Association Of Catholic Bloggers

It's a bad time of year to be hurting.  Not that there is a good time for pain, of course, but the days around Christmas and New Year's can be particularly poignant for some. Many of us have had such seasons. Times when we can't be with loved ones, or a close friend has died, or we've suffered a miscarriage, or we're sick, or we've lost our job, or there is illness in the family.  Even the time of year can make us feel blue.  Here in the northern hemisphere, night falls early in these months of bleak midwinter. We may be struggling to adjust to the long, long, long dark. For anyone reading this who is sad, in pain, or maybe just wishing the holidays would be over and gone - know that you're not alone... (continue reading)

(from The Cloistered Heart)

‘Silence is so lacking in this world which is often too noisy, which is not favorable to recollection and listening to the voice of God. In this time of preparation for Christmas, let us cultivate interior recollection, so as to receive and keep Jesus in our lives.’ Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI    (from The Cloistered Heart)

My 'Advent Window' opened when I was twenty years old. I was in what I call my 'God doesn't bother me and I don't bother Him' phase. There was so much to do... friends to hang out with, boys to date, parties to go to. I took no time to think about God; in fact, I was ignoring Him altogether. God, however, was 'thinking' of me, and began reminding me of Himself through a series of little seasonal things. A song heard on the radio, a nativity scene featured on the courthouse steps, Christmas songs piped into stores to draw customers... (click to continue..)

'Advent is concerned with  that very connection  between memory and hope  which is so necessary to man.  Advent's intention is to awaken  the most profound and emotional  memory within us; namely,  the memory of the God Who became a child.  This is a healing memory;  it brings hope....  It is the beautiful task of Advent  to awaken in all of us  memories of goodness  and thus to open doors of hope.' Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI (from The Cloistered Heart)

(from The Cloistered Heart)

'For my heart is always with Him; day and night it thinks unceasingly   of its heavenly and divine Friend, to Whom it wants to prove its affection.' St. Elizabeth of the Trinity   (The Cloistered Heart)

(from The Cloistered Heart)

'I would like us, in our meditation today, to make up our minds once and for all that we need to aspire to become contemplative souls, in the street, in the midst of our work... (continue)

'As soon as worldly people see that you wish to follow a devout life, they aim a thousand darts of mockery and even detraction at you. The most malicious of them will slander your conversion as hypocrisy, bigotry, and trickery. They will say...' (click to continue)

Someone once wondered why my earliest writings on The Cloistered Heart did not mention s aints who'd had ideas somewhat similar to my own . Actually, I'd had no clue that anyone else ever thought such things... at least things with specifically 'cloistered' imagery. Imagine my surprise, then, when I first read this from Elizabeth of the Trinity:   'May the God Who is all love be your unchanging dwelling place, your cell, and your cloister in the midst of the world.' Oh my goodness... (continue...) 

How do we know what miracles of grace we may be the instruments of when... (continue)

From The Cloistered Heart

In just a few days, The Cloistered Heart blog will 'celebrate' five years on the Internet. Five years of posts on what it can mean to live for God, cloistered in heart, in the midst of our families and neighborhoods and workplaces; and it seems that in some ways, we are just beginning..... Because that many pages of quotes and pictures and analogies can be overwhelming, and because we (thankfully) have new visitors on an ongoing basis, I've decided to spend this week re-visiting some of our rooms and corridors.  So let's have a look around the cloister, shall we?.... (continue reading)

(from The Cloistered Heart)

  from The Cloistered Heart

(from The Cloistered Heart)

I was drawn to the idea of a cloister in my heart. I longed for a place to retreat from the world, to be alone with Jesus. I not only longed for a place where I could escape the noise of life around me, but I also dreamed of providing a place in my heart where Jesus could find respite from this world... (continue) 

from The Cloistered Heart

(from The Cloistered Heart)