I am fascinated with a newly published letter that Madonna (the artist and performer) wrote when she was twenty years old. The letter (courtesy of the website Letters of Note) is addressed to film director Stephen Lewicki as a sort of “résumé” for the lead role in his film A Certain Sacrifice. She mentions how she wanted to be a movie star or a nun, and how, after trying things out, she decided to pursue a music career.

… and, after a bunch of interesting stuff about her life, the letter concludes …

Initially I was a bit miffed that Madonna compared being a nun to a disease, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that the comparison represents a fine bit of discernment. Madonna recognized that trying out life as a nun led her to “dis-ease”, that is, a lack of ease in her own life, a feeling of being “not at peace” or “out of sync”.

Thank God Madonna did recognize that “dis-ease” because she was then able to open herself up to another calling as a singer-songwriter, actor, and entrepreneur! She is hands down one of the greatest artists of our time. Granted, I would gladly take Madonna as one of my nuns, but I am nonetheless delighted that she followed her calling and gifted the world with her art.

How do you negotiate the sense of “ease” and “dis-ease” in your own life?

What insight started percolating as you read Madonna’s words and thought about her life calling?

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Join A Nun’s Life community tonight for prayer at aNunsLife.org/live at 6 p.m. CT (your time zone) Come a bit early or stay a bit late and chat with us in the chat room!

This past weekend Sister Maxine and I had congregational meeting — IHM Sisters and Associates gathered in person and via the Internet to pray and talk about our life together. Coming up in January we will be electing a new leadership team (each religious community does this ever 4-6 years) and so we wanted time together as a community to discern and discuss what will be needed for and from the leaders who will be elected in January.

What amazes me about religious life, and in particular my IHM life, is that we are very intentional about making decisions together, truly discerning how the Spirit is calling us, and being willing to hang in there with each other even when it’s tough. In our elections for a new leadership team, we don’t send out head-hunters or gather up a search committee, or start campaigns and platforms. Instead, true to our life as Catholic sisters and nuns today, we gather the whole community together to pray, discern, discuss, and pray some more.

We believe that community governance, founded on Jesus’ presence in
our midst and on our love and respect for one another, enables us more
fully to live the gospel and to proclaim the reign of God.

“We are committed, therefore, to governance which expresses

• faith in Jesus Christ,
• love of one another,
• respect for the individual,
• participation and collaboration,
• corporate decisions and actions.” (from our IHM Constitutions)

I don’t think I ever would have thought this type of corporate decision-making was possible prior to my becoming a nun. I’d just never seen this kind of thing done before. Seriously — a group of 200+ people coming together, valuing each person’s voice, open to the Spirit of God, and making big decisions together. Whoa!

Granted, we hit bumps in the road on occasion — after all, there’s that little thing I like to call our human condition that enters in! But what never ceases to amaze me is that we hang in there together. We don’t throw up our hands and leave the table. We stick it out, trusting that by the grace of God, we will make it through and end up in a good place — even if we can’t see it at the moment.

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Join A Nun’s Life Community for evening prayer and chat at 6 p.m. CST (your time zone) today at aNunsLife.org/live.

We welcome Kerri Leigh Power to the A Nun’s Life blog today as our guest blogger for today. What strikes you as you reflect on these words?

Years ago, when I was at a crossroads with my career and unsure where to go next, I read the classic book What Colour is Your Parachute by Richard Nelson Bolles. I went through all the exercises — wrote inventories of my skills, prioritized my interests, drew circles to see where it all intersected.

I stared at the lists and diagrams till they gave me a headache, trying to discern my next steps as though reading a mysterious rune. While at the time it gave me some needed focus, it’s all a blur now.

But one part of the book has stayed with me over the years. It was a line in the epilogue, where Nelson Bolles made what he called “some random comments about your first mission in life.” There he declared that our shared mission was “to stand hour by hour in the conscious presence of God.”

I was in my twenties, and I had never heard those words before or anything like them. They rolled over me like waves — “hour… by… hour” in the “presence… of… God.”

It’s amazing how a few words that we read or hear can speak to something within us that has slumbered for a lifetime, waiting for that gentle touch, that invitation to awaken.

I felt instinctively that the man who wrote those words had a relationship with God that permeated every aspect of his life. And I wanted to know — what was it to stand in the presence of God? What was it to be immersed in it, imbued with it, like a flower absorbing particles of light from the Sun?

My fledgling faith has taken a long time to develop. Now, ten years later, I find myself at a similar crossroads (life itself seems to come in repeating waves.) And I know that I don’t want God to be an epilogue in my story. I want God to be the main event.

But like career planning, it’s something I need to think about over and over again. I still ask myself most days — how can I stand hour by hour in the presence of God? I forget God so easily, at the first sign of pain or unhappiness. I forget to ask for help. I forget to pray.

And then, in a moment of grace, I remember, and it’s as if by simply remembering, a space opens up and I again feel imbued with the possibility of light. Maybe for now, remembering is enough.

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Join the A Nun’s Life Community for prayer today at 6 p.m. CST (your time zone)

I am on a mission to be more organized! It’s not that I’m particularly disorganized, just not organized in the right ways! For example, my desk drawer is VERY organized when it comes to my markers and pencils. These are highly treasured implements of writing and thinking for me (yes, I think with markers and pencils). But when it comes to my daily plan, ummm, not so organized. Or, to be more diplomatic, not the most effective organization plan for my day.

In such times of need, I turn, as often I do — to God. I figure God is the Creator of the Universe. Surely God should know something about organizing and could perhaps shed light on the subject. If we go Old-School God, then we’re talking creation. Now that was an organizing nightmare. How do you organize that which never existed before? There’s no precedence, there’s no one to ask for help, there’s no logic because even logic wasn’t created before creation!

The whole “order from chaos” thing is definitely impressive yet there is one simple phrase that brings me great comfort and inspiration:

“For God is a God not of disorder but of peace.” (1 Corinthians 14:33)

On days when the organizing feat of creating the universe is beyond my comprehension and sheds little light on my way more minor organizing needs, I turn to this passage because I get it immediately. Though there are a lot of good criteria for organizing my life, my projects, and my sock drawer, one of the most important is to be mindful of peace. Does this schema bring peace? Do I feel peaceful with how I’ve crafted the day’s schedule? Will my approach leave me feeling anxious or scattered? Will how I go about my plan (or non-plan as the case may be) cause anxiety or stress or become a burden to someone else?

What helps you with your organizing? How does peace play its part for you?

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Join the A Nun’s Life community for prayer at 6 p.m. Central Time (your time zone). I’ll be there so long as I can find my schedule, organize my day, and avoid the black hole of minutia!

Question from a person discerning …

I have been in the midst of discerning my vocation for at least 3 years now, and it keeps on going back and forth between religious life and married life. However, I know if I have a family, I will always wonder what my life would have been like if I became a religious, and vice versa. I assume there will always be that wondering, and as you have the postulancy, you have even more time to decide? I am just worried that as more time passes, I will miss the deadline for becoming a member of a religious community and then realize that I missed my calling, that would be horrible. How does one deal with these problems that arise?

Yes, to an extent there is always that wondering, those “what if’s”. We can only ever make the best decision with the lights that we have at the moment. With religious life, there is plenty of time for discernment. In postulancy (or candidacy) you can have 6 months to a couple years, depending on the community. Then novitiate is another 2 years, then first vows 3 years. After all this time a person takes final vows which are binding for life. So, you’ve got time built into the process of becoming a nun. It gives you time to test it, see how it feels, and discern if this is what God is calling you to.

Ultimately we make sacrifices in any life commitment we choose. But making the commitment is itself so rewarding and what makes us most fully who we are. I have no regrets — I may wonder what it would be like to be married or have kids, but I haven’t ever regretted my decision because it truly “fits” for me.

As part of your discernment, I’d encourage you to consider what is preventing you from making the next step. Consider what it would be like to take a step toward one or the other. Get to know a religious community (if you don’t already) — really the best way to discern a vocation to religious life is to spend time with the community.

What other “what ifs” sneak up in your mind? How do you deal with the “what ifs”?

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Join the sisters and A Nun’s Life community at 6 p.m. Central Time (your time zone) at http://aNunsLife.org/LIVE for Praying with the Sisters live podcast and chat.

It is interesting (and somewhat disturbing) to think back at the times in your life when someone mistakes you for something that you are not — (in a Daughters of Saint Paul book store) “Are you a Catholic sister?” — (out with a friend) “So how long have you two been together?” (in a store while shopping) “Can you tell me where the drapes are?” — (yesterday at the gym) “We have daycare for your children” — (on a street corner in Washington, DC) “Monica Lewinsky!?”

What’s interesting is not so much that they asked the question, but how we respond. Do we recoil in horror? play along? wish that it were true?

Moments like this are highly instructive to us because we see ourselves reflected in the eyes of strangers. When we have a strong reaction, it’s important to ask ourselves why. Our reactions often point to some truth or facet of ourselves that we are wrestling with, but like the layers of an onion, we have to pull back the layers to see what’s inside … and we may tear up as we do so!  Sometimes the results are just funny (“no, no I am not Monica Lewinsky”) and other times they stay with us like a friend, nudging us toward clarity and insight.

Here’s a few things to do when disturbed or delighted by a mistaken identity:

1. Run away in horror.
2. Resignedly disregard #1.
3. Replay the scene in your mind and see what part stands out the most. Pay attention to how you felt at that moment.
4. Ask yourself why you reacted the way you did. Are there any attitudes underlying my reaction that are discriminatory or untrue?
5. Is there any truth in what was said? If it was a partial truth, then sift through what fits and what doesn’t.
6. Bury that insight until years later when you have to go to therapy.
7. Resignedly disregard #6.
8. Thank God for using any moment, even an awkward or uncomfortable one, to help you get to better know yourself and how God is moving in your life.

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Join A Nun’s Life Community for prayer today via our live podcast “Praying with the Sisters” and chat room. Just before 6 p.m. Central Time (your time zone) join us at http://aNunsLife.org/LIVE … more info on that page.

