The word “Pax,” which means peace, is over the main entrance to St. Emma Monastery in Greensburg, Pennsylvania.
“People tell us that as soon as they pull into the parking lot, they feel their concerns melting away from their hearts and they feel at peace,” said Mother Mary Ann Noll, OSB, prioress of the small community.
There are many reasons why people visit the Benedictine monastery. Hundreds are drawn to their summer flea market and Christmas open house, and there have been food festivals and stage performances. Customers shop at their Catholic gift and book store and the Treasure Shoppe that’s filled with high quality donated items.
People coming for group retreats, private retreats and other occasions can stay in the retreat house, monastic guest house or in the well-appointed Robertshaw Country House. Others stop by to visit the shrines, attend morning Mass, or join the Benedictine sisters in praying the Liturgy of the Hours.
“The search for God is lived here within St. Emma’s. We are all God-seekers and have that hunger within us that material things cannot satisfy.”
— Mother Mary Anne
In the Rule of St. Benedict, all are welcome as Christ.
The sisters’ monastic life is their ministry: to be Christ-centered and to become a spiritual center that draws people in. They seldom go out into the world, and instead, people come to them.
“The search for God is lived here within St. Emma’s,” Mother Mary Anne said. “We are all God-seekers and have that hunger within us that material things cannot satisfy.”
The beginning and a vocation
The Benedictine presence came to these foothills of the Laurel Highlands in southwestern Pennsylvania in 1847 when Boniface Wimmer brought a group of monks to serve the German immigrants. That was the foundation for what became St. Vincent Archabbey, seminary and college.
In February 1931, Mother Leonardo Fritz and 10 Benedictine sisters arrived to work in St. Vincent’s kitchens and dining rooms. Their intentions were to support the struggling motherhouse, Abtei St. Walburga in Germany. There were 40 sisters in Latrobe by 1939. Four years later, they purchased a house and 10 acres in Greensburg to use as their retreat and retirement home. That became St. Emma Monastery.
Mother Mary Anne met them when her family visited an uncle who was a priest at St. Vincent, and he sometimes brought some of the sisters to family dinners.
“Mother Leonardo would tell me, ‘One of these days, you will be one of us,’ and I always cringed,” she said. “I was 16 when someone asked me if had ever considered being a nun, and I rather happily said, ‘Not really.'”
| From The Rule of Saint Benedict |
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 Let all guests that happen to come be received as Christ, because He is going to say: “A Guest was I and you received Me.” And let suitable honor be shown to them all, especially to those who are of the household of the faith and to strangers. When therefore a guest shall have been announced, let him be met by the superior or by the brethren, with all due courtesy; and let them at once betake themselves to prayer together and so let them associate together in peace, because the kiss of peace may not be offered first, but only when preceded by prayer, so as to avoid the snares of Satan: and in the salutation itself let all humility be manifest. Whenever guests arrive or depart, let Christ be adored in them–for Him indeed we receive in them–by bowing of the head or by full prostration. And when the guests have been received let them be taken to pray and then let the superior, or whomsoever he shall have appointed, sit with them. Let the divine law be read in the presence of a guest, that he may be edified; and after this let all courtesy be shown him. — “How guests are to be received” |
God had other plans. She was 17 when she heard the calling in her heart and 18 when it became clear to her that she was supposed to be at St. Emma’s.
“God has a way of doing that,” she said. “The very meaning of vocation is to call, and it’s very true that Jesus says, ‘I have chosen you, and you have not chosen me.'”
She joined after graduation from high school in 1962, a year after the novitiate was opened for American women. She was the fifth to enter. By 1987, the sisters still at St. Vincent’s relocated to St. Emma’s.
“I am blessed to have known all but the first five of our sisters,” said Mother Mary Anne, who later earned a bachelor degree in psychology.
Meet the sisters
The monastery grew with additions to the retreat house; more shrines were installed and another chapel was built. The community purchased 105 additional surrounding acres and currently lease half of that to a local farmer.
There were 28 sisters in 1993 when Mother Mary Anne became prioress of the community that in 2010 gained its independence as a conventual chapter.
Now there are five. One of them, Sister Petra Littlejohn, 81, was a medical technologist before entering another community. She came to St. Emma’s for a more structured prayer life and was there for 20 years. She is now in a nursing home.
Sister Maria Johanna Uhlott, 48, was a biology teacher and also worked in nursing homes and in a rehabilitation center for adults with physical and cognitive challenges. She felt called to vocation but stopped looking for the right community after six years of searching.
“I wanted to find a place where they wore full habits and prayed the whole seven hours of the Divine Office. I found that and much more when I came to St. Emma’s in 2014. I found a loving community of prayerful sisters.”
— Sister Margoretta Judy
“Then I went on a personal retreat here, and within the first week, it just felt like home,” she said. “It was a perfect mix between prayer and work, and community was the biggest draw.”
Sister Margoretta Judy, 84, is the oldest. She had been in another Benedictine community for 54 years before it closed.
“I expected to finish my life there, but I had to look for another place,” she said. “I wanted to find a place where they wore full habits and prayed the whole seven hours of the Divine Office. I found that and much more when I came to St. Emma’s in 2014. I found a loving community of prayerful sisters.”
Sister Mary Paul Jenson, 43, finished her first vows last November.
“I worked in a machine shop doing quality control and making blueprints for operators,” she said. “I was considering religious life and went looking for a community that prayed the full liturgy. That was very important to me. I found St. Emma’s online and entered in 2019. I found that the sisters have their own community, and the volunteers have their own community, and it was two separate communities coming together.”
Volunteers at the monastery
The 75 dedicated volunteers are crucial to the monastery. They take care of housekeeping and the grounds, staff the shops and provide manpower for all of the events.
Home school groups come to help, and young men have completed Eagle Scout projects on the grounds. Generous benefactors have funded projects including a shrine of a life-size St. Pio at a confessional. It was created by internationally renowned Canadian sculptor Timothy Schmalz, who also created a life-size Last Supper with Jesus at the table with 12 benches. It’s the most popular shrine at the monastery.
“One day a group brought food and sat at the table with their friend who had terminal cancer,” Mother Mary Anne said. “She wanted to have lunch with Jesus.”
Visitors sit and pray on the other side of the St. Pio confessional, and walk the Rosary path across the field and into the woods. They pray at the outdoor Stations of the Cross, the Fatima shrine and the chapel dedicated to St. Walburga.
Those sacred places are part of the sisters’ ministry to bring people to the monastery where they can seek God.
They also come for comfort, like the man who knocked on the door asking for prayers. His son had been murdered and he was on his way to meet with law enforcement.
“God sends the ones who are supposed to be here, and we get to accompany them on the roller coaster of their lives. St. Emma’s is a place where people can share the depths of their hearts, and St. Benedict asked us to listen with the ears of the heart.”
— Mother Mary Anne
Another time, a young couple asked if they could come to pray in the chapel. They had just experienced a miscarriage and were heartbroken. Another man called grieving over losing his 17-year-old daughter to cancer, and now his wife had been diagnosed with stage four cancer. He needed prayers.
“God sends the ones who are supposed to be here, and we get to accompany them on the roller coaster of their lives,” Mother Mary Anne said. “St. Emma’s is a place where people can share the depths of their hearts, and St. Benedict asked us to listen with the ears of the heart.”
