Come back to me with all your heart.

A year ago last February I arose at the unlikely hour of 3:30 a.m. to join Trappistine nuns for Vigils, their first common prayer of the day. Before entering the dimly lit chapel, I stood on a windy bluff, high above the Mississippi in the sharp cold, amazed at the array of stars sparkling overhead. A city dweller, I rarely see such a spectacular show. Chicago's glare obscures all but the brightest stars and planets. And unless you work the night shift as cab driver, waitress, factory worker, cop, or office cleaner, odds are you're still snug in your bed when the nuns of Our Lady of the Mississippi Abbey in Dubuque, Iowa begin their day by praying for you.

That's what they do: they pray. They pray for you, for the church, for the world, for those in need, for each other, and for themselves. They spend their days practicing mindfulness of God's presence. And whether it's through their work--making their heavenly creamy caramels--or their common prayer or the silent emptiness of meditation, they see their lives as an offering for the benefit of the world.

When I joined in the chanting of the psalms that morning, I was aware of a certain poignancy in the air. Ever since my arrival the day before, I could sense the excitement that new adventure brings. But there was also an awareness of pending loss. As we prayed in the simple and appealing chapel, seven of their company were down the hall in a small meeting room conducting their own morning prayers--in Norwegian. This smaller group was preparing for the day--within the month-that they would leave the confines of these monastery walls and venture to the abbey of Tautra Mariakloster on the island of Tautra in Norway.

This month, on March 25, the newly transplanted nuns will celebrate the first anniversary of their foundation, as well as the 793rd anniversary of the first introduction of Cistercian life to this island in the Trondheim fjord. (Trappistines are a subset of Cistercians.) But since 1537, when Lutheranism was introduced to the country, there have been no Cistercians rising before dawn and praying their way through the day in Norway.

In 1998, Our Lady of the Mississippi Abbey received a surprising invitation from Norwegian religious and civic officials. They were asked to found an abbey of Catholic cloistered nuns in a country that is 99 percent Lutheran. Trappistine constitutions and statutes advise them to "examine the possibility of a foundation not only prudently but also boldly and generously, considering whether they wish to participate in a monastic manner in fulfilling the mission of evangelization as the contemplative presence of the Church."

Boldly and generously, the group, led by Abbess Mother Gall Fitzpatrick, O.C.S.O., unanimously decided that the people of Norway's invitation was God's call, and five members of the community, joined by two native Norwegian Trappistines from other abbeys, would be sent to reintroduce Cistercian life to Tautra. God had called their bluff, and now there was a fjord in their future.

What prompted this gracious invitation after centuries of rancor, and then indifference, between Catholics and Lutherans since the days of the Protestant Reformation? Mother Gail suggests, "Every human person has an inner call to contemplation. The people of Norway have a strong love of nature and an appreciation for silence and solitude. They told us they feel a need to combat the strong secularism in their country with a spiritual center."

In time, a monastery will be built again in Tautra, and the two small houses the nuns now live in will become guest houses for pilgrims who come to participate, however briefly, in this life of monastic prayer.

One member of the new community, Sister Hanne-Maria Berentzen, was a popular journalist in Norway before joining the Trappistines. Her journalist colleagues and family donated a new bell for the monastery that will ring out the six daily calls to prayer.

The monastics among us are a steady, quiet reminder of the radical promises of God. They are a sign to us that it is possible to seek and find God in this world, in the way we work, live, play, and pray. In the way we eat or fast. In the way we speak or remain silent. In the way we pour out our energies and talents in the world, as well as in the act of quiet contemplation. The Cistercian constitutions say, "It is the contemplative life itself that is their way of participating in the mission of Christ."

The life is not to be lived by everybody, but it is lived for everybody. Here and there, around the world, almost hidden but not quite, certain members of the Body of Christ have chosen silence, solitude, poverty, community, and prayer. And they are praying for you.

TOM McGRATH is executive editor of U.S. CATHOLIC magazine and editor of its family life beat.