Charism
The gratuitous gift of the Holy Spirit enabling each to be a channel of God’s Love and Redemption in the world.
We serve our community and the world through our life consecrated to prayer, silence and solitude. But these are tools, not ends in themselves. Their function is to create a space for a deeper and more constant conversation with God.
Prayer
More accurately we should say “prayerful presence.” We aim to pray always as the Apostle Paul suggests. The concrete details of how to prayerfully go to the supermarket or drive on the freeway are the very work which a solitary must engage in. There are no formulas for this.
Silence
Even with our mouths closed, we are hardly ever silent. Our eyes dart to and fro, our mind races forward into a fantastical future and backwards into an imagined past. We are hardly ever just present to the moment. Yet it is in this very moment where silence and healing are to be found. So our work is to constantly strive to be where Christ is, here and now.
Service
We live and work within our own neighborhoods, earning our living, and giving back to the world the love we have so graciously received from the Lord. Some of us work as chaplains, teachers, and computer-geeks.
Community & Solitude
Just as Our Lord blessed the poor in spirit (while clearly not suggesting that being destitute,
hungry, and homeless were noble ideals) so
too we take the meaning of “solitary” to be a person who, in the midst of their life, is profoundly aware
of being alone with God. We carry our cloister in our hearts and our
monastic cell is wherever we are. We believe the Lord is calling us to be a visible witness of the eremitical life without a monastic enclosure. We place emphasis on the centrality of the Holy
Eucharist. Following Romuald, we dedicate
much time to the “one way” of recitation of the psalter.
Divine Offices
We all have different tastes and spiritual inclinations. Therefore, we do not restrict recitation of the offices to any one version. Some use the offices from the Book of Common Prayer, some use a traditional Roman breviary, others a different version, and some may have constructed their own Office book using the shape and form traditional to each office. It doesn’t matter which version is used. What matters is that you recite the office. We also place emphasis on “quality v. quantity” when praying the office. Sometimes life circumstances limit the number of offices one can recite on any given day. Rest assured the community supports you with their prayers when this occurs.
Lectio Divina
Apart from the Offices this is the single most important “weapon” in the arsenal of a solitary. A great part of the formation of the novice will be spent teaching and refining the practice of Lectio, until it becomes second nature. Fundamentally, lectio is to be a time where the individual seeks the Heart of Christ in the Gospels, learning directly from the Master how to become fully human.