Prayer – which is just conversation with God, who is our Beloved – is the focus of the life of a nun…
Prayer should be the central part of my day.
It should be the first thought on my mind when I awake from sleep. It should be the last thought in my head when I fall asleep at night and it should consume my time and effort for all the other parts of my day…
And I have been reflecting on that.
The other day, I was speaking to a Christian friend, who is not Catholic. And he asked me, out of curiosity, what a nun does. In other words, he wanted to know if nuns were preachers. And I told him that generally the job of a nun is to pray. And while some nuns may belong to an order that is tasked with a duty, like caring for the sick or the poor, or teaching children, or ministering to the community. And while some nuns may in fact be called (and allowed in their order) to preach as missionaries, there are other nuns who spend their entire lives in seclusion and prayer.
The Carmelite nuns, of which Saint Therese of Lisieux counted herself in that order from her early teens until her death in her early twenties, are a closed order. In other words, those nuns take themselves away from the world. They live in a cloister and do not make contact with the outside world. They will see their families a very limited number of times each year and will no longer physically touch or interact with other human beings. This is not because they are forced to this life, but because some women experience a vocation where they are called to live a life such as this.
So one may be forgiven for asking oneself, what these nuns are actually responsible for doing with their days. Well, they tend to their own congregation – cooking and cleaning after themselves, and also often growing their own food. But they are also called to a life of prayer. In other words, these women give their entire Earthly lives away so that they can devote their time on Earth for preparing themselves and the souls of others for Heaven. Saint Therese of Lisieux spent her Earthly time in the convent of the Carmelite nuns praying for the souls of priests… Prayer – which is just conversation with God, who is our Beloved – is the focus of the life of a nun…
And it is for this reason that I pray today for the Pope. Once when Pope Saint John Paul II was praying in his private chapel, a secretary interrupted him with an urgent matter. The Saint refused to get up immediately. The secretary continued interrupting, until the Saint responded, that if it were truly a serious matter, then it needed much prayer and he would remain in position and pray.
And I pray for the Pope, because as the head of the Catholic Church, I cannot imagine how much he needs to pray and how relatively little time he is afforded time to pray…
For with prayer, I stand on Holy Ground where everything is clear. Here. At the Foot of the Cross.
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