Monastic Life

Dear DLL Jesus,

Today is the day when I just want to go on looking at the photographs and go on writing to you about them!!!🤗 The more I see them the more I want to write to you about them!🤭 But I don't know what exactly to write to you!

The heart is extremely overwhelmed by the whole trip to the Infant Jesus shrine. My love for this beautiful place is simply overflowing right now! But it is not that I am getting the desire to live there - the way it had happened to me in May when I went to Bangalore. It is a feeling that I am unable to explain - I don't want to live in this monastery - no, there's an extremely different kind of feeling that I am getting this time - I can't name it but it could perhaps be "loneliness" - maybe that's it - because I am not getting the same vibes that I got in the Goa monastery - this monastery has a very sombre look and feel - a lot lonelier than Goa. Any which way, it was not a monastery in Bangalore. 

But the Carmel Hill monastery or seminary did not give me a positive vibe - I felt lost and lonely, I managed only because of Fr. Michael, Fr. Lancy and Fr. Deep - even though the others were equally good to me, somehow the monastic life of the young seminarians overwhelmed me - this time I felt that I cannot live that kind of life. Last evening when I was sitting alone listening to Fr. Rudolph's 6 pm Konkani Mass, I was in so much tears that I wanted to come back home at that very moment! Thank you for sending the angel in the form of that priest/deacon who rescued me by speaking to me. That made me get up and go start talking to Fr. Michael - that conversation rejuvenated me a lot! That was the time I started feeling bad for the seminarians studying there - what a hard and disciplined life they live - do everything at the ringing of the bell - unlike last time in Bangalore, this kind of life scared me - I wondered why are their lives so hard - I feel like crying even now while writing this - oh, I am already in tears!😢 Please accept my prayers for them, Lord! My sincere prayers are to strengthen them in this way of life - not only for the young seminarians but the priests also - what an austere and hard life they live and we dare to judge them! They are set apart for you - perhaps that's why you made me sit there outside and brought this enlightenment - make me realize where everyone has been going wrong! 

Thus,  it is my humble request to you to please remind me every day to pray for all your priests and seminarians - even though I may not remember, from today I am dedicating my prayers to them - don't make them feel lonely the way I felt yesterday evening - please strengthen them to carry on the work you have entrusted to them!