Silverstream Priory is blessed with a strong, healthy and international group of Benedictine Oblates, both men and women.
Oblates are members of the wider monastic community — men and women, married or single, priests, deacons or laymen — who “offer” themselves (make their oblatio, “offering”) to God through a particular Benedictine monastery and seek to conform their lives in the world (as far as circumstances permit) to the pattern of the Holy Rule of the great Patriarch of Western monasticism.
The Rule of Saint Benedict was written for a very specific monastic context, yet because of its spirit of mercy, discretion and flexibility, it can serve as a faithful and sure guide, not only for monks and nuns, but also for Christians living in the world, and families in particular.
The word “Oblate” is derived from the Latin word oblatus, meaning someone who has been offered up, immolated, sacrificed to God. Benedictine Oblates are truly “victims” who offer themselves up, their souls and bodies, to that Immaculate Lamb of God who, in perfect obedience to his Father, was slain from the foundation of the world, for the remission of sins.
The drama of this eternal and most perfect Oblation of the Son to the Father is captured by the Psalmist and repeated in the Letter to the Hebrews (10:5-10):
Wherefore when [Christ] cometh into the world, he saith, Sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not, but a body hast thou prepared me: in burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin thou hast had no pleasure. Then said I, Lo, I come (in the volume of the book it is written of me,) to do thy will, O God … By the which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.