As the novel coronavirus hits the United States, and we are all experiencing a national quarantine for the first time in living memory, our habits of being are tested by this new thing.

We have all come to rely on immediate access to secular conveniences and a faith that is almost entirely composed of communal worship and actions. These will not serve us well when the doors are shut and we all must enter the monastic cell.

As Anthony to his desert haunt was tormented by demons, so many are calling in for help to face this isolation and fear, and other temptations go unspoken but are just as real. After just a few days we are not passing.

Welcome back to Hidden Habits, where we work to shape the inner life in the unseen closets of prayer, so that when the outer world tests us we are ready.

If you are facing isolation and struggle, I invite you to see this time as a time of spiritual renewal, when we turn away from the outer conveniences toward the inner life of the mind, heart, and training to face ourselves and our demons with the power of Christ in faith, but also the training in faith of the Bible, tradition, and habits.

Begin today with a plan to read the daily offices of prayer (I commend missionstclare.com to you) and to sit in quiet prayer for five minutes twice a day.

Many people deal with temptation and struggle through distraction, but the desert monastics teach us that if we will go into the wilderness with our struggles, we will find peace there. That peace is not something we stoke up within ourselves but that comes from Christ when we abide with him in prayer, study, and contemplation.

Then we can find real love of neighbor coming through us from God our Creator.