October 14 – What We Share

What a sublime comfort it must be for the Abbess to know that the monastery does not run on her fuel!



She has probably been enclosed for decades before the responsibilities of Shepherdess come to her, and by that time she will have seen many trials swoop down upon the Abbey without seeing any substantive change in the order of things, which for monastics, is divine.



The Offices will go on, morning, noon, and night. New postulants will still be learning, training toward their novitiate, and novices toward their Clothing, no matter what befalls. The Feast Days and Fast Days remain the same. Should any of the nuns ever have to be in hospital or away for any reason, rare as that is in a cloistered monastery, she will have her own Book of Prayer with her, and she will be able to keep up, knowing what her sisters are doing virtually every moment of the day.



We in Cor Unum may take comfort as well, knowing that wherever we are, though far from one another, though ourselves isolated for a season, the devoted life is something we share, and it goes on.