Many of us live with illnesses or chronic conditions that prevent us from fully living our lives in the way we desire.  Even though there may be no physical cure for our suffering, God invites us to work toward the healing that comes from deep listening and close awareness of God’s presence in our lives.

Lectio Divina, the Benedictine practice of reading and savoring Holy Scripture, guides many of our prayer practices and the spirituality of our daily lives through the stages of silencio, lectio, meditatio, oratio, and contemplatio.

What if we were to extend that practice to our own bodies? What if we were to acknowledge that our bodies are a sacred text and that we can learn from them by slowly “reading” and deeply listening to our bodies, meditating on their messages to us and then lifting our body’s pain and suffering in prayer to God?

Please join Sheryl Rose, spiritual director and oblate, for a new workshop series “Lectio Divina and Living with Illness: Reading the Sacred Text of your Body.” Each session builds on the previous session.

Much of the material is based on the book Broken Body Healing Spirit: Lectio Divina and Living with Illness by Mary C. Earle. (Reading the book is helpful, but not required.)

Additional presenters are Sr. Paula Hagen, a long-time enthusiast of Lectio Divina and Julie Kelly, MSN, a healthcare practitioner whose patients live with chronic illness.

About the Leader: Sheryl Rose

Sheryl Rose is an Oblate of St. Paul’s Monastery, a Spiritual Director at its Benedictine Center and a daily practitioner of Lectio Divina.  Sheryl offers retreats for those seeking peace and connection to the Divine using the sacred path of the labyrinth and presents workshops on the challenges and blessings of living with chronic illness or conditions of pain and/or fatigue, drawing from her own experience of living with fibromyalgia over the last 18 years.

Milestones on her spiritual journey include training as a spiritual director at the Franciscan Spirituality Center in La Crosse, WI, certification as a Labyrinth Facilitator at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco and a graduate degree in Leadership and Spirituality from St. Catherine University. Sheryl is retired from over 25 years of parish ministry in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis.

This three-part online workshop will be held January 22, February 5 and February 19 from 10:30am-12:00pm over Zoom. Space is limited.

Contact: Benedictine Center
[email protected]
651-777-7251

Click Here to Register