Marianist Spirituality Center

Read about the Marianist Spirituality Center in South Korea, established in 2012, which provides a space where individuals can encounter God, nature, and themselves while embracing the principles of Laudato Si.

The ecological crisis is also a summons to profound interior conversion (Laudato Si, 217).

The Marianist Spirituality Center is located on Ganghwa Island, near the border between North and South Korea. A place where prayer for peace and unity becomes truly intense.

The Marianist Sisters opened the spirituality center in 2012 to offer a space where people can encounter God, nature, and themselves. The world sings of an infinite Love: how can we fail to care for it? (Laudate Deum, 65).

The life of the spirit is not dissociated from the body or from nature or from worldly realities, but lived in and with them, in communion with all that surrounds us. (Laudato Si, 216).

Christian spirituality proposes an alternative understanding of the quality of life, and encourages a prophetic and contemplative lifestyle, one capable of deep enjoyment free of the obsession with consumption. (Laudato Si, 222).

It is our humble conviction that the divine and the human meet in the slightest detail in the seamless garment of God’s creation in the last speck of dust of our planet. (Laudato Si, 9).

At the spirituality center, we try to live a simple and respectful life with creation, putting into practice easy actions that make us aware of the goodness of all that God puts at our disposal. The garden provides food for the table. We cultivate lady's mantle, a plant with multiple health benefits, which the sisters carefully dry for three years to make an herbal infusion. With a natural vegetable fiber, the sisters make the scouring pads used in the house. They avoid those made of plastics, which are not recyclable and pollute.

Living our vocation to be protectors of God’s handiwork is essential to a life of virtue; it is not an optional or a secondary aspect of our Christian experience. (Laudato Si, 217)

View a video with images from the Marianist Spirituality Center in South Korea below.

[Source: Marianist Magnificat Newsletter, June 2024]