INSIDE
Daily Life in the Monastery of Our Lady of Grace
Seeking to have one mind and heart in God we move in a daily rhythm of solitude and common life, prayer, work and the study of sacred truth. While many of the sisters rise long before the rising bell, we first come together as a community for Morning Prayer at 5:50. A half-hour interval precedes the celebration of the Eucharist at 7:00 by our chaplain, a Dominican Friar. The rest of the day is structured around the various times when we will return together to the chapel to sing the Liturgy of the Hours. Our schedule includes two hours a day for lectio divina (prayerful reading of the Sacred Scriptures) and private prayer. Part of each day is given to study and four hours are spent at assigned work. There is a period of optional recreation following our main meal at noon, and an hour of recreation for the whole community after our light meal in the evening. Our day together concludes with Night Prayer at 8:00. We have perpetual adoration, so throughout the day and night there is a sister praying before the Blessed Sacrament, interceding for the needs of the world. It is a day which is harmoniously ordered to the continual remembrance of God, who draws us through his Word and Spirit to share together in their own divine life
"The solitary cell, the closed cloister, are the place where the nun lives wholly concentrated with Christ in God. The mystery of this communion is revealed to her to the extent that, docile to the Holy Spirit and enlivened by his gifts, she listens to the Son, fixes her gaze upon his face, and allows herself to be conformed to his life, to the point of the supreme self-offering to the Father, to the praise his glory. The enclosure, therefore, even in its physical form, is a special way of being with the Lord, of sharing in Christ's self-emptying of Himself by means of a radical poverty, expressed in ...renunciation not only of things but of 'space', of contacts, of so many benefits of creation, at one with the fruitful silence of the Word on the Cross." (Verbi Sponsa)
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