Paperback: The hermit's vocation is a rare jewel in the church. Nazarena's story is a shining example of just how costly it can be to remain faithful to the unique call heard in the deepmost heart of each one of us. - Michael Downey, author of Trappist: Living in the Land of Desire (1997)
In this book, Thomas Matus tells the true story of one woman's struggle to live her extraordinary vocation to a life of total silence, solitude and hiddenness.
A gifted musician and ordinary Sunday Catholic, Nazarena, née Julia Crotta, had a vision of Jesus calling her to the desert while in college in Connecticut. After much searching and numerous attempts to have her unique vocation recognized by the church, she eventually found her "desert" in a small room at the monastery of the Camaldolese Benedictine nuns in Rome. She lived there as an anchoress for forty-five years until her death in 1990.
Radical yet traditional, exceptional yet simple, Sister Nazarena had a long and spiritually fruitful ascetic life. Nazarena, An American Anchoress (1998) uses excerpts from her own letters of spiritual counselling and material taken from interviews with those who knew her to tell the remarkable story of her life of silence and prayer.
About the author: Father Thomas Matus is a Camaldolese Benedictine monk who for the last thirty years has lived at the monastery of Camaldoli in Italy and at a Christian ashram in south India. He is the author of several books including Yoga and the Jesus Prayer Tradition: An Experiment in Faith (1984) and is coauthor of Belonging to the Universe: Explorations on the Frontiers of Science and Spirituality (1991).
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