FORT SMITH -- The halls of St. Scholastica Monastery are quiet these days, the sounds of students bustling to class long gone.
Gone, too, are the hundreds of Benedictine nuns who once filled the convent with prayer, music and laughter. Like many religious communities, it has faded, but there is life still in the dwindling number of sisters living out the Benedictine life of prayer, community and hospitality. And they are planning for the future with the same determination and hope that has been part of the community since its start 136 years ago.
The sisters shared a three-phase plan for their future in their March newsletter.
Sister Maria DeAngeli, prioress, said the plan came after many years of prayer and discussion.
DeAngeli said the changes are necessary because of the aging and declining membership of the community. In the past decade, the sisters have gained seven new members, but in that same time, 47 have died. The community that once numbered more than 300 now includes only 41 members. Of those, more than half are over the age of 80.
"We knew we had to do something, but how?" said DeAngeli. "It was rather like a spiritual journey. We had to work with our emotions. A lot of us have been here a long time and it's home for us."
After much discussion and a vote among the sisters, they decided to enter into a contract with Reliance Health Care Inc. to buy 9.75 acres of their 65-acre property along Albert Pike and Rogers avenues.
This first phase of the plan will secure care for the community's most elderly sisters. About 14 currently reside in the third-floor infirmary at the monastery. In the future, they will be cared for at a nursing home to be built by Reliance. The planned 140-bed skilled nursing facility will include a 16-bed wing for the elderly sisters. Plans are to complete this phase in two years.
"It will be their [Reliance's] nursing home, but our sisters will have a place there," DeAngeli said.
The nursing home will be built on the southeast corner of the property along Rogers Avenue and 46th Street.
DeAngeli did not disclose the terms of the sale.
The second phase includes building a smaller monastery close to the nursing home for the remainder of the sisters, and phase three concerns the existing monastery building.
The Gothic-Tudor Revival style building is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The original five-story wing was completed in 1924. Other wings were added in later years, including what is now the main entrance, which features a six-story tower section. The sisters have not yet
decided what to do with the structure.
They will continue to lease a portion of the acreage to Trinity Junior High School, which uses part of the origi-
nal St. Scholastica Academy building. The sisters will continue to use the rest of that building as a retreat center.
As a pontifical religious community, St. Scholastica is not financially supported by the Catholic Diocese of Little Rock. The majority of the community's revenue comes from investments, with lesser amounts coming from donations, community ministries and benefits contributed by the sisters. From Sept. 1, 2013, to Aug. 31, 2014, revenue was $4.1 million with expenses and losses of $2 million. The larger than usual income was due to good investment returns and bequests to the monastery, according to the newsletter.
The sisters looked into renovating the current monastery building to better meet their current needs, but the cost was prohibitive. The sisters were also concerned about the infirmary and their ability to adequately care for the elderly sisters, as well as being able to maintain adequate staff.
PIONEERING WOMEN
The history of St. Scholastica dates to the late 1870s, when four nuns from Immaculate Conception Monastery in Ferdinand, Ind., were sent to Arkansas to start a mission at Shoal Creek in Logan County. Benedictine monks from St. Meinrad Abbey in Indiana had arrived a few months earlier in nearby Creole, now known as Subiaco, also in Logan County. They came to establish churches and schools at the request of the Cairo and Fulton Railroad Co., which hoped to attract German Catholics to the area. They offered land to the church to establish a monastery and a convent.
Two areas were selected -- Creole for the monastery of St. Benedict and Shoal Creek, about 10 miles east, for the convent of St. Scholastica.
The four sisters -- Xaveria Schroeder, Josepha Schmidt, Bonaventura Wagner and Isidora Luebberman -- arrived in the spring of 1878 to a life vastly different from the Mother House in Indiana. The land was isolated and hardscrabble and the people were poor.
Sister Louise Sharum wrote about the history of the sisters in two volumes -- Write the Vision Down and Until the Morning Star Rises. According to her accounts, the sisters arrived in Little Rock by train, met with Bishop Edward Fitzgerald, and then continued on by rail to Spadra. There they had to travel on to Creole by wagon over the rough countryside. They didn't see any other people along the way but did spot some razorbacks they described as being "so lank and lean that breath would blow them over."
In the first book, Sharum included a note written by Sister Bonaventura about their journey to Creole and their first glimpse of the wilderness they would call home.
