Ave Maria! Today is Pro Orantibus Day, which Bl. Pope John Paul II asked the church to observe on November 21, the Memorial of the Blessed Virgin Mary’s Presentation in the Temple. "Pro Orantibus" translates from the Latin as "Those who pray." As Pope Benedict XVI reminds us, today 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." This unique way of life continues to flourish abundantly in our time. It's value is inestimable, which the Holy Father explained and confirmed in the following Angelus message several years ago:
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.
A garden locked is my sister, my bride,
a garden locked, a fountain sealed.
~Songs 4:12
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