The View Up Here

As I've continued to understand myself in this process of discernment, I've realized that it is essential for me to live a life where the Liturgy of the Hours (aka the Divine Office) are prayed. The reasons are several, and I understand them to be universal, not tied to my own personal preference. We are called to pray unceasingly by Jesus Christ. Sanctifying the hours of the day permeates what we do, who we are, and how we love one another. Stopping our work to pray is a reorientation toward God against the temptation to make our work about us, rather than about the Kingdom. The Benedictine Ora et Labora isn't just a simple "prayer and work" translation; rather, prayer is work/work is prayer and it all points to God's will. The classic Catholic both/and, in other words. Prayer informs our ministry, ministry informs our prayer. There is an ebb and flow here, not a "now we do this" and "now we do that" binary concept. In the short...

Friends,  I will be going to visit two more communities at the end of this month and beginning of June. They are the Religious of the Assumption and the Visitation Nuns . Both communities are beautiful. They are also quite different, although the founder of the Religious of the Assumption, St. Marie Eugenie, had her early formation in a Visitation monastery , so there is a connection as far as spirituality and charism. Neither community is Benedictine. They are both spiritualities of the heart (Religious of the Assumption being Augustinian, and the Visitation nuns being Salesian and the historical setting of the devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus). In the Benedictine charism I have found balance and a call to simplicity, openness and the desert spirituality. But... I may be seeking for more than that. A "feminine genius" as Pope Francis has named it, perhaps not found with the Benedictines as I have experienced them. I may find this elsewhere or I may discover it...