"So we rode, God knows with what feelings, toward our new home. ... We stopped before a lodging, which we took to be a stable, but we didn't trust ourselves to say it out loud for fear that it was a shelter which would serve other purposes. And so it was: it was the church! -- at the sight of such poverty it encouraged us strangely and we had an idea of what courage Mary and Joseph had, when in the middle of the night they had to leave lovely Bethlehem and with their priceless Treasure find an abandoned stable for shelter."
The sisters lived in a two-room hut in Creole until a house for them was built in Shoal Creek. There they opened a school, embarking on decades of ministry through education. St. Scholastica Convent was officially established in 1879.
HARDSHIP AND HOMESICKNESS
Life for the sisters was hard. They fought homesickness as they cleared the land, chopped wood and planted vegetables and fruit trees. Despite the hardships, young women continued to enter the convent. They were sent to work teaching students in Fort Smith, Paris, Dixie, Altus and Marche, and to help staff St. Joseph Orphanage in North Little Rock. By 1908, their numbers had swelled to more than 80 and the nuns were operating more than 20 schools, including some outside of Arkansas.
Attuned to the needs of the communities they served, they saw the need for hospitals and when they joined with the sisters of Pilot Grove, Mo., they got into the hospital ministry, first in Boonville, Mo., and then in the Arkansas cities of Dermott, Morrilton, Clarksville and Van Buren.
Eventually the isolation, lack of water and difficulty getting supplies prompted the sisters to move to Fort Smith. There they built a new monastery in 1924, adding wings and buildings as they were able, despite the financial difficulties of the Great Depression. They also moved the school from Shoal Creek, and housed boarding students in the monastery. They named it St. Scholastica Academy.
The community continued to grow, but they were often poor. Parents sometimes could not pay to send their children to school, so they paid in produce or meat. Some local merchants helped out by letting the sisters buy on credit or by giving them food. At one point when they were unable to make their loan payments, the bank manager suggested selling the land, but Mother Perpetua Gerard wasn't ready to give in. Relying on prayer and some financial savvy, she held fast and eventually times began to brighten.
In 1936, the sisters began raising money with an annual bazaar and continued to do so until around 1950, by which time the loans for their many building projects were paid in full.
CHANGING TIMES
By then, the community included about 300 sisters. It was strong in numbers and in students, so much so that they decided to build a separate building for the academy, which included dormitory rooms and classrooms to serve the 150-plus students. The building was completed in 1958, but times were about to change.
The academy was closed in 1968 and renamed the St. Scholastica Education Center, offering classes for the community in art, music and religious education. A portion of the building is now used for retreats and special programs. The other half is leased by Trinity Junior High School.
Sister Elise Forst said the changes in the community were part of the overall culture change of the times, as well as changes within the Catholic Church.
"There were so many more opportunities for Catholic women to serve after Vatican II," she said. "There was encouragement for people to look at what they really wanted to do, and some saw their motivation wasn't for religious life."
Throughout the years, the sisters worked in a variety of roles. Sister Miriam Hoffman worked at the hospital in Morrilton as a dietitian for many years, beginning in the 1950s. She said the sisters working there lived and prayed together just as they would have back at the monastery.
Hoffman said as with many of the sisters' missions, sometimes the people helped were too poor to pay.
"They would provide meat and vegetables," she said. "We canned a lot of food" for use in the hospital.
Sister Pierre Vorster said the sisters made banners and vestments to raise money. Some sisters were even sent to Switzerland to learn the trade. But often it was the people they served who made sure the sisters survived the hard times.
The sisters see the current changes as part of the ever-changing life of their community.
"The sisters have made changes all along the way," DeAngeli said. "The move to Fort Smith. The academy closing. I think our life has been a life of change."
Today, as always, the sisters' lives are centered around prayer. Even as they were teaching, working in hospitals and doing mission work, prayer was of the utmost importance.
Their current ministry includes a growing program in spiritual direction, a local Hispanic ministry and the retreat center, as well as a house of prayer at the original location in Shoal Creek. The sisters and their supporters also help finance scholarships at a school in Guatemala. Some of the sisters have also traveled there to meet the students they are helping. The nuns are also involved in social justice and peace work.
But their main job is to live the monastic life.
"That is our main work," DeAngeli said. "Praying the Divine Office and living the Rule of Benedict."
As their mission statement says: "Seeking God in our life together and enlivened by daily prayer, we, the Benedictine Sisters of St. Scholastica Monastery, respond to the needs of the people of God with a spirit of hospitality, simplicity and reverence for one another and all creation."
And they hope to do so for many years to come.
Religion on 03/14/2015