The Way of Life for Urban Monastics

Love God with all your Heart, Spirit, Mind, and Strength

The greatest commandment is to love the Lord, our God. Let this love be the foundation of our lives, actions, relationships, and hope. May we wake up every day and choose to love God.

Accept God’s Abundant Grace and Pursue Growth

God’s love set a place for you, in His kingdom, at His banquet table of grace. God sought you, found you, called you beloved, and invited you to feast on the abundance of His grace. This loving grace, in time, transforms us. This grace invites us to be like Jesus.

Pursue Closeness with God through a Life of Prayer

Prayer draws us into an awareness of God’s presence. It is a way of being close to His tenderness and love. Let our love of God inspire us to pursue God through prayer. As we pray, we experience thoughts, emotions, and words moving between ourselves and God.

Live a Simple Life

To live monastically is to live a simple life. Let us find ourselves increasing in contentment and gratitude for what we have. Let us prayerfully expect to have, expect to get, and do less.

Live with Monastic Rhythms to your Days, Weeks, Months, and Years

We establish active rhythms in our days, weeks, months, and years. They help us center and prioritize our love for God. Simple rhythms grounded in love sustain us. They weave themselves around and through our lives.

Dedicate Yourself to a Life of Prayer

Prayer is being purposefully in God’s tender, loving presence. In prayer, thoughts, emotions, and words can move in both directions. Prayer and work is a kind of monastic motto. Ora et labora. Prayer and work. These are our vocations, with prayer first. We dedicate ourselves to prayer. We pray first. Pray in all things. Pray at the end.

Pray the Divine Office to Begin and End Each Day

This day is a gift from God. Every day is a gift. Let us dedicate today to the Lord. Let us take care to wrap each day with the Divine Office. Give special care to the edges of the day. Fold and mark the edges of each day, its mornings and evenings, with these prayers.

Cultivate a Love of Fasting

Fasting is a gift. We must each begin our journey to cultivate a love of fasting. It takes time for God to do this divine work within our hearts. Regular fasting is important because there are things we can only experience and discover through fasting. God is with us as we regularly abstain from all food and nourishment. Jesus will help us cultivate our love of fasting.

Your Work is Spiritual and Supports your Life

Work is our second vocation, after prayer. We work to support our lives and families. Work is spiritual. Do it, together with all things, as if it was for the Lord. Do it prayerfully. Give your work attention and care. Work with integrity and grace.

Bring your Work into Harmony with our Way of Life

Our walk with Jesus is formed by the people we meet, the things we do, and the places we go. Into every thing we do we bring our full selves. We spend a large amount of our lives on our second vocation, work. Take care that your work is in harmony with our Way of Life.

Live your Life in a City with an Urban Rhythm

Where we live gives shape to the rhythms of our lives. We choose to live within the chaos of the city with a monastic calm. We live our Way of Life against the rapid currents of our cities. For one to be an Urban Monastic, and not a sojourner, one must live in a city.

Love your Neighbors as Yourself

The heart of God is loving your neighbor as yourself. We are neighbors of our God, who inhabits creation with us. God’s love shows us that we are infinitely worthy. It deepens the love we have for ourselves and others. Jesus tells us to love everyone with this love.

Dwell and Live Among your Neighbors in your City

We allow ourselves to rest within the walls of our homes, and the boundaries of our cities. Dwelling among our neighbors means being present with them. We walk the same streets. We breathe the same air. We live our lives in our cities, and among our neighbors.

Help Build a Better Future for your City and Creation

We love our cities because we love our neighbors. We love our cities like Jesus loves. Like Him, our love should serve others in humility. Together with God and others, we support and help build a better future for our cities and creation.

Embody the Fruit of the Spirit in your Life

Words and actions ripple through our world. Each wave starts in a person’s heart before moving into creation. So we give ourselves over to God’s refining work. God wants us to naturally embody and emanate the Spirit’s love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

Cultivate a Life of Hospitality Flowing from your Heart and Spirit

God’s love for me is beyond comprehension. This same love flows from God to everyone. As we become more like Jesus, we will grow in our love and service for others. May our lives be marked by a spirit and works of hospitality.

Be Gracious with Everyone, Generous in Spirit, and Forgive Quickly

The grace of God sustains all things. This grace comes from God’s love. It flows from there and permeates creation. As we live in God’s love, we find that our grace flows from our love. The Spirit’s transforming work of love gives us a generous spirit and helps us to forgive quickly.

Take Care of Yourself Spiritually, Mentally, and Physically

The fullness of our spirit, mind, and body make up our presence. These three are interwoven and inseparable from who we are as people. Jesus cared for His whole self, and we should follow His example.

Dedicate Part of your Living Space to Nature

Life revolves around nature. Life grows from the goodness of creation. Urban life can easily disconnect us from the natural world. When we bring nature into our living space, it reconnects us. A slice of creation is like the garden in the center of monastic cloisters.

Seek and Make a Home within Silence

The quiet of a monastic life is hard within the city. We must seek silence, and make a home within it for ourselves. Discover and create prayerful spaces of silence to be present with God, and ourselves.

Remember and Keep the Lord’s Day Holy

Every Sunday brings us back to the cross and the resurrection of our Christ. Sunday is a day for remembrance, that we set aside as holy. This is a day we give to prayer, praise, and being present with our God who conquered death.

Seek Solitude and once a Year Go on Retreat with God

In solitude, we dwell within the individual and personal love God has for us. No one can do this for us. We alone must seek solitude to be present with God without others. Once a year, we should try to go on retreat with God.

Consume with Restraint and Intentionality

To be monastic is to live an ascetic life. A simple life. A life with less. One consumes and owns less. Let our desire to consume become a desire for God’s presence and love. God has given us more than we will ever deserve. Creation is good, but God is greater. Therefore, let us consume with restraint and intentionality.

God’s love is enough.

Dress in a Way Fitting for your City and Vocation

Our bodies are beautiful gifts from God. We cCelebrate and honor this gift each time we get dressed. We are expected to dress in a way that fits into the diverse tapestry of our city and is functional for our work. Beyond this, there is neither a uniform nor a habit for Urban Monastics.

Be Skeptical of Money, Power, and the People who Hold them

The desire for money and power is insatiable. It easily consumes our finite lives. No one gets to have everything. Choose to pursue Jesus over money and power. Live with Christ and follow His narrow path. Be skeptical of those with money and power. Be skeptical of what they tell you.

Reject Acts of Violence and Do Not Kill

Throughout the history of monasticism, our ancestors have not fought. They rejected violence, even when it meant their own death. The monastic tradition we are a part of is unwavering in its rejection of violence. We are to be people of peace, people who stand against the killing of anyone.

Restrictions on Abusers and Predators

Let us take great care to build and protect the spaces we meet in. This care requires us to be aware of those who have physically or sexually abused or preyed on others. Part of their repentance will include their rejection of power and prestige. Across Urban Monastics, they are not allowed to be in leadership or to make decisions.

All are Welcome to become Monastics or Sojourn with us

You, and everyone else, are welcome to become an Urban Monastic or to sojourn with us. Each one of us commits to let this Way of Life be the foundation for how we live.