Fermentation Fest helps spread the word of the Cistercian nuns

But the monastery’s buildings are crumbling, development is encroaching, and the sounds from Highway 12, which is undergoing a major expansion, are increasing. The nuns had launched a $7 million project about 20 years ago but the effort, which had targeted property in Highland, gained little traction. The new campaign, started in 2017, has raised $9 million for the $12 million first phase, with another $6 million needed for a second phase. The plan is to build a new facility on 229 acres off Highway K near Barneveld. Construction could start in 2023, with the nuns taking occupancy in 2024.

article at WisSJ

Wisconsin Cistercians attribute their growing membership to young women seeking to live radically for God

When six young aspiring sisters entered Valley of Our Lady Cistercian Monastery the year Prioress Mother Anne Marie’s own mother died in 2006, Mother Anne Marie wondered if her mom (who had six daughters) had anything to do with the new postulants’ arrival.

Whether or not a mother’s intercession played a role in the six millennials entering the community in the Diocese of Madison, Wisconsin, the new sisters proved to be an abundant blessing for then-novice-mistress Mother Anne Marie, 66, who was used to forming one or two postulants a year.

“I was pestering mom,” said the Mendota, Illinois, native, “‘If you’re pulling strings to get six postulants to enter all in one year, you’re going to have to help me.’”

Four of the six women went on to profess solemn vows, and more continue to enter, so much so that community leaders had to creatively allocate space to house their now 21 members and move ahead with fundraising to build a larger monastery.

continue at NCRegister

Cistercian Sisters invite the public to view and venerate the relics

PRAIRIE DU SAC -- Our communion with the saints is a reality we too often forget. Throughout the history of the Church, the intercession and example of the saints have strengthened and inspired all the faithful, while their relics have been both objects of veneration and sources of miraculous graces.

Relics, from the Latin reliquiae, “remains, remnants,” are of three classes. First class relics are the material remains, in whole or in part, of a saint; second class relics are objects or fragments of objects that a saint owned or used; and third class relics are objects that have been touched to the remains or belongings of a saint.

continue at MadCathHerald

Silent retreat for single women 18-35 on April 29 at the Cistercian Valley of Our Lady Monastery, Prairie du Sac WI

FSCC-Cistercian Retreat Flyer by Matt J Korger on Scribd

'Powerhouse of prayer:' Millennials are drawn to monastic life in Prairie du Sac; CapTimes profiles Cistercian nuns

PRAIRIE DU SAC — Sister Christina Marie, 33, was an entomologist. Sister Mary Benedicta, 36, studied to be an aeronautical engineer. And Sister Mary Bede, 30, intended to become a professional violinist.

They left those lives to become nuns, cloistered together at Valley of Our Lady Monastery in a small village in Sauk County. It’s home to a Cistercian order, the only Catholic convent of its kind in the country.

In four weeks, Erin Wells, 24, heads there, too.

She’ll come from her parents' house in Columbus, Ohio, after earning a degree in mechanical engineering from Ohio State University. She’ll sell her car, get rid of most of her possessions and bring only a few things, including a Bible and her rosary.

“I went to college thinking I was going to be an engineer, work for Honda and travel to Japan all the time,” she said, “and be rich and write a book and be on the New York Times best-seller list.”

Now Wells is set to be part of an ancient tradition of communal religious life known as contemplative monasticism. She will live simply, becoming singularly focused on prayer, talking and listening to God without distraction.

continue at The Cap Times

Really good coverage here.  Go check it out.

HT FE

Laetificat: Valley of Our Lady Cistercian Monastery

For today’s Feast of St Anthony of the Desert (aka St Anthony, Abbot or St Anthony the Great), and because the primary focus of this blog is how Madison is rejoicing in Jesus Christ, I wanted to show you a really wonderful religious community in our diocese: the nuns of Valley of Our Lady Cistercian Monastery in Prairie du Sac, near Sauk City. They are a cloistered monastery that rises way before the crack of dawn and chants the whole Liturgy of the Hours in Latin every day. They’re the only contemplative monastery in the diocese, and the only monastery of Cistercian nuns of the common observance in the country, and they’re praying for us night and day, even though most people don’t even know they’re there.

As a branch of the Benedictine family, Cistercian spirituality is “ora et labora”, pray and work. Their primary, most important work is as official pray-ers of the Liturgy of the Hours, the opus Dei, the Prayer of the Church. Fittingly, they don’t just say this prayer but sing the Gregorian chant. The Church prays through their voices, and God listens and responds with grace for us all. Another essential form of prayer for them is Lectio Divina, meditative and contemplative reading. They also do manual labor in the form of various tasks around the monastery and also the work of making altar breads, which is how they support themselves. They practice silence, except for a daily time of social recreation.

Some catechesis: under Church law, there are quite a few different forms of consecrated life other than religious life. Within true religious life, women’s religious communities are of two different major types: active communities like the Sinsinawa Dominicans or the Dominicans of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist, who make simple vows and are called Sisters, and contemplative monastic communities who make solemn perpetual vows and are called nuns. A nun is the counterpart of a monk, a contemplative monastic who takes solemn vows. Sisters are often called nuns colloquially, but, for instance, the “Nuns on the Bus” are Sisters and not nuns. The Cistercians are nuns.

continue at Laetificat Madison

WOW! Plans for new Cistercian monestary in Wisconsin!

Contemplatives save the world; not by their own power, but by the grace of God.  If America will be saved, it will be by the power of prayer.  This.Is.Amazing.

Matthew Alderman reports on the New Liturgical Movement:

One of the most exciting new projects to come into the firm during this time is a new design for a monastery in Wisconsin. It will be the new home of the nuns of Valley of Our Lady Monastery. It has been a great pleasure to be a member of the design team working on this project.

Alderman also designed the new St. Paul's Student Center in Madison.  I found out at the recent Knights of Divine Mercy that the Student Center had to be scaled back not because of funding, but because the city council rejected such a large and beautiful building intruding on the existing campus "architecture." 

This is also the order that was disenfranchised in a recent state court election.   They are Cistercian like the Laser Monks were.  I think at least one of the Laser Monk priests was assigned here to serve the sisters.  Here's a video of the nuns chanting.  Fr. Z reported a while back that they celebrate ad orientem, not to mention their vocations were booming.  There was I think other videos of the sisters that the LaserMonks took down after their closure. They are well known for sustaining themselves by making altar bread.

Back to the article, currently the sisters reside in Prairie du Sac, in the Diocese of Madison.  It doesn't say where exactly the new site is, but their website gives us this tidbit:

The property for the new monastery is located in South-Western Wisconsin in the Diocese of Madison. These 229 acres in rural Iowa County are part of the Driftless Area, a region geologically renowned for being consistently missed by advancing glaciers over the millennia. As a result of this freedom from glaciation, the diverse and dramatic terrain preserves much of the topography of Wisconsin prior to the Glacial Period. The famous bluffs, rock outcroppings, caves and coulees boast a history of over 100 million years and provide a refuge for a rare community of plants and wildlife.

That would be a little southwest of their current site.  Interesting, I drove past here after Knights of Divine Mercy last Friday without even realizing the sisters location.  

And get this:

One of the largest projects undertaken by the firm in recent years, it is, to my knowledge, the first new traditional ecclesiastical project to draw on the simplicity and balance of Cistercian monastic architecture, and the first ever undertaken in the United States.

Save the monasteries, save the world. 

Read the whole article over at New Liturgical Movement

The sisters also have details over at their website(navigation is a little quirky).

They also have a photo gallery online of their visit to the new site.

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