Tim Oberholzer
Tim Oberholzer is Executive Director of the Center for Benedictine Life. In addition to managing the operations of the CBL, Tim facilitates in-person retreats and on-line programs. Tim also accompanies others as a spiritual director.
Tim spent five and a half years as a Trappist monk at New Melleray Abbey in Peosta, Iowa. Deep prayer and reflection led him to leave the community prior to making solemn profession. He moved to Idaho to be closer to his parents, discovering the Monastery of St. Gertrude through a job posting for the innkeeper position at the Inn at St. Gertrude.
Tim earned a business degree from the University of Notre Dame, studied philosophy and theology at the University of St. Thomas, and completed the Stewards of the Mystery spiritual direction training program.
Tim is a widower remarried, a committed runner, and an avid reader.
Events with Tim Oberholzer
Diffusions - Playing with Words: Benedict’s Little Rule for BeginnersAugust 26, 2025
St. Benedict’s “little rule written for beginners” invites us to grow in virtue through intentional living in the ordinariness of life. The text contains numerous themes to inspire and direct individuals and communities in the way of perfection. During these Zoom sessions, we will ponder the Rule of St. Benedict by “playing” with recurring words and themes. Each month we will examine Benedict’s weaving of a different word or theme through the Rule to gain an understanding of his intention and our application. Examples include: time, love, work, good, life, community, care, evil, fear, guest, just/justice, prayer, and discipline. Whether…
Diffusions :: The City Is My MonasterySeptember 11 - November 6, 2025
What this book describes is immersion in the ways of the Spirit – an infectious immersion that draws others to trust, to hope, to try, to persevere. There’s discipline, routine and regularity; but these are suffused with imagination, hunger, desire, longing; and the whole is surrounded with irony, humour, self-deprecation, that seeks the pearl of great price, yet doesn’t take itself too seriously. This isn’t a definitive handbook, for all that the contents page might suggest. This is a series of memories, dreams and reflections, whose cumulative effect is to make one set the book aside and plunge into this…