At the beginning of every Easter Vigil, the priest prays the following words as the Paschal candle is prepared: ‘Christ yesterday and today; the Beginning and the end; the Alpha and the Omega. All time belongs to him and all the ages. To him be glory and honour for ever and ever. Amen.’[1]
‘All time belongs to him.’ There is perhaps nowhere on earth where this truth is more apparent than in a monastery, where each day consists of set times of prayer in the ancient tradition of the ‘Sanctification of Time’. More profoundly, by religious profession, our lives are consecrated to Christ and given over to him. From then on, we are completely at his disposal. Every present moment belongs to him, not to us.
We are often asked, particularly by school groups who visit us, to describe a typical day in Carmel. There is actually no such thing! In black and white, our daily horarium or timetable can look very stark, and it gives the impression that our way of life must be very monotonous, doing the same things at the same time day in, day out. In reality, no two days are the same and life is full of what Pope Francis loved to call ‘God’s surprises.’ It’s also true that no two nuns in the same monastery will have the same experiences in the same day, even though outwardly we might follow the same schedule. We each have particular areas of responsibility and to a large extent we are entrusted to organise and carry out our work duties as and when we can.
Like the first Carmelite hermits on Mount Carmel, we are hermits who live in community and one of the distinguishing marks of the Carmelite way of life is its particular emphasis on solitude. We spend two hours a day in silent, personal prayer; an hour first thing in the morning and again in the early evening. We can go to the chapel for this, but I usually stay in my own cell. The cell is not simply the place where we sleep, but the primary place of encounter with God. As the Rule of St Albert puts it, ‘Each one of you is to stay in his own cell or nearby, pondering the Lord’s law day and night and keeping watch at his prayers unless attending to some other duty.’[2] Even when we are not physically in our cells, we ‘carry’ them with us, in that interior space where we meet God in each present moment. So our offices and work rooms in a sense become an extension of our own cell. They too are places of encounter with God.
Most of our day is spent in silence. We only speak during the day when absolutely necessary about work matters and for an hour of recreation each evening, so that each sister is left free to cultivate an attitude of attentiveness to God’s word and to be at prayer even in the midst of activity. We each work alone insofar as that is possible. My own work is mainly in the Altar Bread Office, from where we supply altar breads to several hundred parishes, schools and communities across the United Kingdom. It is the main way we earn our own living and I work there for around five hours each day: bagging altar breads, packing parcels, preparing online postage for a daily collection and responding to customers by email and telephone – often also receiving prayer requests along with their altar bread orders. I also have responsibility for preparing the liturgy for Mass, keeping certain areas of the monastery clean and tidy and answering the door in the afternoons. While I am working, each of my sisters will be busy with their own work whether that is altar bread work, looking after visitors, sewing, preparing the chapel for the liturgy, cooking, cleaning, attending to administration and the upkeep of the house or any number of the other tasks which need to be done in every household.
Pope Leo XIV shared recently that his own spiritual life has been strongly influenced by a Carmelite text, The Practice of the Presence of God by Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection. This simple book captures the essence of daily Carmelite life: being aware of God’s presence throughout the day and entrusting everything into God’s hands. St Teresa also taught this spirituality when she wrote that God is present in the kitchen amongst the pots and pans.[3] As a keen cook herself, she was definitely writing from her own experience!
We are blessed to live in a rural setting, surrounded by so much beauty and wildlife. The south side of our monastery looks across fields to the River Derwent and borders the Lower Derwent Valley Nature Reserve. This vista changes so much throughout the seasons: a blaze of dandelions in spring, hay in summer, grazing sheep in autumn, flood plains in winter. One might spy a pair of red kites hovering and circling above, a young deer bolting across the fields or a heron flapping steadily towards the river. The horizon is visible to both east and west, so that we witness some glorious sunrises and sunsets, as well as the changing patterns of the moon and stars on clear nights.
Our solitary prayer is balanced by the communal celebration of the liturgy. We gather together in the chapel seven times a day for the Divine Office, which we pray in union with the Church throughout the whole world and on behalf of the whole world. As we pray the psalms, it is striking how often these ancient prayers resonate with what is happening in the world right now. Their timelessness is also rooted in the way they address God directly, offering up the rawest emotions of the human heart with the simplicity of faith. The Office is usually chanted in monotone, although we sing a psalm tone on Sundays, major feasts and solemnities.
The high point of each day is the celebration of Holy Mass, the time of which varies because we are kindly served by a rota of priests from our local deanery. Since Mass is the most important aspect of each day, everything else is arranged around it and so even the horarium itself can change a lot from day to day.
During each day, we are deeply aware of the needs of those who are suffering in the world and those closer to home who rely on our prayers. ‘God’s surprises’ in the course of the day can often spring from visits or phone calls, emails or letters from people reaching out for prayer. Like many religious communities today, we live this vocation within the reality of smaller numbers and the quiet pressure of sustaining our life with fewer sisters. These limitations can sometimes be felt quite keenly, yet they also reveal something essential about our charism: that it is not our strength that carries the life of the monastery, but the Lord’s. In these circumstances, fidelity itself becomes a form of witness — a quiet trust that God continues to work through what is small and hidden.
More and more, our community is becoming aware of how important it is for us to simply be a presence here, witnessing to the living God and his boundless love and providing a welcoming space for people to encounter God in silence and hope. As an enclosed community, we have the privilege of being able to foster an atmosphere of silence and prayer, but it is not purely for our own benefit. We often welcome individuals or groups for quiet days or simply some quiet time of prayer in our chapel. People are also welcome to join us for the liturgy.
The words of the Eucharistic Prayer: ‘Jesus the Way to the Father’, drawn from Chapter I of Gaudium et Spes, reflect this outward-looking dimension of our community life:
‘Keep us attentive to the needs of all
that, sharing their grief and pain, their joy and hope,
we may faithfully bring them the good news of salvation
and go forward with them along the way of your Kingdom.’[4]
Although our way of life can seem very highly structured, I think the real test of how deeply we are identified with the Carmelite charism comes when those structures are suddenly taken away. I think of our sisters who live in war zones and natural disaster zones. I have a friend in the Carmel of Aleppo, where in recent years the sisters have withstood not only civil war but also a severe earthquake and then further violent unrest after the fall of the Assad regime. Their first instinct is always to reach out to the people around them – both Christian and Muslim – who stand most in need. They have a particular vocation to live in the midst of a suffering people and to serve them. While we live here in peaceful North Yorkshire, we still carry that sense of being alongside the people who live around us, and we are conscious of those who need our care.
The last Office of each day is Compline or Night Prayer, which begins with a silent examination of conscience, when we return the day into God’s hands and commend it to his merciful love. It is also the time when, if there have been any disagreements during the day, they can be resolved, forgiven and left behind. Tomorrow is another day.
After Compline, we usually stay in the chapel for a few moments of silent prayer for those who have asked our prayers in the course of the day, for world events, for those who will die during the night, and for all who are feeling vulnerable or afraid for any reason. In these moments of intense prayer, we can reach out with God’s love to those who feel they have no hope.
When St Teresa began her reform of Carmel, she wrote that in the face of the world’s turmoil she resolved to do the little in her power by living her religious vows as faithfully as she could and striving that her companions should do the same.[5] By living this way of life from day to day in the twenty-first century, we too are doing the little in our power to help heal the wounds of our broken world.
[1] Roman Missal 2011
[2] Rule of St Albert 10
[3] The Book of her Foundations 5:8
[4] Roman Missal 2011
[5] Way of Perfection 1:2
