At Belmont Abbey College, we approach education from the unique millennium-and-a-half Benedictine monastic tradition of seeking God by living, working, and praying in community. The core values animating our life overflow into the following 10 hallmarks of Benedictine education
We aspire to embody four essential characteristics of a Catholic college, as Pope John Paul II expressed them in the Apostolic Constitution Ex Corde Ecclesiae:
OUR Passion is sharing a lifelong journey to search for and live in response to Truth.
A Christian inspiration, not just of individuals, but of the whole college community
A reflection on the growing treasury of human knowledge in the light of the Catholic faith.
Fidelity to the Christian message as it comes to us through the Church.
A commitment of service to the Church and to the larger human community.
Monks have been engaged in teaching here at Belmont Abbey from the very beginning when in 1876 Fr. Herman Wolfe arrived with two students, and classes were held that very same day. The monastic community’s commitment to education has continued ever since, even though that effort has assumed various forms through the years, including at one time having been a military academy, a seminary, and a junior college.
Today, the monastic community’s main apostolate and focus is Belmont Abbey College, a four year undergraduate liberal arts college, with approximately 1600 students.
Monks contribute to the College in a variety of ways. First of all, our spiritual support is always present through the intercessory prayers we offer every day on behalf of the College and its members, through the daily Eucharist, and through the Sacrament of Reconciliation. As a community, we are also significant financial benefactors of the College.
Individual monks have formally served in the College as professors, as coaches for athletic teams, as librarians, as campus ministers, and in the staff and administration of the College. Informally, monks have also been spiritual directors, mentors, confidants, and friends to innumerable students through the years.
The “good zeal” of the Rule, which has “each try to be the first to show respect to the other” and “prefer nothing whatsoever to Christ,” challenges our College community to engage persons from all backgrounds who desire to teach and to lead, to serve and to study with us. Each member of the College community should collaborate in pursuing a rigorous and disciplined search for Truth and be able to count on others’ assistance when needed.
We aim to inspire by the design and life of the campus a spirit of transcendence and mindfulness, encouraging all to cultivate a life of prayer appropriate to his or her own faith. All who come here should cultivate openness to the work of intellectual and personal transformation by connecting study to the fundamental purpose of life.
We strive to create lasting relationships between students, faculty, and staff. We believe that persevering together in the pursuit of wisdom—as opposed to engaging one another only enough to achieve private understanding— builds strong, lasting relationships and makes remarkably powerful growth possible for all.
Benedictine education intends to establish intellectual and moral virtues in each of us, which may take years to perfect. To achieve this, we must develop mental habits of challenging and wrestling with the ideas we take for granted, which will transform students, faculty, and staff alike by nurturing learning and generosity over a lifetime.
In intellectual inquiry, obedience means respecting the integrity of the methods of study appropriate to each academic discipline, and maintaining fidelity to the evidence, wherever it leads. Teaching and learning are impossible without this obedience, and through it, we form an intellectual community, drawing on a diversity of academic endeavors while respecting the methodologies proper to each.
Discipline is the way of focusing energy and attention on what matters most. In our pursuit of academic excellence, we strive to order our minds and actions to develop personal discipline. Our goal is to grow beyond a discipline imposed from the outside to a mature self-discipline in which we possess a robust love of learning and can imagine and pursue what is necessary to achieve our personal goals.
Humility is St. Benedict’s word for wisdom. It is an accurate appraisal of one’s strengths and weaknesses before God, before others, and before oneself. We seek to cultivate the exploration of truth in academic disciplines, aware that through a rigorous and wide-ranging pursuit of academic excellence, we are all made freer to discern and cultivate the gifts we possess, thereby contributing to the well-being of all.
We foster good stewardship of our environment and our talents out of respect for God’s creation. The world with its bountiful resources and each person with his or her unique talents have been created by God for the sake of us all. We strive to encourage the study and practice of the arts, aware of their capacity to develop in us a deeper recognition of the nature and purpose of life itself.
St. Benedict directs us to respond to a guest’s unexpected arrival as we would to a visit from Christ Himself. Therefore, we strive to extend personal hospitality to each member of our educational community, especially to those who are new to our community or are guests to our campus. More broadly, we seek opportunities to enable us to recognize the needs of those in our community, and to call forth the talents and gifts of persons of differing capacities and dispositions, and of diverse races, cultures, and backgrounds.
A Benedictine community is rooted in a particular place where mutual service is demanded of all without concern for individual reward. We have a practical focus on community building, cultivating responsible living that is enriched by the examples of those around us, grounded in the wisdom of the past, and refreshed by the perspectives of others. In so doing, we seek to ensure that students cultivate the disposition to serve others in ever deeper and broader ways.
The Benedictine Volunteer Corps at Belmont Abbey is a six – eight-month program that seeks to assist monastic communities throughout the world and provide Belmont Abbey graduates opportunities to experience monastic life and ministry in a variety of cultural contexts. The volunteer must be a recent graduate of Belmont Abbey College, no older than 26 years of age, and a Roman Catholic.
An Oblate is a lay-person, single or married, formally associated with a particular monastery. An Oblate seeks to live a life in harmony with the spirit of Saint Benedict as revealed in the Rule of Saint Benedict and its contemporary expression.
Oblates do not usually live in the monastic house of the community, yet they remain one with the community while they continue faithfully to carry out the duties of their particular state in life and occupation, wherever they may be.
Oblates strive to lead full Christian lives enlightened by personal efforts to understand Christ’s teaching in the Scriptures as interpreted by St. Benedict in his Rule for monks. Oblates are guided and inspired by their continued spiritual association with the monastic community.
Since Oblates of St. Benedict primarily offer themselves for the service of God and others, they will, therefore, strive for God’s honor and glory before all else, keeping in mind the Benedictine motto: “That in all things God may be glorified.”
To learn more about the Oblates of Saint Benedict at Belmont Abbey, please visit their website.
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