Dear Blogging Family,
It’s been a long while since I posted a blog! Time just marches on… Thankfully I am able to steal a few moments today to share with you a very important part of our life here at Our Lady of Solitude: Priest Retreats!

Karol Kottage provides priests with a place to ‘come away and rest for awhile’ with the Lord. Their presence is a great help for our community as well, since we do not have a permanent chaplain. Priest retreatants are asked to offer the nuns’ conventual Mass each morning.
An important part of the charism of the Poor Clares of Perpetual Adoration is prayer for priests. Without the priest we would not have the Blessed Sacrament. Our foundress, Mother Marie de Ste. Claire, once said the praying for priests and praying for more priests is ‘essentially a Franciscan mission.’ And it is one that we take quite seriously!
I recently came across a excerpt from a heartfelt letter that Cardinal O’Malley wrote to his priests:

Let us continue to pray for our priests and the heavy burdens that they carry. It is our hope and prayer that Our Lady of Solitude will provide a place for priests to encounter the Lord in prayer, on Tabor, in the desert, and most especially in the Most Blessed Sacrament.
Help us spread the word to Priests you know about Retreats at Our Lady of Solitude:
To remind you of the efficacy of intercessory prayer:
“The day was long, the burden I had borne seemed heavier than I could longer bear and then it lifted – but I did not know some one had knelt in prayer; had taken me to God that very hour, and asked the easing of the load, and He, in infinite compassion, had stooped down and taken it from me. We cannot tell how often as we pray for some bewildered one, hurt and distressed, the answer comes, but many times those hearts find sudden peace and rest. Some one had prayed, and faith, a reaching hand, took hold of God, and brought Him down that day! So many, many hearts have need of prayer. Oh, let us pray! -St. Maximilian Kolbe
I love the fact that you are dedicated to prayer for priests. During the Year for the Priest, I adopted 3 priests whom I knew and made them the special objects of my prayer for the year. At the end of the year, I selected 3 more and will continue to do so for the rest of my life. I have recently become a Candidate for the Oblates of the Precious Blood, an Association of the Faithful attached to the Handmaids of the Precious Blood. They are your neighbors in Jemez Springs, NM. Their sole apostolate is prayer and sacrifice for the sanctification and salvation of priests. Like you, the Handmaids are a cloistered contemplative congregation. Maybe you might think of beginning an external prayer apostolate for the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration.
I am with you in spirit always!
In the Heart of Jesus,
Judy Kallmeyer