What must it be like, to remove the last vestiges of life in the world?

It cannot be just the shoes and stockings, the dress and petticoat. Imagine – you’ll not need a purse again, or the debit card inside. Ever.

There are the earrings Grandmother gave you for Christmas the year you turned sixteen; you can send them to your cousin. She always liked them.

Nail polish! No more, and never again. Make-up? You gave it to your niece to use when she plays “dress up.”

Everywhere you look, everything that moves is a sea of black or brown, and in the case of the Poor Claires, it might be a sea of shadows, for they patch their habits with whatever dark scraps come their way. Even Abbey cats seem often to come in black and white! Nevertheless, within weeks the new arrival starts to realize how poorly the habit hides individuality. Sister Elizabeth’s sense of humor cannot be masked; Sister Lucia’s tender heart is more evident than were her tattoos when she entered.

More than “you are what you eat,” women become what they wear. If clothes make the man, they define the woman. In Cor Unum, we no longer wear what we think we are. We clothe ourselves instead in what we hope to become. Ours is not a wimple and veil, but we are putting on habits of joy and faith in God.

Here in the monastery of the heart, we clothe ourselves in the righteousness of our Lord Jesus Christ, and heaven calls us BEAUTIFUL!

Mary of Jesus, founder of the Society of Mary Reparatrix, N.N.

in the public domain in the United States and European Union,

artist dead more than 70 years

Those dear, innocent bells! Little do they know that for as many as they welcome into monastic life, there are dozens more who want no part of it, because of them.

For each man or woman on earth who lives according to a rule or schedule of devotion, there are dozens, hundreds, perhaps hundreds of thousands who boldly say, “I could not and would not live under the regimen of bells, a devotional schedule, punching in to spend time with God.” Even among those who do love the Lord Jesus Christ, the idea of developing such a well-ordered life with Him does not always appeal. “Surely,” they say, “He is not glorified by that kind of forced worship.”

The monastic says, “He wasn’t glorified by all the time I could have spent with Him and didn’t, either.”

For most monastics, the bells become the sweet sound of the rhythm of the life they have chosen, a call to worship, to prayer, to four, perhaps five, or even seven daily trysts with the Lord they love. Nevertheless, one of the most difficult early adjustments is that of stopping in the middle of a project, closing up shop just when you’re making progress, donning the mantle reserved for Chapel attendance, and filing silently into one’s place for as much as an hour (and sometimes more!) of Gregorian chant.

But …

… that’s why they entered.

One young postulant, about to enter her Novitiate year, said that she found herself standing on a street corner one day, with all the pulse and energy of a big city around her, the life she had formerly enjoyed, but asking herself, “Is this all there is for me?” She had a big job in a big city, but she also had a big love for God, and her busy life was not nurturing that love at all.

Did she have to enter a cloister in order to fulfill the desires of her heart toward the Lord? We are the ones who will be able to answer that question.

Even when we are successful in setting daily parameters for ourselves, when we can identify the built-in reminders that keep us within them, and even if we have bells that sound to keep us faithful in our marketplace vocations, we will never have quite what is to be had in cloister. It won’t take long for us see how many and how distracting are the phone calls, many of them unsolicited, the interruptions that come with the people we care about, the disturbances that creep in with every little diversion in our lives. A book we are reading will have us thinking about the plot for days; the music we listen to reverberates in our ears long after we heard it, perhaps standing in line at the grocery store; conversations we have with friends leave us contemplative, and not toward the Lord in every case. When such things are reduced by 75 or 100%, it makes a noticeable difference. When the things that enter our minds and our senses are always toward God, it makes a difference.

That is why they entered, our cloistered counterparts.

The bells and gongs and clappers call them to the hours of each day most precious to them, even if their natural inclinations say, like ours, “Just a minute! Let me finish what I’m doing, and then I’ll come.” When twenty or thirty other women are waiting for you, looking at your empty place in Choir, when they won’t be fully at ease until you are there with them, you learn quickly to attend to the bells that call you.

It’s rather like the young mother with a fussy child, trying to get him quieted for sleep in the afternoon. She leaves him, perhaps still sobbing that he has to close his eyes for an hour or so, and she says on her way out the door, “I wish someone would make me take an hour’s rest every day!” Monastics have taken that wishing into their own hands, and together they take time out of every day to bring themselves before God in worship and intercession.

Together they worship and pray. If ever there was an evidence of strength in numbers, it is to be found in cloister. We will take a look at that brand of unity one day soon.

Meanwhile, I hope you’re enjoying your extra five or ten minutes with the Lord, fitted somewhere into your day as a reminder that He is near and that you are glad. Have you felt yet that it is a waste of time, too interruptive to your day, not worth the effort? If you haven’t, you probably will, but your own choice will sanctify those minutes. I keep a few bells at hand in my house, and often will I ring them as I begin my Psalms Office or Matins in the morning … I love how they say, “These minutes are now the Lord’s own,” and somehow my heart answers them, “You speak truly, dear little friends.”