The IHM Sisters of Monroe, Michigan (my nuns!), are co-sponsoring a discernment retreat in the Toledo, Ohio area. It’s for younger women who are thinking about religious life. If you are (or know someone who is), why not check it out. Here’s a link to our IHM Vocations blog “IHM Calling” with the information on the discernment retreat.

Retreat in the foothills of the Rockies - a hike at Castlewood Canyon State Park (2004)

So what’s a discernment retreat all about anyways?

Well, religious communities offer many different kinds — some for women (or men if a religious community for men) who are discerning that particular community and some (like the one above) are more general so you can get to know a variety of communities. There are also retreats in general offered by retreat centers that are for anyone who is in a discernment mode, be it discerning a life commitment or a ministry or just in general. Many of these are facilitated by spiritual directors who are well trained in the area of Ignatian spirituality and discernment.

A discernment retreat, like other retreats, is set in a prayerful mode and is primarily directed at helping retreatants become more conscious of how God is moving in their lives, how God is calling them. A discernment retreat typically offers time for prayer, reflection, and input on how to discern (e.g., helpful tips and tools, insights from our faith tradition, etc.).

For retreats that are specifically for folks discerning a call to religious life, the retreat typically has more focused input on religious life. There may also be input on the particular congregation that is offering the retreat. This includes an introduction to the life and mission of the community, the kinds of ministries, the story of the foundation and lived tradition of the community.

Retreatants typically have the chance to meet with sisters and talk with them about discernment in general, religious life, and/or the community itself. There may also be an opportunity to talk with a spiritual director or to share conversation with the other retreatants.

Attending a discernment retreat does not mean you are “signing on the dotted line” or that you are in an “exclusive relationship” with a community. It just means you are serious about checking things out and learning more about how God is calling you. You don’t have to commit to anything. All you have to do is be open to allowing the Spirit to be with you, surprise you, challenge you, and inspire you!

A great place to find listings of discernment retreat opportunities is the opportunities section of Vision Vocation Network.

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Join A Nun’s Life Community for prayer today via our live podcast “Praying with the Sisters” and chat room. Just before 6 p.m. Central Time (your time zone) join us at http://aNunsLife.org/LIVE … more info on that page.

You are in for an AWESOME treat! My dear sister Joyce Durosko, IHM, stars in this YouTube video. Sister Joyce talks about the wonderful mystery of being called to religious life. Are you a person who is open to being surprised … especially to a God who is full of surprises!? Sister Joyce offers great wisdom for people discerning religious life, including what to look for as you meet sisters and discern, try to figure out if they are “home” for you.

What questions or insights percolate as you watch and reflect on this video?

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Join Sister Maxine and Sister Julie and the A Nun’s Life Community for prayer today via our live podcast “Praying with the Sisters”. Just before 6 p.m. Central Time (your time zone) join us at http://aNunsLife.org/LIVE … more info on that page.

I was wondering what advice would you give concerning my discernment process. I am going to be 35 years old soon, and 5 years ago I left a religious community in my canonical year because I felt God was not calling me to religious life. I returned to my job as a registered nurse and about 2 years ago returned to all of my church ministries. The thing is I am very unhappy and confused about what to do next. Every website I look at seem to have discernment weekends for young young women. I live in the Caribbean and find it extremely fearful to just step out and seek again entering into a community because I am afraid of making another mistake. I don’t want to wake up 45 years old and missed what God wanted me to do.

- Sadie

Dear Sadie,

First I want to say that you are doing a great job at putting God’s desire first — even if you don’t always understand what that desire is. You are very brave to consider the question of religious life a second time. Discernment is pretty intense but also worth opening your heart to again if you feel nudged by the Spirit. Trust that God is speaking to your through your feelings, including the feelings of frustration, fear, confusion, and regret.

Here are some questions that I’d invite you to consider praying over.

• Imagine walking up to a beautiful house inside of which is your deepest desire. You knock on the door. A wise, welcoming person opens the door and asks you warmly, “What is it that you seek?” What do you say?
• You are serving God, the Church, and the vulnerable … what is missing for you?
• Why did you leave religious life before? What continues to attract you?
• When are you most peaceful? most centered in yourself and God?

Pay attention to how your spirit rises or falls in prayer, when you are thinking about religious life, when you think about continuing your lifestyle and ministries as they are now.

Do you have a spiritual director or trusted mentor who can reflect back to you some of your desires and attractions?

Rest assured that God will continue to lead you — stay open to God and be faithful to your prayer and to reaching out to help others. No matter how you choose to live your life, you will be living God’s dream for you.

I am not familiar with religious communities in the Caribbean. We have IHM Sisters in Puerto Rico whom I’m sure would be happy to connect with you. I hope these thoughts help you. Be assured of our prayers.

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Today’s “Praying with the Sisters” podcast has been recorded because the sisters will be in transit this evening. You are welcome to listen to the recorded prayer for today and then to join the A Nun’s Life community to share prayer requests this evening at 6 p.m. Central Time (check your time zone) in our chat room.

Are you thinking about becoming a Catholic sister? I invite you to come to our home, the Immaculate Heart of Mary Sisters of Monroe, Michigan, for a discernment retreat. This retreat is for women who are attracted to our IHM spirit and mission and want to live vowed religious life.

What does that mean? Well, are you attracted to the liberating mission of Jesus? Do you have a sense of adventure? Are you open to being surprised by the Spirit of God? Do you wish to be part of a group of diverse women who are bound together in sisterhood by our life and mission in God? Do you wish to live and pray the Gospel with every fiber of your being?

The IHM Sisters invite you to “come and see” … come to our home, be among us, pray with us, work with us, and see how God is calling you.

May 14-16, 2010
beginning at 7 p.m. on Friday night

Riverhouse on the IHM Motherhouse campus
805 West Elm Ave., Monroe, Michigan 48162

Here’s a PDF with more info on the IHM Come and See weekend. If you are interested, let me know or contact the IHM Vocation Director, Sister Mary Bea Keeley.

Included in the retreat will be input on tools for discernment, learning about our IHM way of life and mission, meeting wisdom figures and newly vowed members of the congregation, and more. There will be time for prayer, reflection, input, Mass, chatting, and of course meals and sleep!

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Join the sisters for prayer today at 6 p.m. Central Time (check your time zone). Praying with the Sisters is a live podcast where you can chat with us and others in A Nun’s Life chat room. All you need is an internet connection and a heart open to prayer.

http://aNunsLife.org/LIVE

I was wondering about the occupational options open to nuns. Specifically, could somebody be a physician and a nun?

- Maria

A Catholic sister or nun can engage in any occupation or job, including that of a physician. However the choice as to which kind of work or ministry to engage in is discerned according to the mission of the congregation and the needs of the world. Because each community has a particular mission, it might happen that particular occupations will fall outside of that mission proper. Also, communities which are cloistered or semi-cloistered would have additional limitations to working outside of the monastery because their primary ministry is prayer and contemplation.

As mentioned, the choice of what kind of work to do is made through discernment with others in the sister’s community. It is a very intentional discernment that takes into account the mission of the community, the needs of the community, the needs of the world, the sister’s gifts and passions, and most importantly the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

If you are thinking about what it might be like for you to be a sister or nun, I encourage you to get to know a community and, when ready, to chat about this with the vocation director or another sister whom you know in the community.

In my IHM community, for example, our mission is centered around “the liberating mission of Jesus Christ”. Traditionally we have focused this mission around education. So many of us are involved in “traditional”educative endeavors such as teachers, catechists, and professors. We also express our educative mission through ministry as writers, care givers, justice advocates, church leaders, editors, administrators, bloggers, counselors, missionaries, lawyers, doctors, and more.

In what other occupations have you seen sisters or nuns? In what way is that occupation a ministry? If you are a sister, how did you discern that call?

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Join Sister Maxine and Sister Julie for evening prayer
at 6 p.m. Central Time (check your time zone)

Can someone with a disability become a nun? For instance I am legally blind and about to reach the age were I can enter if I wanted to. Are nuns aloud to take medications? Because I heard if your not perfect in health they will reject people.

- Aarin

Dear Aarin, Thank you for writing. This is a tough one. Religious congregations do require a person to be physically and mentally healthy in order to become a Catholic sister or nun, but sometimes if a person has a managed illness or a disability they can still become a sister or nun. We are allowed to take medication for both temporary and long-term illnesses or conditions.

I think the main thing is that religious communities want to be sure that people are capable of living the mission. But words like “healthy” and “capable” mean different things to different people so it really depends on your relationship with particular communities. Some communities might not be able to handle it (i.e., don’t have the resources, or their mission is of a kind where a person couldn’t engage in it because of their illness or disability, etc.) while others might be able to.

There are a couple discussions about this that we’ve had on A Nun’s Life. You might find them of interest.

• Can You Become a Nun if you have a Chronic Illness?
• Chronic Illness and Becoming a Nun REVISITED
• Discerning religious life with persons who have a managed mental illness

It is very important to get to know a community and for them to get to know you too. Talk it over with the vocation director. Also, I encourage you to find a spiritual director to help walk with you as you discern how God is calling you. And do take a look through How to Become a Catholic Nun and maybe even consider joining the Vocation Forum here to chat with others who are thinking about religious life and how God is calling them.

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Join Sister Maxine and Sister Julie for evening prayer
at 6 p.m. Central Time (check your time zone)

Read the story of Ane Kirstine Wynn, a 25-year-old woman who recently entered Saint Joseph’s Monastery, a cloistered community of Passionist Nuns in Kentucky. Becoming a Passionist nun: Ane Kirstine Wynn by Amy Wilson of the Lexington Herald-Leader (April 4, 2010) tells the story of Ane Kirstine’s journey to religious life. It is a remarkable story that includes her shift from the Lutheran faith to the Catholic faith, struggles with her parents over her decision to become a nun, the fear and joy of discerning a call to religious life, and reflections on her first 3 months in the monastery.

