What is Cloistered Life?

Questions Invited About Cloistered and Monastic Life

What do cloistered and monastic communities do all day besides pray? Do they do any work? Why is it good to spend so much time praying? There are lots of misconceptions about the hidden life of cloistered and monastic communities. This website will act as a forum which will allow our web visitors to ask questions about this unique kind of religious life. Cloistered and monastic communities, in turn, will provide answers to them in this column.

Please click here, go to the bottom of the page, and type your question in the box below marked “Leave a Reply” and return later to this site for an answer.

Spotlight on the Saints: St. Clare, Abbess—August 11

After hearing Saint Francis of Assisi preach, Clare confided to him her desire to live for God alone, and the two became close friends. On Palm Sunday in 1212, Clare ran away from home to enter religious life. She eventually took the veil from Saint Francis at the Church of Our Lady of the Angels in Assisi, Italy.

Clare founded the Order of Poor Ladies at San Damiano, and led it for 40 years. Everywhere the Franciscans established themselves throughout Europe, there also went the Poor Clares, depending solely on alms, forced to have complete faith on God to provide through people; this lack of land-based revenues was a new idea at the time. Clare’s mother and sisters later joined the order, and there are still thousands of members living lives of silence and prayer.

Intercessory Prayer—Let us ask Saint Clare to intercede with God today to assist us with our urgent prayer needs, and to intercede for all cloistered religious who strive to live for God alone!

Pope Benedict Visits A Convent of Cloistered Dominican Nuns

Recently Benedict XVI visited cloistered nuns at the Dominican convent of Santa Maria del Rosario in Italy where he said recited the Liturgy of the Hours. During his address to the community, the Holy Father reminded them that “by this collective prayer that finds its culmination in the daily participation in the Mass, your dedication to the Lord in silence and obscurity is fertile and rich in fruits.” Afterward the Pope told them that their life of prayer and work is very important for the Church. View video.

Pro Orantibus Day (For Those Who Pray) — Nov. 21

Pro Orantibus Day Recalls Cloistered Communities as the “Heart” of the Church

(Aug. 12, 2010) Nov. 21 is the Church’s Pro Orantibus Day, an annual day of solidarity and support for cloistered and monastic religious throughout the world. Pope Benedict XVI spoke to a group of cloistered Dominican nuns in Rome in June, referring to such religious as “the heart” which pumps life to the rest of the Body of Christ.

The Holy Father has often spoken of the tremendous value of the cloistered, contemplative life. This time he compared the role of the cloistered nuns in their life of contemplation, work and prayer to the heart that gives life-giving blood to the rest of the body. Pope Benedict said that their lives were “hidden with Christ,” and that they contribute to the mission of the Church, which is the “instrument of salvation for every man that the Lord has redeemed with His Blood.” Read CNS story.

Pro Orantibus Day was begun by Pope John Paul II in 1997, and the Holy Father asked that this ecclesial event be observed worldwide, and that it be observed as a special day to thank those in the cloistered and monastic life for serving as “a leaven of renewal and of the presence of the spirit of Christ in the world.” The Pope also intended it to remind others of the need to provide spiritual and material support “for those who pray.”

The nationwide effort to publicize Pro Orantibus Day is coordinated by the Institute on Religious Life, a national organization based in Chicago.

For instruction and aids to celebrate the day please see our FREE resources.