Order of Julian of Norwich

Two nuns from OJN.

The Order of Julian of Norwich (OJN) is a contemplative community of monks and nuns in the Episcopal Church (Anglican Communion).

History

The Order was founded in Connecticut in 1985, under the inspiration of Fr John Swanson (now known by his religious name, Fr John-Julian OJN). The Episcopal Church formally recognised the Order in 1997. The Order has since relocated to Waukesha, Wisconsin, where Julian House Monastery has been gradually extended. The community is semi-enclosed, and the focus of their life together is on prayer, contemplation, and manual labor.[1] Since 2010 the Guardian (elected superior of the community) has been Reverend Mother Hilary OJN.

Julian House Monastery

Originally occupying a single house with an adjacent chapel, the community engaged in extensive fundraising to extend the monastic buildings, and engaged with local contractors to construct an ecologically sensitive building. The house and chapel are now joined, and further extensions have provided community work rooms, additional cells, and facilities for caring for elderly members of the community. Amongst other eco-friendly features, the monastery generates its own solar electricity, harvests rainwater through a water management system, and engages in extensive market gardening and sustainable land husbandry.[2]

Spiritual life

The monks and nuns of the Order lead lives balanced in prayer, work, and recreation. They rise at 3.30am, pray a four-fold daily office, celebrate a daily mass, and engage in individual and community works; their day ends with compline (night prayer) at 7.00pm. Professed sisters and brothers take a four-fold vow; this consists of the customary three-fold monastic vow of poverty, chastity, and obedience, plus a fourth vow of commitment to daily prayer "in the spirit of our Blessed Mother Saint Julian".[3]

References

  1. http://justus.anglican.org/resources/bio/154.html
  2. See the article Care of Place.
  3. The vows and full Rule are available on-line here (requires PDF download).

External links


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