Poustinia: Hermitage Retreat
Poustinia is a Russian word that means "desert." Catherine Doherty wrote a book in 1975 called Poustinia: Encoutering God in Silence, Solitude and Prayer, which is considered by many to be a modern spiritual classic and explains the practice of making a poustinia. A poustinia entails going apart from the community to a cabin or hermitage where one can escape the noise of the world to fast, pray, and encounter God.​
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"What can help modern man find the answers to his own mystery and the mystery of Him in whose image he is created, is silence, solitude – in a word, the desert. Modern man needs these things more than the hermits of old."
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- Catherine Doherty, Poustinia
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“Silence, stillness, and solitude- these are the conditions of what the Russians call poustinia- the inner hermitage where God is to be rediscovered. The spirituality of poustinia, or hermitage retreat, descends from the most ancient days of the Church, when Christians fled a godless world to rediscover the world of God. The lonely place, eremo in the original Greek language, is where we derive the word hermitage- a solitary moment of retreat from the cares of self and into the care of God. In hermitage we learn again a basic truth: solitude is not an absence, but a deeper presence… In a church deeply committed to the activity of the new evangelization, we need a complementary contemplation; and this requires a physical place where, heeding the words of Christ, we 'come away by yourselves to a lonely place, and rest a while' (Mk. 6:31). We may do many things for God; but we will only be fruitful if those things flow from the life of prayer.”
