In all the “nun” books that make their way into the Abbey, “nun” have been found to indicate that a new postulants usually take to the devoted life like a duck to water.
This makes quite good sense, really. If one enters the monastery in order to grow nearer to the Lord, to develop a style of life beyond the everyday, this is an indication that some lack or distance has been evidenced! If one enters in order to find Christlikeness in community, the fullness of Christlikeness must not yet have been attained. The same is true for us if a life of undiluted worship and prayer is the vision; we don’t press in to have what we have already obtained.
We in Cor Unum aspire to unbroken fellowship with God and “perfect” love both in heaven and on earth. “Be thou perfect, even as my Father in heaven is perfect!” is worth the climb, but it is a climb!
We are not wise in our own conceits when we live lives of pressing on! The very trudge up the hill is an ever-present reminder that we are not arrived, but here in the Abbey we guard against the old adages that say we will never make it.
Let us never, let us not ever, boast the hill! Rather, we sing with the saints of old, of the ages, really, “We’re marching to Zion . . . beautiful, beautiful Zion! We’re marching upward to Zion, the beautiful City of God.” What is attainable, we will have in the name of the Lord our King.
Andreas Cruz photography
Cor Unum Abbey 