The religious life is the most perfect life; that is, it is the life most conducive to the interior life: a set wake and bed time, set times for silence, daily Mass, communal sung prayer every few hours. In every dimension, there is rigor and regularity, stability and silence for the sole purpose of raising your mind to God.
However, most of us are not afforded this privilege.
If the interior life is the means by which we are sanctified, how can we, as those living in the world, be sanctified with so little access to an environment that is conducive to this? The hectic, fluorescent-lighted office and the increasingly-disastrous, child-filled home is assuredly not this environment.
While this may be cause for discouragement or complacency for mediocrity, we have models in the faith who provide us a solution.
St. Catherine of Siena
At 12 years old, young Catherine had already vowed herself to Christ. She hardly left her small room and subsisted on very little sleep in favor of one thing: continual conversation with God.
Her parents, however, were violently of another mind as they firmly intended for Catherine to get married.
Consequently, Catherine was banished from her room — or rather, her cell — and forced to engage in menial activity all day. Only then, thought her parents, would she abandon her secluded life, come around, and seek marriage.
Her spiritual director, Bl. Raymond of Capua relates her victory:
But the devil was again vanquished; Catherine, instead of yielding, became stronger with the help of grace, and gave way to no trouble in this storm.
The Holy Spirit had taught her to erect a little cell in the interior of her soul, where she resolved never to come forth, notwithstanding her pressing exterior occupations.
When she was privileged with a room, she was often obliged to leave it, but, nothing could oblige her to leave this interior retreat — eternal truth has declared that the kingdom of God is within us — Regnum Dei intra nos est.1
Catherine was a contemplative, and this was not affected by her being pulled into activity. God built a chapel in her soul long before she had fully realized its presence. Her victory consisted in remaining in this sanctuary already built by God.
Therefore, Catherine could leave her cell, but her cell never had to leave her.
Bl. Raymond shows how her example influenced his own life as a contemplative preacher:
Catherine built for herself a cell not made with human hands, helped inwardly by Christ, and so was untroubled about losing a room with walls built by men.
I remember that whenever I used to find myself pressed with too much business, or had to go on a journey, Catherine would say again and again, “Make yourself a cell in your own mind from which you need never come out.”2
If her spiritual father, a contemplative, can learn so profoundly from her example in this regard, how much more can we?
Bl. Raymond of Capua, The Life of St. Catherine of Siena, pg. 18
Great! I need this.