Faith and Family / Sean Gallagher

Parents, monks and nuns have solidarity in service to others

The vocation to cloistered religious life may seem on the surface to be worlds away from the vocation to marriage and family life.

Times of solitary and communal prayer fill up more of the days of monks and nuns than those of parents. Mothers and fathers, on the other hand, are called to live and work in the world—a life that stands in contrast to those called to live within a cloister.

But a beautiful aspect of our Catholic faith is its organic interrelatedness. We’re all members of the mystical body of Christ. And though God may call each of us to vocations that can be very different, our common faith can help us learn from each other’s calling and strengthen us in our own.

For example, parents are constantly called to serve their families in hidden ways that mark the life of cloistered religious. So many of the often little and sometimes large acts of service of parents will never be seen by the broader world—or even by their children.

It happens when parents get up in the middle of the night to care for a sick child; in washing one more load of laundry; in making one more meal (that one or more child will probably object to), in helping with homework and, overarching it all, in consciously shaping their daily lives to be a witness to faith and virtue to their children.

It’s as if these countless acts of selfless service happen within the hidden life of a cloister.

I, in part, appreciate this deep commonality between two seemingly different vocations because about 25 years ago, I discerned a possible call to monastic life, living as a Benedictine novice and junior monk for more than two years at Saint Meinrad Archabbey in St. Meinrad.

Through my prayer and the life I shared with the other monks in the monastery, I ultimately discerned that God was calling me to marriage and family life. With the blessings of my superiors, I left the monastery in late 1999 and married about 18 months later.

I haven’t for a moment regretted my time in the monastery. In fact, I am certain that it formed me well for my calling as a husband and father.

Whatever good I may have achieved thus far in my vocation (and I by no means claim to be a model in it) has happened through God’s grace, a good bit of which continues to come to me through my experience as a monk.

But one doesn’t need to have this experience to benefit from the witness of monks and nuns in the Church. Spouses and parents can find strength in the witness of the Church’s cloistered religious in facing the challenge of serving others day after day in ways that go unrecognized.

And I daresay that perhaps our religious can find encouragement in the difficult days of their hidden calling, knowing that they’re spiritually one with so many faithful Catholic spouses and parents.

Let’s all of us—in every vocation—pave the way more smoothly for the work of grace in our lives by keeping those in other callings in prayer, especially for the strength to do God’s will when we seem to be living an unseen life.

In the end, all of us, in every vocation, is one with our Lord. His eyes see every act of service we do with the help of his grace, no matter how hidden it is to the rest of the world. †