of practices with each abbey. This autonomy allows distinctive features to develop within monasteries that one might call "differentiators." When you visit our abbey, you will immediately experience how we are the same but also quite "different" from other monasteries. A lot of who we are can be seen in this painting by a famous artist known as John Bell. We are not an architectural gem like many European monasteries, nor do we have manicured gardens and flowing fountains. Quite simply, we are monks who live a simple life in the rural country section of northwest Arkansas. We are men of prayer, who teach others to prayer, while providing a space for others to step back from their daily busy lives to reconnect with God.

The major differences between Benedictine monasteries are often described in four parts: Place, People, Liturgy, & Ministry. Here are some of the differentiators that monks from other abbeys have noted about us as opposed to their own monasteries:

Our Differences in:

Place

We are located in Arkansas which means our climate, especially during the summer, is quite hot. If a prospect wants regular snow, then he needs to look to a monastery to the north.
As a result, our monastery, ministry buildings, and church are all air conditioned. We live "off the grid" producing our own electricity because we have a 2,700-panel solar array.
Our monastic cells have private bathrooms. We live "off the grid" with this as well because we have three lakes and our own water plant to provide the water and sewage treatment.
Our furnishings are usually hand-made and crafted by our own monks. This means they are not so much professionally refined but functional for us. Our Choir Stalls were made by our monks. Our daily mass lectern, chairs, and refectory tables and chairs were crafted by our monks. Even our Church was largely crafted by local artisans so you should not expect to see grand murals, frescoes, or other elaborate artwork like monasteries that had wealthy donors to bring in artists. We are a simple working monastery crafted for our needs.
We are often referred to as "Country Monks" because we are monks living in the rural country. You will see cows, chicken houses, turkey houses, gardens, fields of corn, bee yards, and numerous other iconic elements of what you would expect in a southern rural monastery. While we have nearby small towns of between 2-3,000 people, we are about 1 hour from the nearest large city of Fort Smith, AR. The nearest stoplight is about 10 miles from us.
We have 1,600 acres of land that includes lakes, farms, trails for hiking and running, mountain biking trails, and camping areas. Being outside is part of our monastic DNA that comes down from our first founding monks who were photographed outside on a regular basis.
We like to work in our gardens to produce vegetables and fruit as part of our monastic heritage of bringing produce to the table. St. Benedict spoke about monks being known by the labor of their hands.
Because our campus is large and our monks are assigned to so many ministries, all our monks are issued cell phones for the purpose of communication and safety (during candidacy and novitiate a man will not have access to cell phones but only land phones).
We are not rich, but through the generosity of donors and wise investments, we are financially sound such that we have food, clothing, insurance, funds for our monastic education, and funds for our monk elder care.
The monks of old built our fairly formidable stone structure on a hill. This is a great sign of faith especially when we have the usual tornadoes that hit around us. This is why you will monthly hear the giant tornado siren we have on our monastery roof that alerts citizens within five miles of a sited tornado. We will never experience flooding, but we do have to move to the lower levels of our monastery about 2-3 times a year to protect ourselves, students, and guests from storms.

People

Our monks are known for being pretty faithful to attending communal prayer during our designated times.
Our location in the southern USA makes our monks particularly friendly; we simply don't see visitors or guests as an imposition who need to be kept as far from us as possible.
Many monasteries can have these unspoken separations of brothers from priests. We are one of the few monasteries in the USA where our brothers outnumber our priests and you will quickly notice that this difference between priest-brother matters nothing to us.
Many monasteries can have this artificial division between the "intelligentsia" versus those that undertake manual labor. In general, we do not make an issue of degrees and past accomplishments. We have monks with no degree beyond high school to a monk with nine degrees; you would never be able to tell them apart in their interactions because we are all just monastic brothers to each other.
We were once accused by a visiting monk of being "unpretentious" which was that monk's way of criticizing us; we took it as a compliment. As one member noted, we're country but not hick. We see ourselves as genuine and not trying to put on airs, as we say in the south. We have a humble realism about our community.
We are politically divided between republicans and democrats, so our house is respectful of these preferences without any one perspective being oppressive as is found in many monasteries.
We are very good at receiving all guests as Christ. We do not judge them, and we do not try to impress them. It may be our greatest charism.
We respect seniority (after a fashion) but we don’t get bent out of shape by it or put it above the person. This is why you will see us accommodate our seniors for choir, meals, and recreation.

