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Do people expect nuns to be perfect?
Question from Therese …
Dear Sister Julie, First of all, congratulations on a beautiful website, and thank you for the chance to ask a question of a real live nun!
I’m in a “helping profession,” and find that often times doing a good job–or even a great job, isn’t enough. The expectation is for us to be “perfect.” This means satisfying people with a broad range of expectations, some of which I’m not always aware of.
Relatedly, I find that my own flaws (many of which I’m not aware of) come to the surface to surprise me (smack me in the face, more like).
I know that I’m “technically” doing a good job. The question is do you have to deal with the expectation (when encountering laypeople) that a nun must be “perfect,” despite the fact that we all are also human and make mistakes? How do you cope when someone you are trying to serve is disappointed in you because you don’t meet their notion of the “ideal”? (Sorry if this is a strange question)
Dear Therese, Thank you for writing! I’m glad you stopped by. Let me first reassure you that you are not alone in terms of what you are feeling. I think many in helping professions experience what you described so well. Needs rarely come packaged in neat, discreet boxes. They are often jumbled together and come spilling out when we encounter someone who is there to help. A visit to a physical therapist for an ankle injury, for example, might cause one’s deep hurt at not being able to run to surface in unexpected ways. Sometimes it’s clear what’s happening, other times, not so much.
In answer to your question, yes, I do have to deal with the expectation that a nun must be “perfect” — and interestingly it’s not just from lay people but from anyone, including myself! A Catholic sister or nun is often expected to be perfect in charity, holiness, virtue, and prayer. We are expected to always be perfectly present to others at all times, whether we are at our “day job” or standing in line at the grocery store. I have had the experience of going to the doctor for my own checkup and end up listening to his personal concerns and spiritual questions! But, even in the grocery line or at the doctor’s office, I’m still a nun. I’m not “off duty” because being a nun pervades all that I am, 24/7. I don’t stop being a nun when 5 p.m. hits, just like my sister is never not a Mom.
Honestly, I don’t always cope well but I am learning. An important first step is for me to know that I don’t have all the answers — and to be okay with that. When I bump into someone who expects me to be perfect, I try to acknowledge my own personal feelings (Hello?? You’re the doctor here. You’re supposed to listen to my aches and pains!) and also to move beyond them to a place of genuine compassion. Sometimes that means spending a little time with someone around their concerns. Or sometimes that means graciously refocusing them on the needs I can help them with or redirecting them to others who can help with the other needs that spill out.
In the end, as you know, not everyone will be satisfied. Not everyone will thank you or even recognize that you are trying your darnedest to help them. But don’t be discouraged. You are doing good, and the Spirit helps bring all good endeavors to grow and prosper, even if we are not there to see the fruits!
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I once had a liturgy prof who once told me to go watch 10 hours of Saturday morning cartoons and report back what kind of values children are bring with them to Liturgy. Sounds stupid, no? Ah, but I learned that Smurfs knew that they were a fallen people in need of redemption, or at least they acknowledged that they needed to try their best and to ask for forgiveness when they failed.
I try to be a beacon of light, and I try to apologize for those times I fail. I am also on a campaign to shatter the sterotype that nuns/sisters are perfect little robots. Nuns are women in passionate love with God and all of creation. I love a good joke, a good book, shopping for bargains, and singing along with the radio, but if you cut me off on the freeway, you may get a curse before you get a blessing.
That’s just my Smurfy side, still in need of redemption.
We all have expectations of people in their given roles. Moms should be nurturing. Engineers need to be good at math. Lawyers must have the ability to make a good argument and a good athelete does best to be physically fit. Nuns are no different. They too generally should share certain given charactistics, talents, qualities, what have you. One that was mentioned above is that most nuns are in love with God. If that isn’t true (aside from times of desolation), they are probably in the wrong vocation.
I personally don’t believe nuns should be perfect. After all, noone is perfect but God. But what I do expect of women religious is that they strive for that “perfection”, holiness, compassion, what have you. It’s much like the other Sr. Julie writes above. A sister may miss the mark sometimes, but it’s probably wise for her to be humble enough to admit it and try to remedy the misstep. Unfortunately many people out in the secular world don’t are not as noble.
dee
Actually, to tell the truth, the reason why I was avoiding religious life was really because I thought I wasn’t “perfect” enough.
