"Anyone who comes to the Abbey of Saint Lioba is touched by the beauty and the profound peace of this place, by the atmosphere of prayer that surrounds the liturgy where joy and simple love and truth radiate from the monks and nuns,"
Guest of the Abbey
The Rule of Saint Benedict is at the origin of many monastic families, like the Benedictines of Saint Lioba, who were founded by Hildegard Michaelis in 1935.
Born in Erfurt in 1900, student at the School of Arts in Hambourg, convert to Catholocism at the age of 28, Hildegard Michaelis was the founder of the first monastery in Holland in 1935, which was followed by one in Switzerland and then France in Simiane-Collongue. At the heart of monastic life is the search for God, to trust in him, mature in His love all your life- "it is by this testament of your love for one another that everyone will know you are my disciples" – and to joyfully serve wherever you are asked. The work of communities should serve, before all else, the beauty of the liturgy: "Who has more right to beauty than He who created all things?" Hildegard desired that the work of the community be marked by beauty in order to invite those who saw them to contemplate not only the visible aspects of objects but above all the Creator of all beauty.
In 1966, after suffering from paralysis, Hildegard Michaelis started to paint with her left hand. Every one of these paintings, inspired by Biblical themes or by nature and the beauty of forms, expresses the same joy, the same light, because her inspiration always came from searching for God, Who is the source of all beauty.
She died on July 8, 1982, after establishing the communities of sisters and brothers who will continue the mission that God entrusted to her and which she expressed in one of her letters: “If according to your faith you know that your vocation is to be the apostle of love by praying and working, then know that each thing that you make is a gift which God gives to you and also to those who come to own it. And if your love is powerful, then your radiance will be abundantly apparent in your works.”