Writer Amy Wilson paints an intimate picture of Ane Kirstine’s journey and conveys a sense of feeling and adventure. I appreciate the evident care that she took in preparing for and writing this article. What’s cool is that Amy kept up an email correspondence with Ane Kirstine since she entered in January. The superior of the monastery agreed to this correspondence which is a wonderful testimony to the community. By virtue of their cloistered life, the life of Passionist nuns, like other cloistered nuns, isn’t publicly accessible. Yet, allowing such a correspondence gives the world a glimpse of the life as well as the choice to enter into that life. This can be encouraging to people who might be attracted to cloistered life and it can also help in providing accurate, “real” information about cloistered life, not the variety you’d most likely find in the entertainment industry. You can read these emails on Kentucky.com.

Here are a few quotes from the article itself:

Mother Marie Catherine, head of the monastery, on discerning a call to religious life:

“God’s gifts,” says the Mother Superior, “are God speaking His will. The religious life is a gift from Him to you. The price tag is about bucking against the odds. Every one of the sisters walks that path.”

Ane Kirstine’s “ah-Ha” moment with the Passionist nuns:

In March 2007, she wrote in her blog: “I think I’m going to join this community. Like, seriously. When Mother spoke to us about the Passionist charism, my heart just started burning in me, because it was like she was describing myself to me! My spirituality, my understanding of God and prayer and my place in the world, every little thing she said resonated exactly with my own heart. They take five vows: poverty, chastity, obedience, enclosure and dedication to Christ’s passion, death, and resurrection. They have a striking joy and vivacity that stems from contemplating the lifeblood of Jesus, poured out in love for the world.”

Ane Kirstine on “simplicity of heart” in religious life:

“One of the most beautiful — and most challenging — facets of convent life, at least that I have noticed,” she writes, “is its ability to foster a simplicity of heart. Nearly every time I speak with a sister who has lived her vocation for many years, I am struck by how unified her love is, indeed, how wholly she is God’s. She has become simple, not so much in her mind or actions — for nuns have sharp wits and manifold pursuits, just like the rest of us! — but certainly in her being and in her heart.

What thoughts do you have after reading this article? Questions? Uncomfortable nudgings? Inspirations?

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Join Sister Maxine and Sister Julie for evening prayer
at 6 p.m. Central Time (check your time zone)
at http://aNunsLife.org/LIVE.

“Hello Sister. I am a fifteen year old catholic girl and attending a catholic school. I feel that God is calling me to become a nun. I am planning on finishing high school and then taking to a religious life. The problem is I do not know where to go now that I know God is calling me. Can you tell me where I need to go to become a sister?”

- Alyssa

Hi Alyssa, Thanks for writing. Here are a few resources to check out on A Nun’s Life website:

• How to Become a Catholic Sister or Nun: a general idea of where to start, what the general logistics are, and some helpful hints from someone who’s been there and is now a Catholic sister
• Vocation Forum: a place to explore vocations to religious life

The age requirements for each community varies some. Some communities encourage you to get a college degree first. They may encourage you to “experience life” since you’ll be just out of high school. But it also depends on where you are at with your discernment, how long you’ve know the community (or other communities), etc. Even if you choose to go to college first, I’d highly encourage you to stay in touch with the community. Visit them during spring break or on weekends or whenever you have time.

Basically the first steps start with you and your discernment with God. What do you feel God is calling you to? What are you attracted to in terms of a lifestyle? How will you grow in your relationship with God and others?

In terms of the more practical “next steps” kind of thing, it is important to get to know some nuns. Have a chat with one, and see what she is like. Go to a talk by a nun. Go to mass at their motherhouse. Check out a vocation day at one of the communities. Spend some time just getting to know a community. It’s just like developing a friendship. In the meantime know that you are doing God’s will. You don’t have to wait until you decide on a particular calling. Live now how God is calling you to live. Develop (if you’ve not already) a regular rhythm of prayer, do some spiritual reading (scripture, writings of the saints, etc.), involve yourself in a ministry. Be faithful to your vocation now as a student. Remember, that too is a calling from God. If you don’t know a community of sisters, ask one of your parish leaders. Also, every diocese has a vocation office so you can check with them too and let them know what you are thinking. There are also some online vocation resources to help you along. Here are a couple:

• Vision Vocation Network
• Catholics On Call

As you get to know sisters and their communities, pay attention to how you feel, and how attracted you are to the community. Do you feel at home? Do you feel like you are growing in your relationship with God? Can you see yourself flourishing as a human being with these sisters? Keep bringing all of this to God in prayer.

There are no right or wrong steps in this journey. And they may not happen in any particular order. But this is sort of the gist of it. Let me know if you’ve got further questions or more particular ones. God bless you, Alyssa.

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Join the sisters for evening prayer tonight at 6 p.m. CST and every Monday through Thursday at http://anunslife.org/live

This is the final in a series of three posts on Saint Teresa of Avila. The whole piece was originally published in VISION, the Catholic Religious Discernment Guide.

Read the first part My BFF is a 16th century nun, Teresa of Avila and the second part Teresa of Avila’s desire to give her life to God.

A leap of faith

Teresa spent a year and a half living with the nuns. Still, she resisted becoming a nun, saying, “I could not be persuaded to be one” (Life 3.2). Though obviously attracted to the life, Teresa needed time to adjust to the possibility of God calling her to religious life. Like Teresa we are often given the same challenge of imagining our life in a different way. Teresa says little about how or even if she resolved her questions, but we do know that she decided to become a nun anyway. She was able to set aside her doubts and fears and respond to God’s call.

This didn’t mean that Teresa’s life was easy once she made the decision to become a nun. Explaining her call to family and friends proved to be a challenge. Her father so loved her that he couldn’t imagine letting her leave for the convent until after he died. Nothing Teresa said or did could change his mind. But Teresa wished to remain true to the call from God. She knew herself well enough to know that if she didn’t pursue God’s call now, she might never do it. So early one morning, Teresa quietly left her father’s house for the convent: “I remember, clearly and truly, that when I left my father’s house I felt that separation so keenly that the feeling will not be greater, I think, when I die. For it seemed that every bone in my body was being sundered” (Life 4.1).

The pain which Teresa wrote about here is real. Whether it be family or friends, careers or possessions that we want to hold onto, God’s call is all-encompassing. It is a call to be open to radical change in our lives, if that’s what God asks of us.

Filled with a new joy

Teresa entered the Carmelite Monastery of the Incarnation in 1533, took the habit, and eventually professed solemn vows as a Carmelite nun. Her initial struggle gave way to a lasting joy: “[God] gave me such great happiness at being in the religious state of life that it never left me up to this day, and God changed the dryness my soul experienced into the greatest tenderness. All the things of religious life delighted me, and it is true that sometimes while sweeping, during the hours I used to spend in self-indulgence and self-adornment, I realized that I was free of all that and experienced a new joy that amazed me.” (Life 4.2)

When I first began considering religious life, I never would have imagined I’d experience this “new joy” of which Teresa wrote. But the experience of responding to God’s call and eventually professing my vows as an IHM Sister was a joy that I’d never felt before. I felt like a new person, yet more myself than ever.

Trusting in God Always

All along the way, it helped to have Teresa by my side. Today she is still very much a companion. Sometimes I turn to her writings for encouragement, other times for help in a pastoral or theological quandary. Whenever I have questions about prayer or don’t quite understand how the Spirit is moving in my life, I pray and seek guidance from Teresa. Even Teresa’s own tangles with God (once, when complaining of her suffering, Teresa heard Jesus respond, “This is how I treat my friends” to which Teresa rejoined, “No wonder you have so few!”) give me assurance that my struggles are not out of the ordinary and that there is a way through the darkness.

Although I have known Teresa for many years now, I continue to discover new things about her. Recently, I read a book of her letters. The letters reveal a woman who was deeply committed to a contemplative life but who was, of necessity, engaged in what one commentator calls “a maelstrom of activities.” Sometimes this maelstrom got the best of her. Wrote Teresa, “With so many duties and troubles … I wonder how I’m able to bear them all” (Letter 39 in The Collected Letters of St. Teresa of Avila).

As a religious I can identify with this constant balancing of prayer, ministry, and community life. It is both a joy and a challenge to live this life. Religious life calls us to our best selves and often summons strengths and gifts that we didn’t even know we had. I’m sure on more than one occasion Teresa was surprised to see how things worked out or what paths opened up that she could have hardly imagined. Perhaps some of the best advice that Teresa has ever given to me is to trust always in God, even when things are tough or unclear. She reminds me that determination is indeed a virtue and a necessity in the life of faith.

“Have great confidence,” Teresa wrote, “for it is necessary not to hold back one’s desires, but to believe in God that if we try we shall little by little, even though it may not be soon, reach the state the saints did with his help. For if they had never determined to desire and seek this state little by little in practice they would never have mounted so high.” (Life 13.2)

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What struck you about Teresa’s life and her desire to trust always in God? If you could ask Teresa anything, what would it be?

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Join Sister Maxine and me for prayer today at noon Central Time at http://anunslife.org/live.

This is the second in a series of three posts on Saint Teresa of Avila. The whole piece was originally published in VISION, the Catholic Religious Discernment Guide.

Read yesterday’s post, which is part one in the series:  My BFF is a 16th century nun, Teresa of Avila

Doing Something Big for God

One of Teresa’s first mentions of wanting to give her life to God comes in a story from her childhood. Teresa, at the tender age of seven, was inspired to do something big for God. We’re not talking here about making crosses out of clothes pins. Teresa decided that she and her brother ought to become martyrs because that was the quickest way to heaven (Life 1.4). So Teresa and her brother set out in search of unbelievers so that they could “beg them, out of love of God, to cut off our heads.” But no sooner had the children started their journey than an uncle caught sight of them and promptly returned them to their mother. Teresa surrendered her dream of martyrdom, concluding that “having parents seemed to us the greatest obstacle.”

She resigned herself to an ordinary childhood. Still, she clung to the desire, however innocent and immaturely expressed, to do something big for God. She took consolation in pretending to be a nun: “When I played with other girls I enjoyed it when we pretended we were nuns in a monastery, and it seemed to me that I desired to be one, although not as much as I desired [becoming a martyr or a hermit]” (Life 1.6).

