Ave Maria! Today is the Feast of the Presentation of Mary. It is also the Church's Pro Orantibus Day, an annual day of solidarity and support for cloistered and monastic religious throughout the world. "Pro orantibus" means "for those who pray." In 1997 Blessed John Paul II asked that this ecclesial event observed worldwide on November 21, the Memorial of the Blessed Virgin Mary’s Presentation in the Temple, 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." It is also a day to remind us that we need to provide spiritual and material support to these men and women who who have devoted their whole lives, hidden in the world, to God through unceasing prayer and sacrifice. Practically speaking, these communities depend on God's Providence, working through people like you and me, to provide them with the necessities of daily living. So let us remember them when we pull out both our rosaries and our checkbooks!
Pope Benedict XVI speaks often of the tremendous value of the cloistered, contemplative life. Here is one of the Holy Father's previous statements on the occasion of Pro Orantibus Day. It is his Angelus Message of November 19, 2006, and it explains beautifully the enormous need we have for and the great debt we owe to our cloistered brothers and sisters.
Dear Brothers and Sisters,Praised be Jesus Christ, who calls us to life on high with Him!
The day after tomorrow, 21 November, on the occasion of the liturgical Memorial of the Presentation of Mary, we will be celebrating Pro Orantibus Day, dedicated to remembering cloistered religious communities. It is an especially appropriate opportunity to thank the Lord for the gift of the numerous people in monasteries and hermitages who are totally dedicated to God in prayer, silence and concealment.
Some may wonder what meaning and value their presence could have in our time, when there are so many situations of poverty and neediness with which to cope.
Why "enclose oneself" for ever between the walls of a monastery and thereby deprive others of the contribution of one’s own skills and experience? How effective can the prayer of these cloistered Religious be for the solution of all the practical problems that continue to afflict humanity?
Yet even today, often to the surprise of their friends and acquaintances, many people in fact frequently give up promising professional careers to embrace the austere rule of a cloistered monastery. What impels them to take such a demanding step other than the realization, as the Gospel teaches, that the Kingdom of heaven is “a treasure” for which it is truly worth giving up everything (cf. Mt 13: 44)?
Indeed, these brothers and sisters of ours bear a silent witness to the fact that in the midst of the sometimes frenetic pace of daily events, the one support that never topples is God, the indestructible rock of faithfulness and love. "Everything passes, God never changes", the great spiritual master Teresa of Avila wrote in one of her famous texts.
And in the face of the widespread need to get away from the daily routine of sprawling urban areas in search of places conducive to silence and meditation, monasteries of contemplative life offer themselves as "oases" in which human beings, pilgrims on earth, can draw more easily from the wellsprings of the Spirit and quench their thirst along the way.
Thus, these apparently useless places are on the contrary indispensable, like the green "lungs" of a city: they do everyone good, even those who do not visit them and may not even know of their existence.
Dear brothers and sisters, let us thank the Lord, who in his Providence has desired male and female cloistered communities. May they have our spiritual and also our material support, so that they can carry out their mission to keep alive in the Church the ardent expectation of Christ’s Second Coming.
For this, let us invoke the intercession of Mary, whom we contemplate on the Memorial of her Presentation in the Temple as Mother and model of the Church, who welcomes in herself both vocations: to virginity and to marriage, to contemplative life and to active life.
P.S. The Web site Cloistered Life, a treasure trove of information about this life "hidden with Christ," offers the following prayer for Pro Orantibus Day:
Prayer in Support of the Cloistered Life
Eternal Father, we praise and thank you for those sisters and brothers who have embraced the gift of the cloistered and monastic life. Their hidden presence in our world is indispensable to the Church’s life and mission.
As we celebrate Pro Orantibus Day, let us honor the holiness and glory of the Blessed Virgin. May she intercede so that many young people might dedicate themselves entirely to Your divine service by living lives of prayer and sacrifice.
May all of us always be mindful of the spiritual and material needs of those who commit their lives to seeking God by fixing their gaze on those things which are eternal.
We ask this through Our Lord Jesus Christ, Your Son, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever. Amen.
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