Monasteries of the Heart

How do Monasteries of the Heart communities select a common Good Work? Our suggestion is to focus on one of the areas that Monasteries of the Heart is especially mindful of promoting:
— Celebrate Beauty
— Honor the Word
— Practice Nonviolence

Why is work — good work — a part of MOH? Click the graphic at left to view a short video on work in the Benedictine tradition.

Choose one of these areas and decide on a communal action and/or have each member of your community commit themselves to an action that incorporates that particular good work. In that way, your community can be united in your good work, no matter where you each are or which action each member engages in.

Hermits, MOH members who do not belong to either an online or on-site community, are urged to select a good work also. You might commit yourself to this good work for a year and then evaluate it.


The monastic life exists in pursuit of the beauty of the invisible God. Wherever you find the beautiful you discover another incarnation of God. Members of Monasteries of the Heart know that to revive the soul of the world, we ourselves must become beauty, become contemplatives. And to be contemplatives we must surround ourselves with beauty, and consciously, relentlessly, give it away until the tiny world for which we are responsible begins to reflect the raw beauty that is God.

Example Good Work Ideas:
•Begin a garden in an inner city neighborhood or your own neighborhood
•Donate art pieces to inner city schools
•Give away flowers or art postcards on street corners
•Take inner city children to hear an orchestra or to the museum or to a play or dance performance
• Join or start a threshold choir. These women choirs visit those who are sick and dying: www.thresholdchoir.org

Coming Soon

...pages for each category where you can share you or your community's good work ideas and experiences.


Benedictine monks are credited with saving the written word in the Middle Ages when hordes of barbarians burned all libraries to the ground. The monks painstakingly copied the damaged books by hand and, in a truth, saved civilization. Monasteries of the Heart continues the tradition because it believes in the power of the word to transform the human heart, to uplift the soul, to help us transcend the tragedies of life.

Example Good Work Ideas:
•Send one postcard a week (month) to someone with an excerpt from Scripture, a poem or good piece of literature
•Volunteer to read to inner city children or at a children’s hospital or nursing home
•Once a month take a selection from “the Scriptorium” which appears on the MOH home page, comment on it and send it as a “letter to the editor” to your local paper. Or take the selection from the “Lectio Divina” page.
•Celebrate National Poetry Month in April by organizing an event in your community: http://www.poets.org/page.php/prmID/41


Over the portals of the great monasteries in Europe, the arch reads, “Pax,” or peace and in the Rule of Benedict we are urged to “seek peace and pursue it.” Monasteries of the Heart offers a model of peace that depends on being gentle with ourselves, gentle with the other, and gentle with the earth. It is a call to practice nonviolence as a way of life and method of social change.

Example Good Work Ideas:
•Commit to a peace and justice issue. This area is broad enough to include all of them. Your MOH community can decide on one issue or just agree that this year your group commits itself to “Practice Nonviolence as its “Good Work” and each members chooses a particular issue. For example, your community may decide that all members will work on human trafficking for one year or one member might concentrate on the abolishing the death penalty, another on women’s ordination, a third on human trafficking, etc. What matters is that you are all working on “Practice Nonviolence” together.
•Donate books on nonviolence to your local elementary schools and high schools. Click here for list of recommended books

"Good Work" of All Members of Monasteries of the Heart


—from Joan Chittister

Here’s what’s going on that you need to know about: With the launching of the Monasteries of the Heart movement, whole new possibilities exist for the development of small monastic groups among prisoners.

Imagine what could happen to the loud, harsh, inhuman environment of a prison if prisoners and their chaplains took the monastic life seriously.

Some chaplains are already using Monasteries of the Heart as a basic formation program and forming small monastic communities in prison. We have letters from prison chaplains outlining plans to introduce the concept of stability, community, prayer, silence, stewardship and listening into the lives of prisoners for whom the thought of meaningless routine, uncomfortable schedules, and obedience could be transformed into sacred awareness, silence, and the developmental effect of stability of place on self knowledge and interior development

More than that, this program does what we all say we want to have happen in the penal system. It presents another way to live, another reason to be alive, another kind of human heart to strive for at a time when the people who need those things are most demoralized, most depressed, most alienated from society.

If Monasteries of the Heart is meaningful to you, if it is making a difference in your life, if it is providing a layer of the spiritual life that is accessible, helpful, enriching—please consider making it a reality for those in prison.

We want you to know that ten percent of all donations to the Joan Chittister Fund for Prisoners (click here) is given to initiate Monasteries of the Heart in prisons.

Thank you for your generosity, for giving back in gratitude to God for all the second chances we ourselves have been given in life.


October is Joan Chittister Fund for Prisoners annual appeal month. Ten percent of all donations to Monasteries of the Heart goes to supporting MOH communities in prisons. This year's appeal letter shares Joan's vision for this program; read it here. Follow the link in the letter if you'd like to make a contribution directly to the Fund for Prisoners.

MOH Prison Communities

Barbara Redmond and Jane Eggleston each lead separate Monasteries of the Heart communities in the state prison for women Corona, California. In the video below the two long-time chaplain volunteers reflect on why they started MOH in prison.

Why MOH in Prisons

MOH communities exist in these prisons

  • North Central Correctional Complex; Marion, OH
  • Ohio Reformatory for Women; Marysville, OH
  • Federal Correction Institution Elkton ; Lisbon, OH
  • California Institute for Women (2 communities); Corona, CA
  • SCI Forest Marienville Prison; Marienville, PA
  • SFSD—C.J. #2; San Francisco, CA

Ten percent of all donations to MOH goes to supporting the growth and development of MOH communities in prisons. Donate to MOH here.