Once I was talking to a sister, and she said she had to always re-examine her motives towards her goal of becoming holier. She said that often has to ask herself, “Why am I being reverend? Is it because I am in the presence of others and that’s what they want to see? Or is it because I want to show reverence to God?”
Does anyone find themselves in that position? Does it make you any less perfect if you do the action, but for the wrong reason?
My spiritual director, a priest, said during a retreat on gossip, “There *is* a standard. And He is perfect. We are not”. This is the priest whose example led me back to the Catholic Church and, over time, to respond what had long seemed like a call from God. My priest is profoundly generous in that he does not hide from us his humanness and his struggle to be holy. He is so present that we sometimes see his flaws in action and then he remains present with us as he holds himself accountable, with compassion but diliigence, and asks forgiveness and then works hard to correct or at least gain control of the flaw and admits when he blows it next time. In my eyes, that is as close to holy perfection as any of us can attain here on earth. That is the teaching and example I need from my priest or a nun. Jesus provides me the standard, and my priest’s humility and generosity with his own humanness teach me how to remain hopeful and diligent even as I “fight the long fight” of pursuit of a standard I can never achieve here on earth. His example and its deep, transforming impact on me confirms what I have always believed to be one of the most important qualities and skills of those in “the helping professions”: the willingness to acknoweldge that, because we are by our human nature very nearly every day imperfect, a specific imperfection is nothing more and nothing less than “case in point” and so, while remaining in relationship with those who recognized our imperfection, we set about the process of beginning to grow once again. I immediaitely fell in love with the Penitential Rite when I first encountered it again after decades away from the Church, decades spent in the helping professions. “I confess to Almighty God and you my brothers and sisters that I have sinned through my own fault. In my thoughts and in my words, in what I have done and what I have failed to do. And I ask the Blessed Mother, ever virgin, all the angels and saints, and you my brothers and sisters, to pray for me to the Lord our God”. Pray for me to the Lord our God not only that I am forgiven but that I will receive the grace (a.k.a. shove) to go on struggling toward the standard. Every time my priest allows us to see his process of holy struggle with his humanness (from rant through self-awareness through laughing at himself through more moderated restatement of his request or need), I feel in my heart that he is praying – through his ongoing relationship – that penitential rite. It is my hope and espectation for myself that, when I am less than perfect, that my response **in relationship** communicates the same prayer and, if I am sincere, perhaps the same example. It seems to me, both in the helping professions and spiritual life, the only option since we are going to go right on making mistakes, the same ones, new ones, ones we thought we had conquered long ago.
Re: reverence and the sister’s question re: why she is reverent in a particular moment or way and whether intention matters. I think the Sister may have been speaking of false piety, of the reality that intention is critical. (The importance of intention in spirituality is best expressed for me through the puzzle of the value of diligence during dryness in prayer: my desire and my intention to have faith, to be present in relationship and conversation with God, even when I cannot “get there”, has the effect of “getting me there”). I learned, when I returned to Catholic life, the difference between good works and holy works. Often the exact task, “performed ” in just the same way but with very different intentions, a difference ofintention that provides for all kinds of unimagined transformations in worker and in served, in the environment, etc.
Sister Julie, I love your site.
After thinking about this, I think there is an amazingly subtle and powerful teaching process that goes with what I described above. By “inviting people in” to be with us when we are less than perfect, by remaining in relationship, I think we teach people that they don’t really NEED us to be perfect: our lack of imperfection need not be threatening because they see us engaged – through our relationship of humility with them – in our relationship with God, and they see that we are confident we can grow through and/or past our imperfections. The potential for transformation is profound, I think: we can, in the way we handle our own and others’ responses to our imperfectness, teach what relationship God wants to have with us. My priest’s humble and generous relationship vis-a-vis his imperfections teaches me how to be in relationship with God and his people. And we – as helping professionals, as wannabe nuns – have the same opportunity if we can be humble and generous when our imperfectness disappoints others, “legitimately” or not.
Actually, in reference to the movie “Doubt,” I believe Sister James is the most holy person in the movie (in my oppinion). Though she tries to be meek and humble, she does make mistakes. When she yelled at the boy who was coming back from Sister Aloysius’s office, she had made the mistake of frightening a boy who was really insecure inside, but instantly she realized her wrongs and changed herself. That was an act of conversion, which is how a person comes closer to holiness.
I just thought she was a good example of a nun who lived her faith well.