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So What Makes a Nun Different?
If I had a nickel for every time I’ve been asked this question …
I’ve certainly asked myself this same question while I was in the process of trying to figure out what crazy thing God was calling me to. I often wondered what I could do as a nun that would be so totally different from being an “ordinary” person. I thought that if I could just name that one thing that was so exclusively nun-esque then I could decide whether to be a nun, or not to be a nun. That was the question.
I never did come up with that one thing, yet I know that this is the lifestyle for me. Being a nun “fits.” It’s the thing that will make me most fully myself, just like for my blood sister–being married and a mom “fits” who she is and makes her most fully herself.
I guess over time (9 years to be exact … no rush) the question, “what makes a nun different,” lost its meaning as I began to live the life. I fell in love not with the idea of being a nun, but with the lived reality of being a nun. I couldn’t answer the question by thinking about it, but I could answer it by living into it. Rainer Maria Rilke’s words ring true here:
“Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language. Do not now look for the answers. They cannot now be given to you because you could not live them. It is a question of experiencing everything. At present you need to live the question. Perhaps you will gradually, without even noticing it, find yourself experiencing the answer, some distant day.”
Letters to a Young Poet
And yet the question lingers: what makes a nun different? My friends ask me, my family ask me, strangers who happen to find out that I’m a nun ask me. So, I continue to think about this question. Over the next few posts I hope to approach this question from a variety of angles. Stay tuned. Please post your comments–how would you respond to this question?
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I was watching EWTN this weekend and Mother Angelica said something which made sense about being a nun.
“What makes a nun different?”
We need to have nuns in this world because they are signs and bearers of God’s great love. As we go through life, us laity often forget WHY we are here and WHAT we are headed for. We need the nuns here to remind us there is something beyond this Earth. We are really meant for Heaven and we should be working to better our relationship with Jesus.
In a way that is your nun-esque thing. Only nuns are brides of Christ and they have a special love and message to offer that “ordinary” people don’t. They lead those on Earth to Heaven. We need the religious to be “Christ’s hands and feet”.
Hi Dominique, That is a good point about the symbolic aspect of being a nun — that we are “signs and bearers of God’s great love.” Beautifully put. Sometimes it is difficult to highlight this part of our life because while it is true, it is also true of all the faithful — lay, religious and ordained. We need each other to encourage one another to seek Jesus in all things. Your role as a lay woman is “ordinary” in the sense that you live and work, have family and friends, like many folks — it’s more “mainstream” than religious life. But that doesn’t diminish your calling or raise a religious calling above others. As a lay person you are gifted with your own special love and message that God has given only to you. You are Christ’s hands and feet in a way that I cannot be. I’ve read your blog and love how encouraging you are to other young people. That is a real gift from God, Dominique!
Hey Sr. Julie!
On more worldly terms would you say the difference could be lifestlye? I mean nuns take vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. Laity don’t have to do any of the above and usually don’t. For me i want to be a nun because it is giving myself completely to Christ: body, heart, mind and soul. That for me is “exclusively nun-esque” because you can’t have that same relationship when you are married and trying to raise a family. That was my deciding factor.
You right about everyone having their own special love and message. Mother Teresa said one time concerning vocations: People would tell her how great she was for her work and becoming a nun and she would reply that she is no greater then they. Everyone has their own vocation and call from God and as long as they respond and follow to that call then they too are doing something great.
I read it in “A Simple Path” Its really a beautiful book; have you read it?
Hi Dominique, Sorry for not responding sooner. The vows we take are the “evangelical counsels”, virtues found in the Gospels that all Christians are to live by — not necessarily by professing vows. In a way we all are called to live for God, but the way it’s expressed varies. As a nun I commit myself to finding God’s will for me in and through my ministry and my community of sisters and our life together. A married person and parent does that through her marriage and family and through her profession. See the reference to Dead Man Walking on my post about celibacy.
I’ve not read A Simple Path yet, but it’s on my list!
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