Association Of Catholic Bloggers

'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)

"..As I was crossing the street...a big red truck rounded the corner and hit me. The impact sounded like a terrible explosion, and I was thrown to the ground. The police and ambulance came, they strapped me onto the stretcher, and we were off to the hospital... "The fact that I was alive just overwhelmed me. As I lay flat on my back in the emergency room, just staring at the ceiling, I had time to think...." (click to continue)

(from The Cloistered Heart)

'We must always reserve in our hearts amidst all affairs, as it were, a secret closet, where we are to keep retired within ourselves and where no business of the world can ever enter.'   St. Antonino Peirozzi (from The Cloistered Heart)

You and I have the same basic, fundamental, always-and-forever root vocation. We are called to be saints. To be with God in Heaven is sainthood, and we are called to nothing less . The world will not put the designation 'Saint' before our names, but that's of no importance. God will know. God knows now. He sees every little step we take, every hidden hint of progress toward holiness. 'By holiness we mean the absence of whatever sullies, dims and degrades a rational nature; all that is most opposite to sin and guilt.' (Blessed John Henry Newman). Did I accept God's grace today to conquer some temptation, perhaps in a tiny, hidden moment...? continue....