This episode in Teresa’s life reflects the difficulty of feeling called to something, but not knowing exactly what. When I felt called I thought maybe it meant joining the Jesuit Volunteer Corps or dedicating myself to marriage and raising a family. Not convinced that religious life was for me, I tested many alternatives. But no matter how good they were or how much I welcomed them, they didn’t seem to fit.

No substitute for real nuns

Just as Teresa had romantic notions about what it meant to be a martyr or a nun in the 16th century, so too I had some skewed ideas about religious life in this century. My ideas came from a number of sources; actual experiences with nuns as an adult wasn’t one of them. It occurred to me that I hadn’t considered religious life before because I didn’t know what it was about. My lack of accurate information left me with a superficial understanding of religious life and the women and men who lived it.

Teresa’s life shows the importance of first-hand experience with people in religious life. When Teresa was twelve, her mom died, and she was raised by her father and older sister. When her sister left the house to get married, Teresa’s father decided to send Teresa to the convent school to be taught by the nuns and live with them. Teresa wrote of her initial unhappiness with this, mostly because she was afraid the nuns knew that she didn’t always live an exemplary life. Within days, however, her unhappiness gave way to peace, and she began to feel at home.

“My soul,” she wrote, “began to return to the good habits of early childhood, and I saw the great favor God accords to anyone placed with good companions.” (Life 2.8) While living with the nuns, Teresa found one who became a mentor and friend. This nun talked to Teresa about the things of God and even shared with Teresa her own path to religious life. This personal experience lead Teresa to free herself “from the antagonism that I felt strongly within myself toward becoming a nun” (Life 3.1). Still, Teresa notes, “I had no desire to be a nun, and I asked God not to give me this vocation.” (Life 3.2)

Throughout my discernment about religious life, I took great comfort in Teresa’s words. How many times did I pray to let this vocation pass me by? Yet even then, I felt as attracted to the life as I was terrified by it. What kept me going were the IHM sisters around me who encouraged me and who, by their lives, showed me the great gift and adventure of religious life. Had I not had a direct experience with nuns, I might never have been open to the possibility of religious life.

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In what ways have you tested out your desire to give your life to God or to a vocation like marriage or education or art or parenthood? What words of wisdom do you hear from Teresa in pursuing this desire?

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Join Sister Maxine and me for prayer today at noon Central Time at http://anunslife.org/live.

Kudos to Sister Mary Alternative (an Episcopalian woman considering religious life) for starting this post: “You may be a nun if …” Here are some of her responses that I love!

You may be a nun if …

• you see nuns everywhere you go
• you see nuns so often that now even your friends are seeing them in airports and stuff
• you have the book of common prayer online version saved to your favorites on the blackberry

Here’s a few more from personal experience:

• have vocation/nun material hidden where no one can find it
• you want nothing to do with the idea of being a nun, but yet you find it strangely compelling too
• you know what it’s like to fall in love with a person or a lifework yet it feels like all the pieces aren’t quite together yet … something is missing
• you regularly engage in “nun surveillance“

How would you finish this sentence? “You may be a nun if … “

From the Canticle of Zechariah prayed during Morning Prayer of the Liturgy of the Hours …

“In the tender compassion of our God, the dawn from on high shall break upon us, to shine on those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death, and to guide our feet into the way of peace.” (Luke 1:78-79)

Every morning I pray the Canticle of Zechariah which is the song sung by Zechariah, the husband of Elizabeth, praising God for God’s work throughout history and through their newborn son John who would become the Baptist. These verses always fill me with hope and a lightness as I begin the day and can see dawn literally breaking in through the tree branches beyond my window.

What do you hear in these verses and how can this “word” of God carry you through today?

Discerning a call to become a Catholic sister or nun can be challenging enough (who me, Lord??) but figuring out how to break the news to family and friends is a whole other challenge.

I recently received a question about how to break the news to one’s parents. Here it is in part.

I am very nervous about how they will take the news because becoming a sister is something so radical compared to even what I wanted for myself for years! …. With discussions of college and my future happening at home every day, I feel like I’m pretending to be something I’m not, but I have absolutely no idea how to go about breaking the news…. They know I am incredibly Catholic and I have the reputation as being the most religious in the family, but I am still afraid my news will shock and possibly disappoint them. I know I will eventually have their support, but it is their understanding I crave and I am afraid that that will not happen. When you told your parents, did you tell them suddenly and all at once? Did you sit down at dinner and say “HEY GUESS WHAT! I’m going to be a nun and serve our LORD and our GOD!” or did you do it in small doses, making small hints until they finally guessed it for themselves?

It can be very difficult to put into words one’s call, because you’re probably still figuring it out for yourself and trying to live into what it might mean for your life and future. To actually articulate this to someone else, especially someone whom you love and don’t want to disappoint, can be a real challenge. Even if others are familiar with religious life, it is usually a bit of a jolt for them to think that you — their child, their best friend, their sibling — are thinking about it for real.

Because I was away at college, I could pursue my call without worrying that my family would find out. Even though I was surrounded by religious and seminarians at my theology school, I still didn’t say much about my own possible call because I was still shocked myself. And, I wasn’t sure how it would affect my relationship with them. Would they treat me differently? Or, if I decided not to become a nun, would they be disappointed? Or what if I fell in love in the midst of discerning? How awkward would that be?!

As for my parents and family, I waited until I was sure that this was something that I was going to do. I wanted to get to a place within myself that I could feel strong and know how to talk about my feelings and this sense of call. I wanted to know within myself that even if my family never “got” what I wanted to do, that I’d still be okay with it, albeit a bit sad. I talked a lot with my IHM mentors about how to approach my parents. And I talked first with my sister and brother about it because I knew I’d get the straight-up-without-ice response from them — as well as their love and support.

It wasn’t easy letting my parents and others know. They had a LOT of questions which I wasn’t always sure how to answer. Some wondered if I was being brainwashed, others if I was heartbroken from my last relationship. Some thought I was too young. Almost all feared that I was “limiting” myself, that I was somehow boxing myself in. They feared that I was going to become less of myself — or not myself at all.

Even though I tried to reassure them that become a nun was the most freeing thing I’d ever done, that it was helping me to become more myself, they just didn’t know for sure until they saw me live into it. They saw that I still told the same stupid jokes, that I still loved to hike and feed the chickadees, and that I still loved them dearly.

There’s no easy way to tell family and friends, but remember that this is your call and that just as much as God is leading you, God is also working in your family and friends’ lives too. You’ll learn a lot about yourself and your call when you begin to talk about it with others because they’ll have tons of questions for you, and probably a few challenges. Hang in there with them, and hang in there with yourself. Know that my prayers are with you.

I’d love to hear from others about how they broke the news. Also, any parents or friends out there who have had the experience of being told that a loved one wishes to become a nun? How did you experience hearing the news for the first time?

Welcome to A Nun’s Life, and welcome to our online discussion with Sister Mary McDevitt, a Catholic Sister in my IHM Congregation and a spiritual director. Sister Mary will be joining Sister Maxine Kollasch and myself in order to listen to and respond to your questions about discernment and how to know God is calling you.

This discussion takes place right here on this page in the comment section (below). We begin at 7 p.m. EST and go until 9 p.m

I asked Sister Mary a few preliminary questions just to give us a glimpse of who she is. Read more on my original post introducing Sister Mary.

Sister Julie: Who are the IHM Sisters of Monroe, Michigan? What is your spirituality and mission/ministry?

Sister Mary: The IHM Sisters were founded in 1845 for the education of children in the area. Through the years we have expanded to broader and wider ministries. After a long history of classroom teaching, we have come to understand education in many forms through parishes, retreats, and other ministries. Some still are called to ministry within schools.

The spirituality of IHMs is to share in the work of Jesus to bring about the “dream of God” for this world and for even for the whole planet. Since our earliest history there is a predilection to minister to those who are in dire straits either directly or through education indirectly.

Sister Julie: What was it like for you when you discerned becoming a Catholic sister and entering the IHM community?

Sister Mary: In the 1950s when I considered my future, vowed religious life was the only way I could think of enjoying a life given within the Church for the building up of the Body of Christ. Lay ministry was not very much in vogue. The vowed life seemed to be as a way to give my life totally to the work of God.

Sister Julie: What kind of work do you do at Visitation Spirituality Center?

Sister Mary: Visitation North Spirituality center is a place of welcome for all those who seek some space and time for themselves. We offer spiritual direction, at home retreats, as well as thematic presentations such as Lent, grief, and creative space for artists.

Please extend a warm welcome to Sister Mary McDevitt, IHM.

In yesterday’s post on 4 Steps for Discernment and Decision-Making, Sister Mary noted in Step 2 that you can create a kind of chart to help you figure out how you feel about a decision that you have to make.

I thought I’d give you an example of what that chart might look like for the question, Should I go to graduate school or not?

The pros and cons don’t have to seem like significant reasons, they just have to be important to us. I remember when I had to choose a high school, I ended up going to one because their basketball uniforms looked more cool than the other school’s. Now it wasn’t my only reason, but that desire encapsulated for me all that I felt about the school and that I could envision myself in that school, with those people, and, of course, in that uniform!

Try making a chart for yourself. Consider something in your life that requires you to make a decision. It might be big, it might be small. Try it out and be attentive to the guidance that Sister Mary gives on discernment. Let us know how it goes.

What questions or observations do you have for Sister Mary McDevitt, IHM, in preparation for our online discussion with Sister Mary this Sunday, February 15, from 7-9 p.m. EST?

In Decision-Making Using a Process of Discernment of Spirits, Sister Mary McDevitt, IHM, led us through understanding discernment, consolations, and desolations. When discerning and having to make a significant decision, it’s important to be aware your own inner spirit which is where God dwells within you. Today, Sister Mary takes us through concrete steps to help us figure out how God is calling us. She uses the discernment question example from the previous post, “Should I go to graduate school or not?”

