Spoken prayer
Words addressed to God, alone or together. Where most of us begin.
Founded on a Friar’s conviction that peace is learnable.
Friar Justin Belitz, OFM, taught meditation for more than four decades across the United States, Europe and Australia. He believed every person could awaken to the divine energy within, and that people meditating together could help bring peace to the world.
This is not a memorial to him. It is his work, continuing.
“You are a powerful spiritual being, and Love makes the difference.”
Friar Justin his most frequent injunction, adapted from the film Saved by the Light
A life given to the full life
A music teacher who found meditation, a friar who taught it to parishes and then to the world, and a founder who kept saying the Hermitage was never the building.
Photograph of JustinGlass-chapel portrait, from Garry’s archive
- 1935
Omaha, Nebraska
Born Frank Belitz in “Sheeley Town,” a Polish neighborhood, to a close and musical family. He played the accordion in the family band before he was a teenager.
- 1954 · 1961
A Franciscan friar
Accepted into the Franciscan Province of the Sacred Heart in 1954, he persisted through seminary despite dyslexia and was ordained on June 13, 1961.
- 1961–1974
Teacher, and the first “Success: Full Living”
Thirteen years teaching music in Ohio, a master’s in Music Education, and a program on Franciscan spirituality and meditation for his students, named for the line “I came that you may have life, and have it to the full.”
- 1974–1979
Meditation, and a sabbatical year
A Silva Method program set the course of his ministry. A sabbatical took him to Laredo, St. Bonaventure, Jerusalem and Assisi before he joined the Alverna Retreat House in Indianapolis.
- 1985
The Franciscan Hermitage
With the help of supporters, he founded the Hermitage on seven wooded acres along Fall Creek in Indianapolis. His books were translated into French, Portuguese, Polish, Hungarian, German, Russian and Greek.
- 2015
Over a million people
At the Hermitage’s 30th anniversary, a tally of classes, lectures, radio and television found its programs had touched more than a million people.
- 2020
The circle goes worldwide
The weekly Energy Circle moved online and became international, Indianapolis to Australia.
- 2023
Assisi, and home
His last journey led a retreat to Assisi, the one place on earth he said he felt homesick for. He died shortly after returning, on October 13, 2023, at 88.
- Now
Hermitage World
The building is gone; the work is not. Teachers he formed, programs he began, and new ones built on his foundation.
Three prayers: spoken, mental, silent
Justin described the spiritual life as a progression through prayer, each step quieter than the last. wording to confirm with Samuel
Mental prayer
Active meditation: thought and imagination given direction, shaping a life from the inside.
The prayer of quiet
Contemplation. No language at all, simply being with God. The capstone retreat carries its name.
What he held to
Justin valued every person and stayed open to every idea. He put love at the center of everything, taught creation spirituality, chose inclusion over patriarchy, and trusted the primacy of conscience in matters of religion.
In his meditations he used light as a picture of the divine presence, and he taught that people uniting in meditation could help bring about world peace. Those who knew him remember the humor, the dancing, the Polish food, and how often an afternoon with him was called “life changing.”
What can these thoughts do for you?
The lineage is living. Samuel Robinson’s Train Your Mind, Yvonne’s classes, the Tuesday circle and the Sunday hour all grow from what Justin began.
The work he left
The Library
Sunday homilies, teaching series and the meditations he recorded, being cleaned and titled for the first time.
Books & Media
Success: Full Living, Full Relating and Full Thinking, and the meditation albums.
Soul Guide
Ask a question; hear the exact moment where Justin speaks to it. Quotation, never invention.