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introduction

questions that persist

birth of the foundation

centering prayer

the beginning of the story

st. paul

centering prayer as a way of transformation

thoughts matter

contemplative service

blocks along the way

losing our way

guide/angel

vision for the future

internal monastery

INTERNAL MONASTERY 

Perhaps the finger of God is pointing not to a building and a permanent place of abode for the Foundation but to an internal monastery within the minds and hearts of each of us. Perhaps God is calling you and me, to create a monastery within ourselves, a place of stillness and silence alive with God’s Presence. As we deepen our relationship with Him, instead of withdrawal from the world, perhaps he is urging us to greater intentional involvement in the world. Perhaps He is asking us to keep alive His Presence in the midst of the hurly burly of contemporary life, caring for family, pursuing careers, serving in the public arena. Perhaps he is nudging us to challenge the values and mores of contemporary society and to challenge them not out of the surface self but from the deep stillness of His Presence within us.   

But as Gerald May reminds us, “An internal monastery is very difficult to establish in a culture that is constantly subverting surrender”.[1]  What we are being called to is no easy matter. An internal monastery calls for fidelity to contemplative prayer, contemplative practices, contemplative living and contemplative service on a daily basis. It requires, above all, surrender to the Living God and the willingness to rest in Him in the centre of our soul.  May we have the love, the courage and the spirit of joy to take up the challenge!

 And so my dear friends, I would like to end by making the prayer of St. Paul for the Ephesians my prayer for you, my companions on the spiritual journey. 

“This is what I pray, kneeling before the Father….: 

Out of his infinite glory, may he give you the power through his Spirit for your hidden self to grow strong, so that Christ may live in your hearts through faith, and then, planted in love and built on love, you will with all the saints have strength to grasp the breadth and the length, the height and the depth; until, knowing the love of Christ which is beyond all knowledge, you are filled with the utter fullness of God…Amen.”[2]  

 Sr. Paul D’Ornellas,
Ortinola, Maracas Valley, 11^th October 2008