There is a built-in cloister for some lives.  There are those, it would seem, who were never meant to marry, and certainly there are many whose marriages have failed, who have been left alone.  For others, death brings thirty, forty, fifty or more years of married life to and end and the two that were made one now live, one approaching our hereafter, and the other inside it.

A friend of Cor Unum Abbey comes to mind.  She lost her husband, not through death but through an awful adulterous affair.  She wanted her marriage more almost than life itself, and living was very difficult for her for a long time after her husband’s betrayal and abandonment.  There was no balm in Gilead for her, except the Balm of Gilead.  (Jeremiah 8:22)  We are going to become very familiar with the comforts, the healing, and all the restorative powers of this Anointed One, this Christ.

There is always Jesus, our Lord, and the Monastery of our Hearts will always be His home.  When we cannot have what we feel we cannot live without, we may always obtain the fulness of life in Him.  (John 10:10)  This is certainly true for married men and women as well, and this truth would have saved countless marriages.

We are stepping over the threshold of life within the veil, of life lived where Jesus is, never leaving Him who will never leave us.  We know we do leave Him sometimes, momentarily, but we turn, our gaze seeks Him out, and there He is, near, with only the most holy jealousy between us.  We repent that we wanted a little independence from His Presence, and we return to His love.  We aren’t good at it, but we will be.  Oh, we will be so much better at finding Him in His Word, at hearing the Voice of His Spirit, at walking in truth and peace!  Postulants practice holiness, and so shall we.  It won’t be holiness for show but for the glow of living in the abundance of the love and the obedience of Christ.

Jeremiah 8:22 … Is there no balm in Gilead; is there no physician there? why then is not the health of the daughter of my people recovered? (NIV)

John 10:10 … The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly. (NASB)

Valentine of Milan, Mourning Her Husband, the Duke of Orleans

Fleury-Francois Richard, by permission, public domain