Now, let’s get practical.

Are there steps I can take once I am more aware of my inner spirit?

1. Pray

• I pray and stay in the presence of God often.
• I ask God to give me freedom of spirit.
• I try to say to God, “Whatever choice is your will, it’s ok with me.”
• When I lift up each choice to God — e.g., about going to graduate school — I notice what my heart says. I check out my thoughts, too, and the long-range consequences of this action.

2. Write down two columns for each choice

• I line up the pros and cons of the situations. Two columns on why I would not go to graduate school — the good side (pro), and the not-so-good side (con).
• Then I do the same with the reverse: the pros and cons of going to grad school.
• I pray over the list and see which reasons are most moving, most serious and which affect my relationships with other people.
• One expert suggests: Be on your death-bed and ask which choice you would be glad you made.
• For Christians: Bring the decision and kneel under the Cross of Christ. How does it make sense there? Will this decision bring me closer to Jesus Christ in my living the Gospel?

3. Time for confirmation

• Once I have made a tentative decision, I talk it over with those who know me.
• I wait awhile and see if I feel peaceful in this decision as it becomes clearer.

4. Choose, act and be grateful

• One or many of these steps may guide me. I may wish to do these steps with a spiritual companion.

Sister Mary has given us a lot to think and pray on. In preparation for our live discussion with Sister Mary this Sunday, February 15, from 7-9 p.m. EST, please offer your comments and questions below.

The following reflection is from Sister Mary McDevitt, IHM, a spiritual director and sister in my community. Sister Mary will be joining us this Sunday, February 15, from 7-9 p.m. EST to have a live discussion with you around discernment and decision-making.

What is “Discernment of Spirits”?

Why spirits in the plural? From many holy writings we can say that not every personal impulse and not every attraction is necessarily from God. For example, “I feel called to be on a beach in Hawaii.” The attraction may be something rather shallow that is from our own non-reflective spirit’s prompting.

For those of us who believe in a spirit world, some decisions may be the tempting of an evil spirit. This is tricky because evil never looks like evil, but instead looks like good. On the other hand, the inspiration may be truly from the Holy Spirit of God. So there are at least three kinds of spirits: holy, not-so-holy, and evil.

How do I figure out which spirit is prompting me?

Saints in both Hebrew and Christian scriptures and during the history of spirituality have searched to find, “What is the will of God for me?” or, “What is the dream of God for the part of the world that I inhabit?” (Think of the “dream of God” as Martin Luther King’s, “I have a dream”.) Let’s say the question is, “Should I go to graduate school or not?”

Here are two steps that might help me figure it out:

1) Self-Awareness

I must search my heart. I need to habitually analyze what I am thinking, and feeling, asking if this inspiration comes from God and and where is it leading? This takes time, habitual prayer, and profound honesty.

2) Awareness of my affective states

This means recognizing certain good feelings known as consolations. These feelings lead me closer to God. Other feelings identified as desolations are also states of affectivity which may indicate an increasing distance from God.

Here are some examples:

1) C.S. Lewis

C.S. Lewis, while riding on the upper layer of a bus in England, felt he was touched by God. He described it like someone asking him to let go. He knew it was from God. When he surrendered to the good Spirit he wrote that it was as if he was a “man of snow” beginning to melt and what was rigid became flexible. (Read more about C.S. Lewis)

2) Angela of Foligno

Angela of Foligno experienced desolation and only dryness of spirit, feeling abandoned by God. She could not pray as usual and only felt absence. (Read more about Angela of Foligno)

3) Immaculée Ilibagiza

Immaculée Ilibagiza, having endured 3 months of hiding with 7 others in a crowded bathroom during the Rwandan genocide, wrote later in Left to Tell, “A wave of despair washed over me and I was overwhelmed by fear. I squeezed my eyes shut as tightly as I could to resist negative thoughts… I prayed as intensely as I ever have. The struggle between the evil whispers raged in my mind.” (Read more about Immaculée Ilibagiza)

Think about a situation in which you have a decision to make. Given what Sister Mary outlined about discernment, consider what consolations you experienced, and what desolations you experienced. Keep in mind that just because something is uncomfortable or difficult doesn’t mean that it is automatically desolation. We can feel consolation and profound peace, even in the most difficult situations. Correspondingly, just because something is easy and pleasurable doesn’t mean it is automatically consolation.

Write down, either here or for yourself, an experience of consolation and/or an experience of desolation. What did you do with the experience? What did you learn from it? (“I don’t know” is a perfectly acceptable answer!)

P.S. Tomorrow’s post will deal with getting practical with discernment and decision-making. And please plan to join us on Sunday from 7-9 p.m. to chat with Sister Mary.

Discernment is a topic that regularly comes up on A Nun’s Life. Last month I wrote a post called How is God calling you? and a few of you asked about continuing the conversation with a spiritual director. Well, I’ve been working on that and am pleased to announce that one of my IHM Sisters who is a spiritual director will be joining us this Sunday evening from 7-9 p.m. EST for a discussion on discernment and decision-making from a faith perspective.

Sister Mary McDevitt is an Immaculate Heart of Mary (IHM) Sister from Monroe, Michigan. For many years, she worked in areas of spiritual formation within the IHM congregation and engaged in retreat work. Sister Mary taught history of spirituality and spiritual direction at a local seminary in Orchard Lake, Michigan. There she assisted seminarians and lay men and women to complete their Master of Divinity degrees before they served as pastors, associates and staff in parishes. Sister Mary is now director of Visitation North Spirituality Center in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan.

In preparation for Sister Mary’s visit, I asked her to provide us with an overview of what discernment is and some concrete steps to help us figure out how God is calling us. Over the next few days, I’ll post her reflections on discernment and we can chat about it. Then on Sunday, Sister Mary will join us on the blog for a live discussion (like how we did the Doubt movie discussion).

Stay tuned for more on discernment and details about Sunday’s live discussion with Sister Mary. Feel free to offer any preliminary thoughts, questions, etc. on discernment or ideas of what you’d like to see Sister Mary address within the realm of discernment. And please spread the word about this event!

Today is the World Day for Consecrated Life. It was initiated by the Vatican in 1997 and is an opportunity to celebrate the life and work of women and men religious and to pray for vocations to consecrated life.

In a recent news release, Cardinal Sean O’Malley, OFM Cap., chairman of the U.S. Bishops’ Committee on Clergy, Consecrated Life and Vocations, noted that “We Americans owe a huge debt of gratitude to the religious in our nation. Their loyal service to our church and country are unparalleled…. The presence of both apostolic and cloistered religious in our nation has been a source of spiritual comfort to many people, Catholic and non-Catholic alike. I don’t know of any other country that can make such a boast.”

A Nun’s Life is participating in today’s celebration by hosting a “social hour” with people discerning God’s call and with a guest blog post at From the Pews in the Back.

1. The social hour is on the Vocation Forum at 8 p.m. EST tonight. All are welcome. To participate in the discussion, you have to be a member of the forum (free and easy to register). Once you are a member, look for the topic “February 8 Social Hour” in the discussion area. Also, I put together some Suggestions for a “Live” Discussion.
2. On the blog From the Pews in the Back I wrote a post today called For the Sake of the Gospel. It’s based on the Sunday readings and talks about my own experience of being called to consecrated life. Stop by and offer your comments.

Have a blessed day!

Is God really calling me? How do I figure out what God is trying to say to me? Am I the only one who feels this way?

If you have some of these questions, especially if you are kinda, sorta attracted to (but simultaneously terrified of) a call to consecrated life in the Catholic Church, then the Vocation Forum is for you. What is the Vocation Forum, you ask? It’s a discussion area for people who are discerning God’s call in their life. It’s a place to share vocation resources and questions with other discerners. It’s a fairly new forum and one that we hope will grow and continue to be a welcoming, supportive place for people discerning. Got a friend or daughter or coworker who is thinking about religious life or wondering what their call is? Send them over to the Vocation Forum.

Occasionally I or my nun Sister Maxine Kollasch, IHM, will be on the forum to support you and to figure out any weird technical issues, but mainly this is your place, your conversation.

Not sure if this is for you? Well, give it a shot. A good way to get to know the forum will be at our live “social hour” this Sunday, February 8, 2009, at 8:00 p.m. Eastern Time. It’s an opportunity to get to know others and to discuss thoughts and questions around discerning God’s call.

You need to be a member of the forum to participate, but not to worry, membership is free and easy to do. If you have any questions, just let me know. Feel free to comment below. Also, if you have any other requests or suggestions around how A Nun’s Life can help with vocational questions, issues, etc. please let us know!

And if you’d like to check out other resources that help in discerning your calling, visit Catholics on Call or VISION Vocation website.

The calling to be a nun is a pretty amazing thing. It’s a real adventure because it is always full of twists and turns and the unexpected. You never know where the Spirit will lead you. Being a nun is also pretty countercultural — we live in community, we hold all things in common, and we are celibate — all these things are meant to help us be free, free to serve God and God’s people. It’s a radical way of life.

Sometimes it’s difficult to know if what you feel is really real until you begin to act on it, test it out. Keep this desire in your prayers and take some steps to see what being a nun is like. Read a book about or by a nun, go on retreat at a convent, or get to know some sisters. Also, it’s okay to want to think about becoming a nun but also feeling bummed out about being a wife and mom. Any life choice a person makes involves some kind of sacrifice — doesn’t mean that a nun wouldn’t have made a wonderful mom or wife. This is definitely something that is good to pray on and begin to talk with a spiritual director about.

For some people, the call is crystal clear. For others, like myself, it’s a process of trying it out, testing it, and ultimately living into it to see if that is where God is calling me. I think it becomes clear when you feel like it is as natural as breathing air, that it just “fits” with you. When you feel like you are living fully into who God calls you to be and feel like you are growing and able to use your gifts and talents for the good of God, the Church and the world. For me there was no precise moment or flash in the sky, it’s just that I grew into it and was at peace, even though I doubted, struggled, resisted, yelled … there was always this undercurrent of peace.

