Praying for vocations usually means praying for more priests. That’s a good and necessary effort, of course, because without priests, there is no Eucharist.
But there’s another vocation that may be even more endangered. And what’s been happening in the church — and in our culture — over the past few decades should prompt us to ask what should be a dismaying question: Is monasticism disappearing from the Catholic Church?
Sure, most things run their course and few things last forever. But there have always been people who wanted to live the Gospel of Jesus Christ to its fullest degree, and monasticism has been the beating heart of the church from the patristic age. St. Anthony, considered the father of monasticism, left for the Egyptian desert around A.D. 270. He was not, however, the first to renounce the world to seek God in solitude.
Anthony first learned how to live as a monk from others who had gone before him. That wisdom has been passed down through the centuries through the lives of saints like Benedict, Romuald, and Bruno in the West and Isaac and Seraphim in the East. These holy men — and the many who followed them — embraced the call to Christian solitude wholeheartedly. Along the way, they enriched monastic tradition and adapted it to answer the challenges of their own times. We may wonder why no one seems to be doing that today.
But in the Ozark mountains of northwest Arkansas, they are — and have been for nearly 50 years. Initially fueled by a wildly successful music career, John Michael Talbot didn’t just embrace Catholicism; he pursued monasticism. Little Portion Monastery and Hermitage is a testament to Talbot’s personal calling, but the life of the community there is also a powerful witness to the enduring value of monasticism in the church. A best-kept secret in the American Catholic Church, what Little Portion offers is worth sharing.
I recently spent the better part of a week there with the Brothers and Sisters of Charity, staying in one of the hermitages, and participating in the rhythms of their life. Because lauds, vespers and daily Mass are already part of my routine, I didn’t expect to experience many differences when it came to prayer. But there was something qualitatively different about praying the liturgy with people whose lives are centered around it.
The bell rang 15 minutes and then five beforehand. Silence reigned most of the day, with talk limited to only what was necessary for work. In a space without screens, actions spoke louder than words. Every smile or kindness became more visible. Meals began with a selection of the community’s constitution or Celano’s “Life of St. Francis” read aloud.
Food was tasty and nutritious, much of it prepared from what is grown in the garden, and regular fasting is built in. Nothing is wasted. When I returned to my simple hermitage, where there was no cell or wireless signal, both prayer and work came easily. Simply put, the life being cultivated there provides space to breathe; it provides a framework that facilitates divine encounter and spiritual growth.
Monasticism first emerged as a lay movement focused on cultivating a deep and radical love for both God and neighbor. Offering a concrete path to those who aspired to perfection in following Christ, early monastics lived lives marked by penance and asceticism. They retreated from society for a purpose: to battle against temptation and sin and devote themselves entirely to God.
Has God stopped calling people into solitude? No. But we have created a culture in which it is nearly impossible for people to hear that calling or answer it. Today, most of us struggle equally with community and solitude. Our radical individualism, deeply disordered attachments, and insatiable appetite for attention make it harder to consider a monastic vocation. But for those who hear God calling them away from the world, for those who aspire to the way of love, recognizing that it is the way of the Cross, littleportion.org is worth exploring.
The future of monasticism in the Catholic Church is doubtful, even dire. That is a tragedy because the culture we live in is destructive to the human search for God, the interior quest that has been safeguarded by monasteries throughout history. As we struggle with complexity and division, the church needs monastics more, not less. And the world? Even more so.
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