Our Lady of the Rock Monastery is a Benedictine monastery of women located in the heart of the beautiful San Juan Islands of Washington state. The monastery, a dependent priory of the Abbey of Regina Laudis in Bethlehem CT, is a place of recollection and prayer. Set amidst 300 acres of forest and farmland, the nuns strive to live out their lives faithful to the traditions handed on to them by their holy founders, Saint Benedict and Saint Scholastica.

Season of Lent

Corpus

On Ash Wednesday we begin the Liturgical Season of Lent. In many languages the name given to this sacred season express the number forty, such as Quadragesima in Latin. The English word Lent meaning "the Spring-fast" is derived from the ancient Anglo-Saxon words lencten, meaning "Spring," and lenctentid, which means not only "Springtide" but more specifically the month of March.

Read about how Lent is celebrated at our monastery.

Lenten Vespers Hymn

We are pleased to offer you an original translation by Joseph T. Moller of the hymn Audi Benigne Conditor that we sing at Vespers throughout the Lenten Season. The hymn was composed by Pope St. Gregory the Great (540-604 AD). Acknowledging our human frailty, it is a plea for God's forgiveness: Scrutinize and nourish our hearts, the weakness of men you know, to those returning to you show forgiveness and grace.

Multum quidem peccavimus,
sed parce confitentibus,
tuique laude nominis
confer medelam languidis.
Much indeed have we sinned
But spare us as we confess.
For the praise of your name
Bring healing to the languishing.

Read entire translation of Audi Benigne Conditor.

Winter at Our Lady of the Rock



OUR LITURGY SCHEDULE
LAUDS
Daily 6:30 am
MASS
Sunday: 8:00 am
Monday–Saturday: Terce and Mass 7:50 am
VESPERS
Sunday: 4:30 pm followed by Benediction
Monday–Saturday: 5:00 pm

You are most welcome to join us in our Monastic Chapel for the celebration of Mass and Hours of the Divine Office. Our chapel is open throughout the day for private prayer and meditation.


The motto of the Order of Saint Benedict, Ora et Labora (Pray and Work), is the animating spirit by which the nuns live. In our dedication to fulfill St. Benedict's call to ORA, the community sings the Divine Office and Daily Mass in traditional Gregorian Chant. Guests of all faiths are welcome to visit and pray with us in our Monastic Chapel, renowned for its simplicity and beauty.

He brought the light of dawn to shine upon this continent.

sunrise by moonlight “Saint Benedict has the reputation of being the messenger of peace, the maker of unity, the master of civilization, and especially the herald of Christianity and the author of monasticism in the West. When darkness seemed to be spreading over Europe after the fall of the Roman empire, he brought the light of dawn to shine upon this continent. For with the cross, the book and the plow, Christian civilization was carried, principally through him and his disciples, to the peoples who lived in those lands which stretch from the Mediterranean to Scandinavia, and from Ireland to Poland.”

—Pope Saint Paul VI on St. Benedict of Nursia, Co-Patron of Europe

The LABORA at Our Lady of the Rock is fulfilled by supporting ourselves and serving our neighbors and guests with a variety of works focused around our farm.

At Our Lady of the Rock, we are, as St. Benedict described, “a School of the Lord’s Service”: a place where the members of the monastic community can seek God, follow Christ more closely, and be a living example of how people of diverse backgrounds and personalities can live together in total lifelong commitment to each other. Our mission is to pray for the needs of the Church, especially in this archdiocese, to meet the needs of those who come to us, and to augment the services of the Catholic Church in the San Juan Islands.