Rooted in Prayer.
Present in the World.
An ancient tradition in living community.
A monastery in the middle of a city sounds like a contradiction. We think of it as the point. For over a century, the Brothers of the Society of Saint John the Evangelist have made their home in Cambridge, Massachusetts – praying, working, and keeping their doors open to all who seek something deeper than the noise. Come and find out what that looks like.
Who We Are
We are a community of men giving our whole selves over to living the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Rooted in the ancient monastic traditions of prayer and community life, and critically engaged with contemporary culture, we seek to know and share an authentic experience of God’s love and mercy. We live a common life shaped by worship, prayer, and our Rule of Life.
We are monks — but not relics. Our monastery sits in the heart of Cambridge, Massachusetts, steps from Harvard Square, on the banks of the Charles River. We are here on purpose: because we believe that a life devoted entirely to God is not a retreat from the world, but one of the most honest and hopeful ways of engaging it.
How Should We Live?
We Brothers have discovered our own answers to this question in our life together, devoted to the love of God through prayer, mission, and ministry. The heart of our life as Brothers is prayer, and we delight in sharing our daily worship with congregations at the Monastery in Cambridge and at Emery House in West Newbury, as well as with thousands of others through our website and in the places we encounter them through our travels.
We aim above all to be “Men of the Moment,” responsive to the call of God and the needs of our world in the present day. At our home and in our ministries, we aim to share with others gifts from the Spirit.
At a time when the religious life is in decline in North America and in Europe, we are blessed with new vocations. There are still people who believe that it is worthwhile to live a life of intensity that has as its chief purpose the pure love of God. We hope that you will get to know us and join us in our life’s mission: to love God above all else and, in turn, invite others to experience that same love.
Do you feel called?
Might God be inviting you to explore this life?
Take a minute to hear about how some of our Brothers experienced their own calling.
Meet the Brothers
We are a group of men from different backgrounds, different decades of life, different paths to this door. Some of us came from professional careers. Some came straight from university. Some were ordained clergy first; some are laypeople still. What we share is a hunger to seek God — and the conviction that we seek God better together than alone.
Br. Keith Nelson
He came to faith by way of Tolkien, a Divinity School library, and a poster on a dormitory hallway — and to SSJE after years of studying Buddhist monasticism in India and a first visit that felt, he says, like an electric shock. He left once, spent years in the world, and came back for good.
Br. Jack Crowley
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Br. Luke Ditewig
He came to monastic life from a Presbyterian seminary and a year working at a Christian camp on Catalina Island, where he realized that what he was hungry for a worshiping community offering hospitality in a sacred space. That sounded, as his father put it, “monastic.” He arrived at SSJE expecting to offer his gifts and discovered, to his surprise, that it was also a school for his own healing.
Br. Jonathan Maury
He grew up on Nantucket with a solitary streak and a long fascination with monastic images, spent ten years working in interior design, and followed a restlessness he couldn’t quite name until it led him here. He has described his vocation as a search for wholeness that turned out to require other people.
Br. David Vryhof'
He grew up in a devout Dutch Reformed family in Michigan and was already drawn to something he couldn’t name when he saw a photograph of a monk in a seventh-grade textbook. He left the community once, spent time in seminary and urban parish ministry in Detroit, came back, and has been here ever since.
Br. Curtis Almquist
He had a dream about monks at the age of twelve and spent the next twenty-two years looking for the right community until he walked into an Evensong at the Monastery, went back to his room in the Guesthouse, and wept with recognition. He came searching for a middle ground between the cloistered and the fully active life, and found in SSJE exactly what he had stopped believing existed.
Br. James Koester
He knew he wanted to be a priest from the age of six or seven, and spent years in parish ministry in Canada before the hunger for more prayer, more community, and more intensity in the life of faith. This pulled him toward SSJE. He has been here for decades, and driving the tractor at Emery House remains, by his own account, one of the highlights of his time.
Br. Geoffrey Tristram
He stopped at the Monastery once by chance, looking for an affordable place to stay during an American trip. He walked into Evening Prayer and knew immediately, three thousand miles from home, that he had arrived. He has called it the end of a lifelong pilgrimage.
Br. Lucas Hall
He grew up in Cincinnati, worked in local politics, and arrived at the Monastery in 2017. He has served as the community’s Vocations Brother, walking alongside men who are beginning to wonder whether this life might be calling them.
Br. Lain Wilson
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Br. Jamie Nelson
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Come and See
You don’t have to be a monk to belong here.
Whether you come to pray in the Chapel on your lunch break, join us for a weekend retreat, or simply stay connected through our daily meditations and sermons — there is a place for you in this community.
A Note on Vocation
Every few years, someone walks through our doors and doesn’t quite want to leave. If something in these pages has stirred a question you weren’t expecting — about your own life, your own calling, your own hunger for God — we take that seriously.
We are not trying to recruit. But we do believe that some people are genuinely called to this life, and we have seen what happens when someone answers that call honestly. If you’re curious, the best first step is simply to come and pray with us. After that, we’re glad to talk.
Our Story
The Society of Saint John the Evangelist was founded in 1866 in the parish of Cowley, Oxford, England, by the Reverend Richard Meux Benson — making SSJE the first stable religious community of men established in the Anglican Church since the Reformation. Our order came to America in 1870, settling first in Boston. For many years we also had houses in Scotland, India, South Africa, Japan, and Canada.
Today, the Brothers of the North American Congregation make their home at the Monastery in Cambridge, near Harvard Square.
There is much more to tell.