I personally never wanted to be a nun. It was the kind of thing that snuck up on me. I resisted and resisted because I wanted to be married and have a family. But the more I considered religious life, the more it just seemed to fit me. I tested it out, even when I wasn’t totally sure. What I found was that learning about religious life and getting to know sisters helped me to sort of try it on and begin to imagine my self as a sister and see if it was really something God was calling me to. There was a lot of uncertainty, but also a lot of peace. It took time time for me to grow into God’s call for me. Over time a lot of questions were ones that I was able to live with — and be happy with.

If you are thinking about becoming a nun or are discerning any major life decision, find ways to test it out and don’t be discouraged if things are unclear or unsettling for a bit. Hang in there and know that the Spirit is with you and is guiding you. If you’d like to hang out with others who are discerning, do stop by Vocation Forum. Or for more info you might stop by Vision vocation network or Catholics on Call.

Blessings!

Question from Hayden …

Hi Sister Julie! First of all, I admire you so much! Nuns fascinate me so much. What an amazing spirit you have to lead a life totally for Christ. I am a Christian (Episcopal; raised Episcopal, Methodist, and went to a Church of Christ College), and desire to be closer to God every day! I do have a great relationship with Him, but sometimes think I have trouble hearing what He is telling me. Any advice? I want to learn how to really listen with an open heart and mind. I think it was fate that I even stumbled upon your blog! You are amazing!

Hayden, I’m so glad you came by for visit. Your question is an important one, one that many people including myself have wrestled with. Even Saint Teresa of Avila — a Doctor of the Church in the Roman Catholic tradition because of her teachings on prayer — struggled with prayer and listening to God.

The first thing I want to say is that your very desire to be closer to God is itself a clear indication that God is working within you, drawing you close. As Thomas Merton, the great spiritual writer and Cistercian monk, wrote in a prayer, “I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you and I hope that I have this desire in all that I am doing.” He continued, saying, “And I know that if I do this, you will lead me by the right road although I may know nothing about it.” For me, that is one of the key things to listening to God and responding to God’s call — tapping into that God-inspired desire within yourself to please God, to respond to God in love, to reverence and stand in awe of God.

One of the best ways to do this is to spend time with God as much as you can. Practice Saint Paul’s injunction that we “pray without ceasing“. That means to have a spirit of prayer in all that you do, as you go about your daily life. It also means taking time just to be with God, alone and without distraction. This can be tough to do, and it is also a very intimate and vulnerable thing to do. But just as we would in a relationship with a loved one, we grow into these moments, we’re able to behold a sunset together without words or to gaze into one another’s eyes with great love. These experiences with God nurture us and help us be more in tuned with what God’s desire is for us, what God’s voice “sounds” or “feels” like.

Saint Ignatius of Loyola teaches that there are some other specific ways to get in tune with God’s call to you and to help you better listen to and respond to God. The overall term for this is “discernment”. Ignatius developed a simple method by which you can review each day in a way that will help you grow in self-understanding and free you to follow God’s will. This practice is called the Daily Examen.

Those are just a few of my thoughts as I pray with you, Hayden, and all of us who long to draw close to God.

What ideas or thoughts does this inspire in you? What helps you to listen to God’s call to you?

I am at a keynote at the National Religious Vocation Conference. Father Donald Senior, CP, is discussing the life and teaching of the great apostle Paul. He is looking at the deep structure of Paul’s writings and life and placing the life and ministry of a vocation minister in light of Paul.

He mentioned the role of Ananias in Paul’s life as someone who encouraged Paul in finding his call. (See Acts of the Apostles 9 for the story.) Ananias gave Paul the space he needed to heal after his conversion from tormenter to “chosen vessel”. Ananias guided Paul to embrace God’s call, and he sent Paul out to proclaim the Good News and live out his vocation.

Who are the Ananias’s in your life? How can you be an Ananias to someone?

An article I wrote was just published in VISION Vocation Guide 2009, an annual Catholic religious vocation discernment guide. It is a publication of the National Religious Vocation Conference.

The article is called “How a 16th-century nun guides me in religious life” … can you guess who that nun might be? Here’s a clue: I write about her regularly!

OK, it’s no secret that the 16th-century nun who guides me in all of my life is Saint Teresa of Avila. The article I wrote for VISION began with a few posts here at my blog when I was reading Teresa’s The Book of My Life, her more autobiographical writing. It was a great article to write because I do love Teresa and I believe that she is very present to us today and can be a wonderful guide for people discerning and wanting to grow in their relationship with God and their understanding of life lived in the Spirit.

Order a FREE copy of VISION Vocation Guide from the VISION Vocation Network website or view the digital version of VISION Vocation Guide. The website is the number one place that I recommend to people who are discerning a vocation to religious life and other vocations within the Catholic tradition.

We have many exciting features to help you discern your life’s calling. Whether you are interested in consecrated life—such as becoming a nun, brother, priest, or monk—or simply looking for ways to deepen your faith through volunteer and study opportunities, you’ve come to the right place!

As luck would have it, the Monroe IHM ad appeared just when I was taking this screen shot!

]]> http://anunslife.org/2008/08/01/vision-vocation-guide-2009/feed/ 5 http://anunslife.org/2008/07/08/letter-to-a-young-religious/ http://anunslife.org/2008/07/08/letter-to-a-young-religious/#comments Tue, 08 Jul 2008 12:07:52 +0000 Sister Julie http://anunslife.org/?p=549

I received this comment/question a little while ago and want to address it front and center because it is an important issue in religious life. It also follows a bit from Sister Susan’s post about Religious Life in the Age of Facebook.

Hello Sr. Julie. This is my first post and I would like to say how much I enjoy reading your blog. I didn’t know where to ask this question, so, I will put it here.

I am the youngest member in my congregation under 40. It’s very lonely at times. The the loneliness is difficult and I only meet with younger members from other congregations sporadically. Sometimes, I really feel like leaving my order because of the loneliness.

I am posting this because I know younger religious read your blog and thought your advice would be helpful. Thanks and God bless!

Dear Younger Sister,

So good to hear from you. I am very sorry to hear that you are having a rough time with feeling lonely. It can definitely be tough when you are the youngest one in a religious community and there’s no one near your age. You are not alone in the sense that other young religious feel the same way. Have you been able to talk about how you feel with a trusted friend in your congregation? Are you able to relate to people your own age outside of the community? For me it was helpful to stay in touch with friends my own age and to get to know colleagues with whom I minister and young people who attend my parish. I know it’s not the same as having young sisters in your own community, but it does help.

I had some struggles with the age thing for the first few years of my life with the community. I always felt (as much my own expectations as others’ expectations) like I had to mirror the religious life of my sisters who lived it as 50, 60, 70+ year-olds. I couldn’t exactly distinguish between what was a characteristic of age and what was a characteristic of religious life. It took time, and the help of wise mentors, to find my way. Not always easily, but authentically and with trust in God, in my Sisters, and in myself.

Never forget that you are a gift to the community and that you have much to offer. They need you there and are open to being changed, “formed” as it were, by you just as much as you are to being changed by them. Spend time with the Sisters who “get” you and who can help you grown in religious life in an age-appropriate way.

A few weeks ago when I was home in Monroe at my IHM Motherhouse, I brought my laptop in with me when I went to visit a dear friend, Sister Annunciata (“Nuncie”), who will be 100 years old in August. She is a light in my life and I can always feel her prayers with me. After chatting for a while, I pulled out the laptop and explained a bit more about my blog and my ministry online. I took her through the blog and read her some posts and comments (wireless Internet at the Motherhouse is totally awesome). She was so happy for me and proud that I was extending gospel hospitality and the IHM mission online. It meant the world to me that she could rejoice in what I was doing even though she herself had never been on the Internet.

It is nuns like Nuncie who see the gift that you are and can encourage it by even the twinkle in her eye. Find your Nuncies and don’t be afraid to let your light shine. Loneliness is definitely a reality, but don’t let it consume you or prevent you from experiencing new kinds of relationships. At the same time, find ways to connect with younger people. And come online and hang out with younger sisters. There are a bunch of us on Facebook too. Perhaps we should form our own online forum just to hang out with and encourage one another.

My prayers are with you, Younger Sister. Please feel free to email me anytime if you’d like to connect — sisterjulie (at) anunslife (dot) org.

Sister Julie

P.S. The idea of having a space for younger religious to congregate online is not a bad idea. If you are 45 and under and interested in this possibility, let me know by following this link: Survey for Catholic Religious 45 and Under. You can also comment below.

]]> http://anunslife.org/2008/07/08/letter-to-a-young-religious/feed/ 15 http://anunslife.org/2008/06/03/james-martin-discerning-a-nonreligious-vocation/ http://anunslife.org/2008/06/03/james-martin-discerning-a-nonreligious-vocation/#comments Tue, 03 Jun 2008 16:29:05 +0000 Sister Julie http://anunslife.org/?p=503

Jackie: Hi Father Martin, I read the chapter on Thomas Merton with great interest, and am looking forward to reading the entire book. I could relate to how you were not happy in your corporate job! I would like to do more meaningful work [than my corporate job], and am wondering what your thoughts are on how people discerning a non-religious vocation might go about determining their calling. Many thanks in advance for your answer.

Father Martin: Well, that’s a good question. Really, though, the process is the same for any vocation and any state of life. One’s primary call comes from one’s deepest desires, which are God’s desires planted within us. Then one “tests them out,” to see how things work out. For example, you may have a great desire to be a lawyer and then find out that practicing law is not what you really desire. So “confirmation” of your choice is also important. In general, though, I would say pay attention to what you find attractive, appealing and exciting.

One of my favorite meditations for this is the one by Pedro Arrupe, SJ, the former superior general of the Jesuits (also included in my book!) Here’s his meditation, called “Falling in Love.” It can be applied not only to individuals, or religious communities, but also to anyone’s vocation in life.

