life had been so busy raising a family that she scarcely ever had a private minute for herself, was more contemplative than he was.
t. The lesson was rather that there was something wonderfully right about what his mother was doing all these years as she lived the interrupted life amid the noise and incessant demands of small children. He had been in a monastery, but so had she.
For example, the mother who stays home with small children experiences a very real withdrawal from the world. Her existence is definitely monastic. Her tasks and preoccupations remove her from the centers of power and social importance. And she feels it.
Moreover, the demands of young children also provide her with what St. Bernard, one of the great architects of monasticism, called the "monastic bell".
Hence, a mother rearing children, perhaps in a more privileged way even than a professional contemplative is forced, almost against her will, to constantly stretch her heart.