Life of Prayer
“My soul thirsts for God, the living God.”
— Psalm 42
Silent prayer and adoration are at the heart of each day. The day begins with an hour of adoration in community, and ends with another hour in the evening. This is a way for the brothers to remain with Him who is the source of all hope. They also spend other gratuitous moments of prayer in intercession for the needs of the world. The brothers seek to draw all those who visit their priories into this personal and intimate contact with Christ.
The brothers strive to place their personal and community life at the hour of the Cross through the daily celebration of the Eucharist: “My hour has come” (Jn 17). In this way, they learn to offer themselves, with Jesus crucified, to the power of the Father’s love and his victory over evil, so that they might become ever more daring witnesses of the hope that the world needs. By involving the faithful in these celebrations, the brothers seek to introduce them to a simple and joyful liturgy, in a spirit of adoration and recollection.
Rooted in the Tradition of the Church and that of monastic life, the brothers pray the main offices of the Liturgy of the Hours in community, with a monastic liturgy, singing in the vernacular with melodies inspired by Gregorian chant.
In order to become authentic witnesses of the joy of the Gospel, they strive to live a constant evangelization of their person and of their community. They do so particularly thanks to their vows, through which they live by the evangelical counsels of poverty, chastity, and obedience, counsels that the Holy Spirit gives to his Church through Christ and fulfills in an exemplary way in Mary, so that she might become the mother of their vows.
The brothers receive this divine motherhood of Mary constantly, from the very authority of Jesus crucified, as the great secret of their consecrated life: “Am I not here who am your mother?” (Nican Mopohua). They receive Mary daily so that she may take them to herself, and, in the Holy Spirit, bring them to an ever-greater unity with the person of Jesus: “one heart and one soul” (Acts 2).
“As an expression of pure love which is worth more than any work, the contemplative life generates an extraordinary apostolic and missionary effectiveness.”
— John Paul II, Vita Consecrata, §59