Father Arrupe wrote: “Nothing is more practical than finding God, that is, than falling in a love in a quite absolute, final way. What you are in love with, what seizes your imagination will affect everything. It will decide what will get you out of bed in the mornings, what you will do with your evenings, how you spend your weekends, what you read, who you know, what breaks your heart, and what amazes you with joy and gratitude. Fall in love, stay in love, and it will decide everything.”

Hope: Fr. Martin, are there specific personality traits or threads that one discerning religious life should be aware of within herself? Are there any characteristics, thoughts, desires within a person that might be specific to religious life?

Father Martin: To answer your first question, I think that the most important thread in one’s life is that thread of desire, or a simple attraction, to a religious community. Now that might manifest itself, to take one way, through a lifelong attraction to a particular religious community, for example, if you always found yourself attracted to the Carmelites, the Dominicans, the Franciscans. (Or to the lives some of their more famous members, or their founders–like St. Therese of Lisieux or St. Teresa of Avila for the Carmelites; St. Dominic or St. Thomas Aquinas for the Dominicans; or St. Francis of Assisi or St. Clare for the Franciscans and Poor Clares.) So pay attention to the kinds of orders you have been attracted to over the course of your life.

Also, I think the one unique characteristic of attraction to the religious life, which is a little different than attraction to the married life, is that in the case of the married life, you’re attracted to one person, whereas in the case of the religious life you are attracted to a whole group of persons, who may be quite different from one another but who share a common charism, or spirit.

In the end it simply comes down to trusting that your deepest desires are simply God’s desires for you planted deep within you.

hoyasaxa: Hi Father Martin, First of all, thank you for your visit to this blog, I’m looking forward to following the conversation throughout the day.

Based on Sister Julie’s question about your vocation to the Jesuits in particular, I was wondering if you had any advice on sorting through the truly vast number and variety of religious communities out there. The idea of “shopping” for just the right “fit” in a congregation makes me a bit uncomfortable, but sometimes that’s how it feels!

Sister Julie also brought up that great moment when Thomas Merton was asked if he had come to Gethsemani to stay…for me it was his “terrified” reaction that really struck a chord! In the process of discerning a vocation to religious life, fear has been a big struggle for me. There’s fear of commitment, of losing control, of making the “wrong” decision, of family and friends’ potential reactions to such a decision, etc. How do you prevent these fears from becoming paralyzing without simply ignoring them?

Thanks again, Father Martin!

Father Martin: Thanks. Great to be here! 1a. The variety of religious congregations can be dizzying at times,  but I think the easiest way to start is to think about which one really makes you excited about religious life, which one includes those religious men and women to whom you have felt the closest bond, and which one has the “charism”, or governing spirit, that seems to fit your own spirituality best.  You also have to trust in God’s Providence in looking back over your life and seeing which groups you have come into contact with.  That is, which groups did God place along your journey?  And then spend time with the community and see if it fits you. And if you fit them. And trust that God will help you make a good decision.

1b.  Fear is a natural reaction for many reasons. First of all, it’s the fear of the unknown. Second, it’s the fear of, as you say, making the “wrong decision.”  And third, it’s the kind of fear Pete showed at the miraculous catch of fish, as he stood before Jesus: fear in the presence of the divine. For the first fear, it’s good to remind ourselves that change and growth are a natural part of human life, and that the unknown can be wonderful!  For the second fear, you have to remember that if God is leading you to this decision, it will be for the benefit for both you and your friends and family. In other words, trust in God’s plans, and, as Jeremiah says, that God’s plans for you are for comfort and peace. Following your “call” will bring new life to everyone–not just you.  Thirdly, fear in the presence of the divine, which is manifested in your case in the call from God (or initial attraction) is something that will ultimately lead you closer to God, closer to other human beings, and closer to a life of joy and love.  So while a healthy fear of God is good, remember also that God wants you to be happy, and to be closer to Him! 

In the end, as Jesus says, “Fear not!”

Sister Julie: You write about Thomas Merton being asked by the Gethsemani monastery porter, “Have you come here to stay?” (page 57) When did you feel that this question was being posed to you as well? How did it feel to first get a glimpse that God might be calling you to religious life? How did you respond? What did you do with any feelings of uncertainty, fear, resistance, etc.?

Father Martin: In essence, I feel that this question was first “posed” to me when I saw a documentary on PBS about the Trappist monk Thomas Merton in 1986. The “call” to religious life came through a simple attraction to the kind of life Merton led. At the time, I understood that only as a simple attraction. But it was more than that: it was a way of God communicating with me through my emotions and desires. That of course, was the call. And I did have feelings of uncertainty, fear and resistance, that took a while to subside. Ultimately, it became a question of asking myself “What do I want to do with my life?”

Sister Julie: “For me, Thomas Merton’s description of religious life was an invitation to new life” (page 59). Could you say more about this? How is religious life an invitation to new life? What did that mean for you?

Father Martin: On a practical level, it was a “new life” because it was radically different from the life I was living in the corporate world. But, on a deeper level, it was an invitation to live as my “true self,” as Merton would say, rather than the “false self” who had been trying to convince himself that the corporate world was the right place for him. And on another level, God was offering me “new” life more generally, because whenever we follow God’s call we are revitalized and enlivened and inspired.

Sister Julie: You are so right about people (myself included when I was younger) thinking that a call from God is “something of an otherworldly experience”. What can religious, vocation ministers, parents, and parish leaders do to help people sense God’s call in the ordinary “language” of every day life?

Father Martin: First of all, by helping people recognize that their deepest desires – not just their surface needs and ones – are manifestation if God’s desires planted within them In other words, your deepest desires for love, longing for a relationship, and hopes for meaningful work or a welcoming religious community, are ways God has of calling you to these very people and places. So we need to recover an understanding of the place of holy desires in our everyday lives.

Sister Julie: How did you feel called to the Jesuit way of religious life? Were you attracted by any other kinds of religious communities?

Father Martin: Well, that’s sort of an embarrassing question for me! (Or at least the answer is!) Because I spent virtually no time looking at any other religious communities. And the reason for that was my complete ignorance about the complex and variegated world of religious orders. These days, when young men come to me asking about entering the Jesuitsm I make it a point to ask them whether, as a part of their discernment, they have also explored the charismas of religious orders. But, for me, as it turns out, God was able to work even through my ignorance! I was led to the Jesuits more or less by chance–or, more precisely, Providence.

Sister Julie: How can the saints help people who are discerning a major life commitment? How about the “smaller” discernments in life?

Father Martin: Mostly by reminding us that the even the saints struggled with their decisions. They looked to the Gospels, talked to their friends, studied to the traditions of the church, and tried their best to discern what God seemed to be asking them, but in the end few were ever completely sure that they were doing the right thing. Just read any life of the saint, and you’ll see that they often struggle with decisions. That goes for the smaller discernments as well. In other words, do your best, trust that God is helping you if you have a good intention, and take the plunge!

Sister Julie: What other saints have been your friends along your journey into and within religious life? why?

Father Martin: You know, the saints have been my “best friends” are been included in My Life With The Saints. But there were a few other good friends I left out due to space considerations. If I had to write a second book it would surely include St. Isaac Jogues (for his heroic faith), St. Katherine Drexel (for her commitment to the poor) and St. Thomas Moore (for his ability to discern even in the most difficult of times. I just hope they are not too upset that I left them out!

It is a pleasure to welcome Father James Martin, SJ, to A Nun’s Life blog. Father Martin is a member of the Jesuits (the Society of Jesus), a Catholic religious community for men. He is also a fellow blogger at In All Things, an editorial blog at America magazine where he is an author and associate editor. (Read more at James Martin, SJ – Biography.)

Father Martin is here at A Nun’s Life to chat with you about the saints, becoming a saint through your everyday life, and much more. Since I often write about religious life and discerning God’s call, I’ve asked Father Martin some questions around his own vocation as well as religious life and discernment in general — click here for my initial questions for Father Martin. Those questions are just to get the ball rolling because really this conversation is for you!

Here’s how this works …

1) Ask your question(s) for Father Martin by writing a comment in the comment box below this post or any post today (all of the posts today will be part of the conversation with Father Martin).

2) Father Martin will be scanning all of these posts and comments and will respond to people’s questions. He’ll send me an email so that I can re-post the questions along with his responses in a new post. The most recent questions with responses will appear at the top of the blog. Father Martin’s responses will be in blue text.

3) If the questioner, Father Martin or anyone else would like to further a particular conversation, they can click on that post and comment there.

4) Loyola Press, the sponsor of Father Martin’s blog tour, is raffling off a free autographed copy of Father Martin’s book My Life with the Saints – you are automatically entered in this drawing when you post a comment or question for Father Martin.

5) Loyola Press is also offering a 35% off discount to A Nun’s Life visitors who wish to purchase My Life with the Saints. You can order at Loyola Press website or by calling Loyola Press toll-free at 800-621-1008. Please use the code 2679 to receive the 35% discount off the hardcover or paperback of My Life with the Saints. This offer is good through June 8, 2008.

My gratitude goes to Father Martin for joining us, to Loyola Press for sponsoring this, and to you readers and guests of A Nun’s Life for joining in!

We’ve already received some questions, so sit back, relax, and join in the conversation!

Welcome, Father Martin!

Welcome, Father Martin!

Father Martin: It’s great to be with everyone today on the second stop of my blog tour, or as I prefer to call it, my blog camino. I’ve long admired Sister Julie’s blog, and feel in good company with a younger religious. (For a Jesuit, anyone under 75 is young!) Anyway, I look forward to answering your questions about the saints, and, most of all, hearing what you all have to teach me!

I’ve just returned home after family and nun festivities and work in four different states. I had some time in Monroe, Michigan, home of my IHM Motherhouse. There’s absolutely nothing like being home with one’s nuns. Although I had some work to do, I feel renewed and encouraged. Community life is such an amazing bond — it is unlike any other relationship or way of being that I have ever experienced.

Now that I am home in Chicago, I am preparing myself for tomorrows Online Conversation with Father James Martin, SJ - rereading chapter 4 of his book My Life with the Saints. The chapter discusses part of his vocation story. Here’s a PDF of the chapter for you to read: My Life with the Saints: Chapter 4. It’s not necessary to have read it to participate in the conversation, but it may give you some ideas of stuff you’d like to ask Father Martin or talk with him about.

