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Esme Y.'s avatar

I began reading your Substack articles only yesterday and they are some of the most honest pieces I have read. My own story is strange and mysterious.

I came back to the Catholic Church in 2017 after 40 years away because of a miracle:

https://lapsedcatholicreturns.wordpress.com/2018/04/20/a-miracle-brought-me-back-to-the-catholic-church/

Ever since then I have felt a great urge to join a convent but my state in life (married) prevents me from doing so. I realized after a lot of thinking and reading the lives of saints that everyone is called to live a sanctified life and a sanctified life doesn’t mean a life free of worries, troublesome neighbors or illness. There are saints who were kings and queens (St. Louis X, King of France and St. Elizabeth, Queen of Portugal), as well as soldiers (St. Martin of Tours). Many people think that retiring to a monastery is an escape from what’s bothering them, only to discover that what’s bothering them isn’t external, but internal, and now it’s with them in a tiny cell 24/7.

It’s possible to live in the world and not be OF the world, but one has to be very vigilant. That means no TV, spare use of social media and the Internet, daily examination of conscience, prayer and meditation, and spiritual reading. This is something a lay person can do in addition to fasting and alms giving. It’s nothing new and people who lived before the “age of progress” knew this.

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Peco's avatar

I’ve never spent any time at a monastery, but I wonder if some of the things you are experiencing there might have some applicability to people’s everyday lives, for instance the structure and rhythms of the monastic pattern of life. I don’t know if that might be something you were considering for a future article. I recall Rod Dreher has a chapter on this in the Benedict Option (based on his visit to the Norcia monastery). In my own life, and that of my family, trying to maintain a sense of unity through a common rhythm of activities and focus has been important, and a stabilizing force against the constant sloshing of liquid modernity, which seems intent on keeping everybody off balance. But it’s a never-ending effort to maintain even the simplest common structures, like mealtimes, prayer, etc.

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