About me

Welcome to Shelton!

I am Sean Andrew Lotz, a priest (since 1994) in the Celtic Catholic Church. I live in Shelton, Washington, USA, and am the vicar of St. Ita’s mission station in Allyn.

I have been blessed by my bishop to try a vocation as a sort-of hermit. I am an “aspirant hermit.” I say “sort-of” hermit since I have to work at two jobs (the congregation does not support me, being very small). It is difficult to live the life of a hermit when one goes into the city twice a day and works around lots of noisy people! And what, you may ask, is an aspirant? Well, in a monastery, an aspirant is a person who hangs around with one small toe dipped into the water to see if he/she could stand to try a more committed period of testing as a postulant to discern if there is a vocation to the monastic life. That’s where I am as a hermit.

Allyn Historic Church in Allyn, Washington, where St. Ita's meets for worship.

I am attempting to build my life around (among other things) the ancient Celtic Christian practices of the constant praying of the Adjutorium and the daily praying of the Beati (Psalm 119). These are ancient ways of prayer which I am finding to be of great benefit in my modern world.

I am not qualified to write about prayer. One must first be a person who prays. But since nobody else seems to have written anything at all about my particular subject, I think I may need to take up the job with humility and courage.

About this blog

Although I have not read anything in original source material specifically about the practice of continual prayer among the early Celtic Christians, I do believe I have detected traces of it. I am convinced that they did something quite similar to the more familiar Jesus Prayer, but didn’t write about it. Perhaps more important, I believe that I have stumbled upon a perfectly viable prayer that works for the same purpose as the Jesus Prayer, which is helpful to me as a Celtic Catholic, as a Christian, as a human. I want to tell you about what I am learning and experiencing, with the hope that it will be of some use to you.

Maybe this blog makes most sense if you think of it as notes toward a book. I am trying to expound on the Adjutorium, and later the Beati, in an organized, progressive way. And when something totally unrelated strikes me, or when I find a nifty article on the Web somewhere, I write about that, too. I hope you enjoy and benefit from it.

The Adjutorium posts

Here is a list of all the posts relating to the Adjutorium, in order:

• First post
• In Latin
• Adjutorium - first, a disclaimer
• A page from the Conferences of St. John Cassian
• St. John Cassian
• Abbot Isaac
• What Abbot Isaac says
• Abbot Isaac on constant recollection
• Old Prayers Made New
• Changing the world in continued faithfulness and perseverence
• The Adjutorium: a prayer for all moods and conditions
• Pray without ceasing [SILOUAN]
• Passing the Adjutorium on to a new generation
• Prayer. Is it really "just talking to God"? [Notes from Stillsong Hermitage]
• Abbot Isaac on pleading with utter confidence
• The Adjutorium is not a replacement for spontaneous prayer
• Be nourished by prayer and Scripture