religious life At the 2010 Christmas party at the Visitation Monastery of Minneapolis, visiting families prayed in the chapel while the Christmas story was told by Sister Mary Virginia, V.H.M. Later, visitors went to the dining room to see Santa and receive a personalized stocking.
Monastics find a new desert Contemplative men and women bring presence and compassion to inner city neighborhoods. by
Robert McClory
Today a new world is emerging, yesterday mainly rural, today almost wholly urban. Your life therefore corresponds to a particularly real and urgent appeal from the world, the church, and God himself. . . . The desert is now inside the city. . . . Be a city-dweller with the city-dwellers of today.
T
hat was the advice Father Pierre-Marie Delfieux gave to the men and women who were entering the monastic community he founded
Robert McClory is professor emeritus at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism and author of As It Was in the Beginning: The Coming Democratization of the Catholic Church (Crossroad, 2007) and most recently Radical Disciple: Father Pfleger, St. Sabina Church, and the Fight for Social Justice (Chicago Review Press), among other books. 40
36 years ago. It was to be a new form of religious life, combining the disciplined prayer and reflection of a much older Catholic monastic tradition with a commitment and presence to the secular city. Delfieux is recognized as one of the founders of the “New Monasticism,” a term that embraces scores of communities around the world today. Their rules and membership differ radically, but many seek a spiritually grounded, integrated lifestyle within busy, loud, often fragmented urban settings. Along with these groups, some more traditional monastic communities have also chosen to live in city environments.
Mission in reverse More than 20 years ago some members of the Sisters of the Visitation began VISION 2012
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