“Seek first the Kingdom of God, and all these other things will be given to you besides.” When the Lord speaks to his disciples about anxieties, about busyness, about the hustle and bustle of the world, he does not lead them to abandon everything and run away; rather, he leads them to put the first thing first, and allow everything to come into the proper place thereafter. The life of integration, of wholeness, indeed of true holiness is rooted in putting God first and giving Him the authority to form you, guide you, and send you on mission. The monastic tradition has long offered pathways to this ordered, harmonious, rightly prioritized life, building communities where God is pursued first and in all things, while work and play and rest and learning and daily needs are organized with this first and truly necessary thing. But for those of us who do not enter monastic life, who live in the midst of the world with worldly anxieties and busyness and the hustle and bustle, we might think ourselves cut off from that wisdom.

Enter my guest today: John Cannon. He knows his way around the world, but he was significantly and definitively formed in a Carmelite monastery, where he was a monk for seven years. His mission now is to bring the order and harmony of the monastery, the fruits of that integrated life lived for and with the Lord, into the world. In particular, he serves and works with Catholic CEOs, founders, and investors to help them grow their ventures and their faith. He also launched Monk Mindset, which offers all of us, regardless of our jobs or stations in life, the opportunity to incorporate the simplicity, order, and harmony of the monastic life into our everyday lives.

Follow-up Resources:

• Learn about SENT Ventures, which helps you lead your business with the collective wisdom of a faith-aligned community.
• Find information about the SENT Summit 2024, which will take place September 3–6, 2024, in Dallas-Fort Worth.
• Visit Monk Mindset, where you can sign up for a weekly newsletter, find a guide for building your daily and weekly schedule in alignment with monastic wisdom, and begin to seek greater order, harmony, and simplicity.
• “Monastic Life and Human Ecology, with Abbot Austin Murphy, OSB,” podcast episode via Church Life Today
• “You Gotta Confront Who You Are!” by Travis Lacy, article in Church Life Journal

Church Life Today is a partnership between the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame and OSV Podcasts from Our Sunday Visitor. Discover more ways to live, learn, and love your Catholic faith at osvpodcasts.com. Sharing stories, starting conversations.