The Mindset of Monastic Living

When I first began my journey of living monastically in the world, I didn't realize how simple it would be to implement such a lifestyle as a lay person.

At first glance, it seems that a monastic lifestyle is impossible in this world - in the midst of busy schedules, constant noise, and endless distractions. Yet the more deeply I understand monastic spirituality, and more specifically Carmelite spirituality, the more I realize how easily one can live it in any walk of life. This is because even more than externals - as helpful as the silence, solitude, simplicity, and routine of cloistered life are for monastic living - the monastic spirituality is at its root a mindset, a way of life.

Monastic living can be summed up thus: attachment to God; detachment from the world.

What does this mean practically speaking? How can you implement this into your daily life?

Attachment to God for the monastic heart means living in a constant awareness of His Presence. In his book 'Listen to the Silence,' Pere Jacques says, "The one, authentic Carmel consists of a quiet, uninterrupted conversation with God." In a later chapter of the book, he writes: "Prayer should be our steady, supernatural method of breathing, day and night, in the silence of our souls. Our prayer should grow more intense at certain times and those times should increase in both frequency and duration. Eventually, even daily duties in the kitchen will be subsumed into prayer, and nothing will be able to disrupts its focus."

This is what the monastic heart is called to, my friends - an ever deepening prayerfulness, a sensitivity to God's constant presence with us, that eventually becomes a habitual state regardless of external occupations.

But to achieve this immersion in prayer, it is essential to practice detachment. There is not room for God where we have taken space for ourselves and worldly things.

Going back to Pere Jacques' book, he addresses this saying: "We can neither find nor embrace God, just as we cannot sit at His feet in order to gaze lovingly upon Him, if we are immersed in noise and activity."

In our day, there is a strong attachment, in truth an addiction, to noise and activity. Hardly an hour passes in which we have not picked up our phone. Tv, music, computers, phones...all these things become habitual for us to turn to in moments of quiet, and this attachment prevents us from entering into the path of deeper prayer. Minimizing these distractions goes a very long way in making us more available to God as those in monastic life are.

Besides this attachment to external things, there are all the internal attachments we have as well. We are attached to our own will which keeps us from embracing God's; to our selfishness, which keeps us from being generous in love of God and neighbor; to slothfulness which keeps us from prayer...the list goes on. St. John of the Cross so vividly put it when he said:

"The soul that is attached to anything however much good there may be in it will not arrive at the liberty of divine union. For whether it be a strong wire rope or a slender and delicate thread that holds the bird, it matters not, if it really holds it fast; for until the cord be broken the bird cannot fly."

Attachment to God, detachment from ourselves - let this be our desire, our prayer, our endeavor. Let us live monastically in the world, immersed in prayer, and eliminating the distractions of this world from our daily lives as much as possible.

——-

Here is my Amazon link to Fr. Jacques’ book quoted above! It is such a beautiful read - it is a retreat he gave to Carmelite nuns, but it gives so much insight and has so many applicable lessons even for those of us in the world…especially those of us seeking to live monastically! https://amzn.to/428Tahp