January 13 – Heaven Will Hear Our Voice

In a healthy monastery, there is oversight for each soul. From the oldest professed monk or nun to the newest postulant, the abbot or abbess makes sure that each is set on a course marked for spiritual prosperity. Good health very often follows; monks and nuns have been surveyed continually over the last decades to determine how it is that they enjoy such unusually long and healthy lives. Part of that answer, as they themselves know, is that their focus isn’t on the length of their days but upon the quality of their worship every day.


The monastic overseer has two essential responsibilities, to make sure that worship and prayer continue, and to make sure that those who worship and pray continue in humble, healthy holiness.


Who guards our souls? Who makes sure that we, too, abide in Christ and that He abides in us? It was He who told us so to do . . . who has the oversight?


We might say the Holy Spirit does, and we would be correct. Who makes sure that the direction, the leading, the promptings, the truth, the compassion, and the wisdom of the Spirit are applied?


We are the abbots and abbesses of Cor Unum. We have the oversight for our souls, under God. He gives His spirit; we attend and obey. When we do, the “monastery” flourishes. When we do not, there is attrition and atrophy, and soon we are found begging crumbs of mercy, our hearts grown cold and our prayers unanswered. All the while, God’s purpose for us remains fixed . . . that we should know Him, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, Whom He has sent.


If we were at work and took our job descriptions out of our desks, only to find we were supposed to collect and distribute the mail each day, which responsibility we had overlooked for two months, we would take action. Let us be moved today to begin to care for our souls as only we can, in the Presence and power and privilege of our salvation. As the Abbess makes sure that the Divine Office is kept and her little flock of nuns is fine-tuned to perform it, let us be sure that heaven hears our voice and that the Father sees our face, upturned to His, this very day.



"Practice for Heaven"
by permission