Below is a beautiful piece of writing on the essential quality of the monastic life. It is from the website of the Holy Monastery of St. Paisius in Safford, Arizona.
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BEHIND THE VISIBLE LIFE of the monastery is an invisible life of interior prayer that the monastic considers to be her deepest calling. Through such interior prayer, coupled with constant self-denial and ascetic labor, the monastic seeks to become near and like unto Christ. From her isolated cell, in daily prayer and repentance, the monastic seeks to meet Christ, to become united with Him, and to thereby allow her heart to be purified and enlarged with Christ’s all-embracing love. Only then can the monastic love her fellow man as Christ loves us all.
Accepting the fire of holy love, however, is sobering and exacting labor, accompanied by many tears. There are no guarantees (and often no outward indications) of “success.” It requires painful self-transformation to humble oneself and shed the outer shell of our nature (our jealousies, resentments, prideful aspirations, and the like) in order to find our true nature in Christ and become new creations. Indeed, only by allowing one’s heart to be humbled and enkindled by Divine Love can one be overtaken by Christ-like compassion and co-suffer with all who suffer in the world. The humbled heart enlarged by God’s love cannot bear to see any harm come to anyone, and thus it prays for everyone and is prepared, like Moses, to be erased from the book of life or, like the Apostle Paul, to be exiled from the Kingdom of God, even for the most grievous sinner or worst enemy. As St. Silouan said: “The monk is one who prays for the whole world…” That is the monastic calling; and that calling is worked out in the isolation of the monastic’s cell where, apart from the world, the monastic sees herself as she really is, with all her faults and passions and without the mediating factor of friends or family or success or recognition to tell her that she is important or good or righteous. The monastic chooses the life of obscurity and insignificance to crucify the ego. By dying to oneself, the heart is humbled and finds humanity. By withdrawing from the world, one is united with the world by being able to see oneself in all sinners. By crucifying one’s self-love, one finds one’s true self and can see others more clearly.
Strangely, then, it is from the monastic’s isolated cell and withdrawal from the world that she seeks to accomplish unity with the world. As St. Nilus wrote, a monastic is one who, withdrawing from all men, is united with all men. A monastic separates from people in order to learn to love them with complete and true love, which is inextricably bound up with perfect love of God.
The ascetic struggle begins by leaving the world so that the monastic can keep watch over herself more readily—away from the distractions of the world. It is there, in the quiet of solitude, that one can converse undisturbed with Christ, in prayer and contemplation, and can thus press toward complete victory over one’s passions.
You can visit the monastery’s gift shop here.
Thank you for sharing this. My heart ever tugs in this direction though it is not an option for me, a married woman in her 60s. Nonetheless, we can all learn from these words and remind ourselves of what matters most.
Very true, Sara!