As hard as we may try to imagine what such seclusion and such pursuit would be like, it is very difficult for us to grasp the impact enclosure has on the soul.

First, of course, is the separation from family and friends and from the known world.  Like sailors setting out toward the uncharted horizon, so does the postulant enter a monastery hoping to stay forever in a world she cannot really understand ahead of time.

Even sailors have a camaraderie of the sort that monastics do not share, but when the cloistered man or woman grasps the divine import of the house Rule, as each must come to do, there will always be a deep and abiding sense of shared purpose, of mission, and of value.  To choose to spend any one day in the active pursuit of God is to choose blessing and strength; monastics have chosen unending days and months and years and decades of devotion.

There is always work to be done as well.  Benedict’s rule called for “Ora et Labora” . . . “Prayer and Work” . . . for he was wise enough to see that such a stringent life of praise and inner devotion and spiritual combat would need the balance of a good half hour’s floor scrubbing.   What’s more, monasteries gather dust and the most pious postulants must still be fed!

We truly have it all here in this cyber monastery.  We have camaraderie; we have work; we have devotion; we choose worship and prayer.  We order our lives; we govern our souls.  We join with others, cloistered monastics and marketplace monastics all over the world, and we do practice the “Ora et Labora” that keeps us close to the God we love, here in Cor Unum Abbey.  Our way is charted, and Jesus has gone before us, straight into the will and the Presence of the Father.

Sister Therese of Lisieux, with other Sisters

public domain