The new bells of Notre Dame Cathedral.
Mirabelle, Wikipedia, by permission

The Divine Office is the teenager who stays home from a dance to attend a family get-together.

It is the husband whose wife doesn’t have to prod him to put down the newspaper or turn off the television.

The Divine Office is the wife who gets small children peaceably ready for bed after dinner so she can spend the rest of the evening with her husband.

Our personal Divine Office is the time we would like to spend in prayer for our families and churches and nations, but never seem able to acquire.

So far, unless it must diverge, this blog is written for all of those who have monastic hearts, hearts to live out their interior lives in an effectual devotion to God. So far, we are in this together, but there are those among us who have long evenings alone stretching before them, with nothing but time to do with as they please, and there are those who, at best, must fit God in between dinner, chores, children, and the life and health of their marriages. These lifestyles are quite dissimilar, but for the heart of worship.

Who understands this time/effort paradigm better than our God and Father, Elohim, the Creator God, who gave us marriage, family, obligations … and for almost all of us, eventually, solitude? Who but He can measure five devoted minutes on a scale with 55 devoted minutes and call them equally weighty?

He also gave us grace and the ability to set the course for our souls, to make choices between those things which profit and those which do not, and he gave us the mental capacity to see that a little time well spent, when that’s all we have, is far better than none invested because we wish we had more!

After more than ten years in this at-home Abbey, I can tell you that the hard part is still just taking the time I’ve been given. I can also tell you, it does get better when one keeps trudging along inside the verges of one’s own Divine Office.

Trudging? Trudging? Trudging toward a glorious relationship with God?

Yes.

It isn’t the relationship that’s tedious or painstaking, far from it. It’s the keeping to the path that is so daunting. One of us refers to it as a path “with handrails.” How is it possible that after so many years of knowing the mercies and the graces and the goodness of God, that we still say, “Not tonight, my Lord; I have a headache.”

I will not often get personal in this narrative and over these days together, but I think you may enjoy this little vignette.

After my husband died, about a week after his funeral, I finished dinner and faced my first evening alone. Our children had been here for nearly a month prior to his death and afterward, helping one another, comforting, showing the wonderful stuff they’re made of. Friends and neighbors had kept up a steady stream of every kind of assistance and kindness, never overbearing, just available and removing every possible practical difficulty. Now, for the first time, I looked around and faced the rest of my life alone in the house, alone in my heart, no longer married, no longer one of two in love.

However … I had been practicing these tiny Divine Offices for six or seven years. A few minutes here, a few minutes there, tiny disciplines of thanksgiving and intercession and stillness, and I had told the Lord the night Frank died – propped up on pillows, alone in our bed – that I was determined to spend the rest of my life grateful for what Frank and I had been given instead of mourning over what had been taken. I knew and I said, as King David had said, “He will not come to me, but I will go to him,” and that was the end of the matter, except for the three and a half years it took to begin to get used to living without him.

So, on that first night alone, I did the dishes and put them away, picked up my Bible and went into the den. I sat in Frank’s chair. I said to the Lord, “I will be to you what I was to Frank, and I hope even more, if You will give me grace for it. My evenings are Yours; I’m Yours … I won’t make You look like a poor substitute for a great husband.”

I opened my Bible, and my eyes fell upon a verse, an obscure verse in Jeremiah … that I had been trying to locate for ages. It was just a little verse of Scripture, but I had looked and looked for it; it was something lovely the Lord had shown me long before that I didn’t want to lose. It wasn’t relative to marriage or death or anything immediately pertinent, just something lost, now found. Perhaps one day I will tell you about it, but that wasn’t the point then or now. It was just a little present, a little something wrapped in love, as if it had been a bracelet I had seen and admired and Frank had gone back to get it for me and keep it for a special moment. “Here, darling, this is for you.”

The joy, like a wedded bliss, that flooded my heart was indescribable. I knew I’d been heard, I knew I’d been taken seriously, I knew beyond doubt then or now that my Lord was glad I was there with Him, and I knew that, for whatever reason Frank had died so relatively young and all our future cut off, all was well and that I would mourn with a healthy hope. I was Frank’s, but now I am the Lord’s, in a very special way. He is not a poor substitute for any loss; He is all and in all, and He is ours and we are His.

Thus began this more intense version of my Divine Office, but I can speak to you from both perspectives, both the snatching what time you have and filling more time than you wanted. The key, I believe, is to remember this: we are making a freewill offering. Nobody forces this devoted life upon us. There are societies aplenty for men and women alone and men and women too busy already. There are books to read and a few really good television programs and some great movies and good time to spend with dear friends. There is also a Lord, a Savior Who is Lord, near enough to touch, well able to comfort and inspire and revive any soul.

One more personal observation, and then we will return to our look into the rudiments of disciplined devotion … while it is true that I wept at times as though my heart would burst through my chest, it was always for missing Frank and always with a sweet gratitude, no matter how devastating the sorrow. I think those years of what seemed like catch-penny devotion made the difference, along with a will to obey what I was learning along the path.

Iglesia Santa Maria monastery

ecelan, by permission, Wikipedia