About HEED
Heed was formed after its founder witnessed firsthand the challenges that an individual goes through to discern religious life and the sacrifices they make once consecrated. His oldest daughter is currently fulfilling a vocation of silence, solitude, and prayer as a contemplative anchorite. Her journey wasn’t without difficulty and financial stress. Over the course of two years, she researched and courted many orders, emailed, wrote, and spoke to many sisters, attended several retreats, sought spiritual guidance, and visited over five convents for weeks to a month at a time. This became her full-time job.
After much discernment she was accepted and joined an order. Several weeks went by and like so many other brothers and sisters, she realized that the match wasn’t the right fit. Most orders today put a heavy emphasis on service and keep themselves super busy as teachers and social workers helping the underserved. While this is very honorable, many people discerning spiritual life feel a calling to serve God alone. The solitary life of prayer is far more powerful than any act of service that a nun or brother could do out in the world. Contemplative religious sisters and brothers do not exist for some job but to be totally available to God. They are called away from this world not on account of how useful they can be but on account of His love and His invitation to know Him in a particular and intimate way.
Today we’re faced with a shortage of religious vocations, in particular those who seek and practice as contemplative anchorites and eremitics. Heed was established to help these brothers and sisters who are called to serve God alone. Because of this calling they aren’t typically associated with established orders or convents. As a result, they must live near a supportive parish. And since they don’t work and have no means for making a living, they need help paying rent, buying groceries, covering health insurance and medical costs, buying gas, and other expenses that employed laypersons or brothers and sisters in an order or monastery often take for granted.
Seeking a religious vocation isn’t easy. A lot of time and energy goes into discerning. For most, it can be a full-time job. Heed is here to help ease the financial burden by covering expenses for camps, training, conferences, retreats, and travel associated with monastery and convent visits for those who are discerning religious life.
In the long-term Heed hopes to provide support for new religious communities in the process of formation including assisting in the search and financing of land, housing, furnishings, and liturgical supplies.
Heed is for those who answer His call. Like how we commemorate Mary during the Solemnity of the Annunciation, she had to first hear God’s call before she could act upon it. It’s this attitude of obedience and submission to God’s will that is the inspiration and foundation upon which we built Heed. Read more about how the Annunciation is the inspiration behind the founding of Heed.
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These two articles do a great job explaining the lives of contemplative anchorites and eremitics, their challenges, their needs, and the reason behind their vocation: