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Unique in the Church, the Camaldolese life is ordered to a three-fold good: solitude, community, and witness. Men and women as hermits live by a monastic rule, committed to both solitude and community life. The discipline of solitude combined with the second good, the rigors of community living are intended to widen the heart in service of the third good: bearing witness to the abundance of God's love as the self, others, and every living creature are brought into fuller communion in the one Love. The essays in The Privilege of Love convey the richness and the depth of the Camaldolese Benedictine spirit. Their diversity of expression is itself a magnitude of God's Love. This bonding is the Spirit's own gift, weaving together the many voices found in these pages--voices of women and men, of monk, hermit, and layperson. The voices speak of historical roots, of the riches found in solitude and the grit of community life, of the psychological strength required in any pursuit of God, of the vulnerability of the human heart which is the home for wisdom's Word, and of the privilege of being in love with Love itself.
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