What makes a man or a woman decide to leave day-to-day life behind and close their lives up in a convent or monastery … with the hope of leaving, never?
What makes a young person give up the social life and the aspirations of independence, as well as the hope of marriage and family, in order to enter a cloistered community?
Here is something to think about: how many monastics and missionaries would there be on earth if all those who had considered a life of devotion had pursued that end?
It is pitiable sometimes that those deep desires are not expressed and valued, because there are probably many, many more members of Cor Unum than we will ever know, men and women and young people who thought they had to leave home in order to live lives of deep devotion.
How many will dismiss their deepest devotional desires through lack of understanding or simple council, even unto the reminder that any one of us may have all of God, at all times, all the days of our lives?
Today is a good day for giving thanks for those dedicated places that we fill and faithfully maintain, such as marriage and parenthood and even career and civic involvement when those are sustained “as unto God.”
"Before It's Too Late"
photo by Kerry
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