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Welcome to the website of the English Benedictine Congregation. We are a group of thirteen monasteries, situated in England and the United States, following the Rule of Saint Benedict.

Saint Benedict lived in the sixth century: according to tradition, he died around AD 547, and spent the last years of his life in Monte Cassino, a monastery founded by him on a mountain top in southern Italy. There he wrote a Rule for monasteries, which is the basis for the life lived by many men and women today.

Monastic life in England goes back to Saint Augustine, who was sent by St Gregory the Great to preach the Gospel of Jesus to the peoples of England at the end of the 6th Century. The history of the monastic life in England is described in some detail in a book published recently by the English Benedictine Congregation, Monks of England, edited by Daniel Rees.

We hope that you who are visiting this website of our Congregation, and also the websites of the individual monasteries, will receive an idea of the spirit which animates the life of our monasteries. A lot has changed since St Benedict wrote his Rule nearly fifteen hundred years ago, but human nature has not changed and God has not changed. Our lifestyle is very different from that of sixth-century Italy, but the Gospel message preached today is the same as the Gospel message preached throughout the ages. There are women and men today, as there have always been, who hear the voice of Jesus speaking to them, inviting them to leave behind their possessions, their jobs, their accustomed way of life, and to come, follow where he calls them. Some of those who hear this invitation are called to the monastic way of life, which was traced out for us by Saint Benedict. They respond to this invitation by coming to a Benedictine monastery, to live under the Rule of Saint Benedict. They make vows by which they give the whole of their lives, and their very selves, to God. They live out the monastic life by an ordered life of prayer, reading and work.

They pray together in the monastery church. This means that they meet together to celebrate the Eucharist together each day, and several times a day they pray the Divine Office, which monks and nuns often call "The Work of God": acts of worship centred on the psalms found in the Old Testament.

They pray privately. The time monks and nuns spend alone in prayer is time spent with God, listening to his voice, loving him, living in his presence, savouring his love for them.

The monk or nun is called to be a person who reads. Their reading is centred on the Word of God contained in Holy Scripture. The practice of lectio divina, "sacred reading", has been practised in monasteries for many years and is becoming more widely appreciated at the present time.

The work done by nuns and monks is very varied. If you look at the websites of the monasteries of the English Benedictine Congregation you will see how many different types of work our nuns and monks do. We believe that the work we do is of service to the Church and to the world in which we live. But we value in a particular way the contribution of the older members of our communities. Their work may not be very "productive" in terms of income-generation, but their patient dedication to the work that has been given to them is one of the means through which the Lord brings them to holiness.

Hospitality is an important part of the life of a Benedictine monastery, although the way it is practised will vary from one community to another. St Benedict tells his monks that guests should be welcomed as Christ. Guests who come to a monastery, he says, are to be met by the community with all the courtesy of love; they are to pray with the guests, the monks and the guests are to be united in peace, and every kindness is to be shown to them.

The English Benedictine Congregation doesn't have a central office or a headquarters. The Abbot President does not have the power to tell the monasteries what to do. He presides over meetings of the Congregation's General Chapter, and seeks to serve the different monasteries by helping them at particularly important times in their lives: every four years he will assist in a review of the community's life, called a "Visitation". When the office of superior is vacant, the Abbot President presides over the election of the new superior, the Abbot or Abbess. So the English Benedictine Congregation is a family of families. It consists of thirteen monasteries, each of which has its own community, its own Abbot or Abbess, and constitutes a "school of the Lord's service", as St Benedict himself puts it.

Ten of our monasteries are in England, three are in the United States. Of the ten monasteries in England, seven are monasteries of monks and three are monasteries of nuns. All the monasteries in the United States are monasteries of monks. There are also some smaller communities, offshoots of one or other of these monasteries. In recent years, monasteries of our Congregation have founded new monastic communities in Peru and in Zimbabwe.

As you visit our website, you are knocking at our door and asking who we are, what we are doing, why we behave the way we do. We also invite you to visit the websites of our individual monasteries, which will give you an idea of the special characteristics of each of our communities. We thank you for your visit, and we invite you to come and see who we are, where we are located, and what we do.