Wine colored Habits

I'm sure that caught your attention. No, it doesn't refer to drinking. Rather it refers to the habit of a monastic order of Maronite Catholic Nuns, the Hermits of Jesus the Eternal Priest.

OK, you ask, who are they & why are you talking about them? Fair enough. & so I shall answer.

I 1st heard about them several years ago when I was watching Mother Angelica Live on EWTN. Mother Elias, the Spiritual Mother, of the monastery was her guest. Mother Elias was talking about her order & their charism, which was to pray for priests. Having a couple of good friends that were a priest & a seminarian at the time, naturally I was interested in finding out more about them as well as supporting their work. It also helped to peek my interest that the 1 Eastern Catholic Church that I had any experience with was the Maronite Catholic Church.

As a result of writing to them I was put on their newsletter mailing list. & acouple years ago I became a lay spiritual affiliate. Over the years, I have come to know them through their newsletters & their website. I have grown to love them & care about them.

Sow, what type of life does these nuns lead? I'll share a little but for greater detail check out their website which I have put at the end of this blog.

They use 4 words to describe life in the monastery; eucharistic, contemplative, eremitic, cloistered.

Eucharistic means that the center of their day is focused on the Eucharist. This naturally includes the Divine Liturgy, but also time in Eucharistic adoration. Jesus is truly present in an unique way in the Eucharist. It may still look & taste like bread & wine, but it isn't. It is changed (transubstantiation is the technical term) into the body & blood of Jesus.

Contemplative means that they spend time in silence, studying & meditating on the Word of God found in scripture. They call it Sacred reading. They expect Jesus to speak to them through this to mold them into the persons He wants them to be.

Erematic describes their lifestyle, that of hermits. Hermits life a lifestyle of simplicity, silence & solitude. This doesn't mean total seperation from others but it requires of them the time for prayer & contemplation. They also are required to spend some time in manual labor, working, not to get rich, but to care for the monastery.

Cloisterd means they are set apart. This is to enable them to better live the erimatic life. It puts limits on the amount of visits they can have so they are free to have the time to live & follow Jesus & their daily monastic routine.

That is it very simplified. Hopefully I got it all correct. But as I said, to get the full picture of who they & & what they do visit their website. It does a much better job of edxplaining things.

& while you are there why not get their address so you can send them a donation. They depend on Divine Providence to meet their needs. So, consider giving them alms. God will bless you for it. In addition you can print out a prayer for priests they have & join in with them in daily praying for the priests & seminarians of the Catholic Church.

Oh yeah, by the way, if you haven't figured out the reason their habits are wine colored the full explanation is on their website. But it should be obvious that the color is tied into the Eucharist.

Their website: www.hjep.org