Reaching Our Buried Treasure

I picture this treasure map with each of these vows working together to help find the buried treasure. These stones come together to form our life and be that buried treasure: our monastic way of life. The Gospel of Matthew says that the Kingdom of Heaven is like a net thrown into the sea, collecting fish of every kind. In our monastic life, we do not just have one type of woman. We have many types — young, old, tall, short, working, and retired. Could you imagine what it would be like if we were all the same?

We have not reached our buried treasure by ourselves. We’ve worked together as community members and helped carry each other to the different stepping stones. We’ve professed vows of stability, obedience, and fidelity to the monastic way of life. We do not do this alone — we do it in the presence of God, the saints, and the sisters of Monastery Immaculate Conception. Without the help of the community, I would not be able to live out these vows on my own. In her commentary on the Rule, Joan Chittister states, “from then on they go through life as a people whose trust in God and who are responsible for one another.” We are in this together. We continue to say yes to being on this journey each day of finding the buried treasure of living the monastic life as a Sister of St. Benedict of Monastery Immaculate Conception.

I would like to close by sharing part of a poem from Monastery of the Heart by Joan Chittister:

“We must turn the compass point of the heart back again to where God waits for us arms full of mercy, made of love, to be our own best selves, not for our own sake alone, but for the sake of the rest of the world. Benedictine spirituality is an attempt to do the ordinary things of life extraordinarily well.”

Let us follow this treasure map to lead us to this monastic way of life extraordinarily well!