Liturgy

Most monasteries have sound liturgy. Most maintain the usual times for communal and private prayer, but we also schedule time for devotionals (rosary, angelus, daily adoration), culpa chapters, for confessions, and for seasonal devotions. In other words, we pack a lot liturgically into our life.
We practice a graduated or progressive solemnity in the Holy Mass and in our Divine Office.
Long ago we found that we men just don't chant well in the morning. As a result, we have limited chanting at Lauds in the morning that progresses to Vespers with full chant.
The community chose after Vatican II to move Vigils from the morning to Office of Readings in the late afternoon right before dinner.
We chose to dispense from the early morning start time of previous years and now begin the day at 6:30 am for Lauds and 7:15 am for Holy Mass so as to make these liturgies more available to our students and general public.
We pray Compline in private which means our communal day usually ends with the chanting of the Marian hymn at the conclusion of Vespers.
During the academic year when we have students, people would generally describe our Sunday conventual masses as "Solemn" or "High-Church" masses due to the use of our high altar, incense, chant, cassock and surplices for servers, statio for the monks, the extensive ringing of bells, and the use of the organ.
People would generally describe the homilies of our monastic priests as expressive, vibrant, animated, and 'real-world' (think Bishop Fulton Sheen or Bishop Barron), and less academically or class-room inclined where the text is read word-for-word. A lot of people will usually remark, "Is that really a monk?!"
Our elder and infirm pray with us, so you will see them in walkers, with canes, and in wheelchairs. In other monasteries they are often kept in a separate Health Center with their own chapel but never brought to the main choir stalls with the main community. We long-ago decided that even as we grew older, we wanted our monks to eat and pray with us till the last moment. Marketers consider this a nightmare because they say we should only show the young monks to the world; we just show everyone because we are intergenerational and quite proud of that fact.
At our Divine Office and Daily Mass, guests pray with the monks in the choir stalls. In 1878 with the founding of our monastery, Fr. Wolfgang Schlumpf made a very intentional commitment to see lay people not as those to be tolerated or kept at a distance as so many monasteries did. Instead, he saw lay people as sent from God to become collaborators in the work and ministry of the monastery, partners in the mission. Practically, we have lived out that commitment by welcoming guests to join us in the choir stalls. Can this be a challenge at times, yes. Can this be disruptive on occasion in our chant and prayer, yes. Nonetheless, we have made this commitment to continue this tradition given to us and passed on by our founding monks. Those who join us for prayer get to recite or chant with us in our communal celebration.
The most notable difference from other monasteries is that we are the only abbey in the world to presently use digital tablets for our prayers. That's right, we don't use books, or parchment, or handouts. The usual method for monks to pray involves lots of flipping of pages and ribbons. Because we welcome guests AND want our elder monks to be able to see the text, we decided to switch to tablets. Our Prior lays out the entire liturgical year with psalmnody and chant and we upload it to tablets which have back lighting. This means our elderly can also magnify the text and guests will never have to flip through books or pages. They simply swipe left to pray with us in chant and recitation.

Ministries & Opportunities

A man joins a monastery to become a monk and brother. While our abbot and community are open to men ALSO seeking to answer a call to priesthood, it is not formally required for admission as is the case in many other monasteries. Most of our men choose NOT to become priests and instead specialize their studies in other academic fields, trades, or crafts. We are one of the few monastic communities that has more brothers than priests. If you still felt called to priesthood, then this would certainly be an option within the community but it would be providing the sacraments for our Education and Hospitality ministries; not stationed alone in a parish.
As part of our formation process, a man gets to try new hobbies, trades, and crafts. While our two main apostolates are Education and Hospitality, within those broad ministries and the needs of the abbey, there are ample opportunities to use existing talents or cultivate new ones. In other words, you're not pigeon-holed into one job or profession for life.
Our ministries are centered within the abbey grounds so our men do not go outside for work and generally get to work with each other. If a man joins our community with a desire to work outside our monastic community, then we would ask him to look elsewhere because the purpose of joining a monastic community is to work within a monastic community; otherwise, one can just remain a lay person and serve as an Oblate.