Here are some things I’d like to ask Father Martin about …

1) You write about Thomas Merton being asked by the Gethsemani monastery porter, “Have you come here to stay?” (page 57) When did you feel that this question was being posed to you as well? How did it feel to first get a glimpse that God might be calling you to religious life? How did you respond? What did you do with any feelings of uncertainty, fear, resistance, etc.?

2) “For me, Thomas Merton’s description of religious life was an invitation to new life” (page 59). Could you say more about this? How is religious life an invitation to new life? What did that mean for you?

3) You are so right about people (myself included when I was younger) thinking that a call from God is “something of an otherworldly experience”. What can religious, vocation ministers, parents, and parish leaders do to help people sense God’s call in the ordinary “language” of every day life?

4) How did you feel called to the Jesuit way of religious life? Were you attracted by any other kinds of religious communities?

5) How can the saints help people who are discerning a major life commitment? How about the “smaller” discernments in life?

6) What other saints have been your friends along your journey into and within religious life? why?

This conversation is for you so please ask your questions and engage with Father Martin. Feel free to pose your questions now or as we go along tomorrow. See you tomorrow morning!

As promised, I took a couple little videos (I don’t have a real video camera, just the one on my digital camera) so that I could share with you some of the profession ceremony of Sister Katherine Collard, IHM.

In this video, Katherine responds to Sister Mary Fran Gilleran, IHM President, who asks Katherine to speak to her desire to become an IHM Sister.

Powerful and beautiful.

Here’s a comment with good questions from my post “What motivates a person to become a nun?” …

I am a 39 year old woman, single mother to 3 beautiful children. I am also in the process of confirming my Catholic faith. I was not raised Catholic, nor have I lived the early part of my adult life in a Christian way. However, God has been drawing me deeper and deeper over the past 3+ years. I know I can’t be a nun, even though I am so very drawn to a religious life. I cannot and would not leave my children, now or when they grow up, but do you think there is a way I can truly dedicate my whole self to God? That is what fascinates me about being a nun. I want to live for Him alone–I do wish I could “marry” Him. Does that sound silly? Anyway-do you have any advice for me for ways to be closer to God? What do nuns study other than the Bible and the Catechism? Thank you.

Dear Nancy, Thank you for writing to me and sharing a bit of your story with me. God bless you and your beautiful children.

All Christians are to live their life for God — married, single, clergy and religious. It’s just that we each do it in a different kind of way. As a mom, you have an important vocation of helping your children to grow into God’s amazing dream for them, to love God, others, and all of God’s creation, and to learn how to reach out to the poorest and most abandoned of society. How you do this and how you make your own way through life is a gift to others as well for they can see another person like themselves who is prayerful, faithful, and compassionate. This is an extraordinary way to live for God.

I also hear in your words a desire to draw close to God personally, in a kind of solitude and intimacy. “Marrying” God doesn’t sound silly — it’s a great metaphor for communicating that deep desire to unite wholly with God. Each of us has to find the way that God is calling us to do that. Having regular times for prayer, celebrating the Eucharist, reaching out in service to others — these are very good ways of living into this union with God. You might also consider getting to know a religious community more deeply. Many communities like mine have associates who share in our prayer, ministry and community.

Nuns read quite a variety of things. I’d first recommend reading about the saints. Their lives are filled with insight into what it means to live wholly for God. Saint Teresa of Avila is one of my favorites. She wrote a lot about contemplative prayer and being united with God. “Interior Castle” and “Way of Perfection” are two good places to start. (I’ve written about Teresa a number of times on this blog — see my Teresa of Avila category.) Find saints that resonate with you. You might, for example, look into the life of the Blessed Virgin Mary and other saints like Saint Anne and Saint Monica who were moms.

There’s some good reading out there about living for God in the midst of everyday life. Check out My Monastery Is a Minivan by Denise Roy. There’s also a great book by Sister Melannie Svoboda, SND, coming out soon by Loyola Press — Gracious Goodness: Living Each Day in the Gifts of the Spirit.

I’ve got tons of suggestions as I’m sure others do. Let me know how you are doing. I’ll keep you in my prayers.

And for others reading this, do you have similar questions? What have you found helpful?

Question from a website visitor …

I’m stepping into religious life… or at least I think I am. I was wondering – do you ever feel lonely and alone? I really hate travelling alone and I yearn for the physical presence of a man – not sexual – just the ‘being there’. Jesus is my spouse, yes, but there are times when He just isnt there – and you just want someone to lean on or to hold you or to just pick you up from the airport. I dont know if you know what I mean. Is this normal? And how can we deal with it? Or do we just accept it and learn to suffer it?

Thank you for the question, Rosemary. It’s a good one, one that I certainly wondered about when I was considering religious life. The answer has many dimensions, so I’ll just give you my thoughts (hopefully in some semblance of order) on loneliness.

Feeling lonely is something everyone feels at one time or another, nuns included. But do nuns feel it more acutely because they make a vow to be celibate, that is, nuns choose to not have 1) sex or 2) romantic or exclusive relationships? (NOTE: the vow of celibacy is actually not about the “have not’s” but about being free to love all and go where God calls us to … but that’s the subject of a future post). Because of this vow, it may seem like women who become nuns are going to be physically lonely — like you said, not necessarily in a sexual way, but just having someone physically present to you.

This is a question that I too had when I was discerning religious life. I wondered about how intimacy (not talking sexual here) could be expressed as a nun — physical intimacy, emotional intimacy, spiritual intimacy. I didn’t know if the vow of celibacy and just the general life of being a nun prohibited any kind of close connection with others. I treasured my relationships with close friends, siblings, etc. What was going to happen?

Now, I’m not exactly sure how this all worked itself out (probably by living into it and trusting God), but I do know that I came to realize that God did not desire that I be cut off from everyone, that I be isolated and therefore alone. It’s just that my primary relationships were now with my religious community, and (as it always had been) with God. My community of nuns is my family. They’ve got my back — always. And I’m there for them. I’d drop just about anything (short of someone else’s welfare) in a heartbeat for any one of my nuns. So in this sense, I am never lonely or alone.

In another sense, however, there is a kind of loneliness that I and others (not just nuns) experience. The source of such loneliness is not necessarily lack of another person, but that ultimate realization (conscious or otherwise) that only God can fulfill us. Saint Augustine wrote, “Our souls are restless, O Lord, until they rest in you.” Even with our closest relationships, we feel this radical loneliness because we long to dwell with God. Don’t mean to go existential on you here, but it’s an important understanding of loneliness. It’s what helps people not suffer loneliness, but embrace loneliness as an experience of God.

A little while back I wrote a post called, Do Nuns Know How to Love? You might check that out to for a response to your question here.

Do respond and let’s have a conversation about this. And I know others will have insight into this question too.

A question from Kellie that I think many have wondered but never asked …

Dear Sister Julie, I would like to tell you that I have nothing but the utmost respect for you. My question is not meant to offend you in any way shape or form. I know that nuns are human like the rest of us. Do nuns ever have sexual urges, and if so how do you deal with the temptation of wanting sex.

Kellie, I am not offended at all and am glad that you asked. You are right — nuns are human like you and everyone else.

Part of being human is being a sexual person — humans are attracted to other people, have romantic feelings and sexual urges. Nuns are no different; however, we choose not to act upon these natural, sexual feelings and urges.

Think for example of other people in committed relationships. Just because you are married doesn’t mean you don’t find another person attractive or have great chemistry with someone. In fact married people might even “fall in love” with someone else, but that doesn’t mean they have to act on it. Committed people make a choice to not act on those feelings. Same thing with nuns. We are deeply human and can have sexual urges or fall in love.

When I was discerning religious life and felt convinced it was for me (and it was!), I fell in love with someone I’d know throughout grad school. Horrified that I fell in love while considering religious life, I went to my nun mentor and told her. I expected that she’d bid me farewell (I should have known better because she is one of the most deeply loving and compassionate persons I know) but instead she said, “Wonderful!” She didn’t tell me to stop discerning religious life nor did she tell me to cut off the relationship. She said to enjoy it! If we lose the capacity to fall in love, she said, then we lose the ability to truly open our hearts to God, to the people with whom we live and minister, with God’s beautiful creation. Doesn’t mean we have to express this love sexually. My nun was a great guide through that time because it was important for me to know how to deal with those feelings because they inevitably will arise if we are to be true lovers of God.

So, how do nuns deal with the temptation of wanting sex? I think the first thing is to remember that wanting sex isn’t bad in and of itself. Sex can be a powerful experience of union and love. For a nun, we vow to be celibate and so we choose to express union and love in other ways, such as through our community life, our relationships, and our ministry (Check out my post Do nuns know how to love? for other ways we express love). We have to acknowledge to ourselves a sexual urge we may have (not bury it as if it’s not there) and find ways to deal with it in a healthy way. Dealing with it may be solved by a splash of cold water or it may mean talking it over with a trusted friend or mentor. This is where being part of a community really helps because you are with women who have made the same choice and can support you and guide you through times like this. Community life helps you tap into the relationships that truly sustain you, that give you a joy and intimacy that goes beyond any urge for sex (however compelling it may seem at the time!). I’d be surprised if this were any different for married people.

I’d love to hear from nuns and others around this question. It is a great question for us to reflect on, and any dialog we can have on this would be especially helpful for those considering religious life.

Summer Day

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

~ Mary Oliver in New and Selected Poems (Boston: Beacon Press) 1992

Indeed … what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? Becoming a nun was and is my answer to this question! How about for you? Or are you still wondering?

(more on the Pulitzer Prize winning poet, Mary Oliver)

This past weekend I spent a chunk of time weeding out my wardrobe — it’s not quite spring cleaning as it is most definitely still winter. But the closet was looking a little too full for my desire to live simply.

The living simply thing is important to me for a few reasons — one, I really don’t need or want a lot of stuff. Two, I don’t like being attached to stuff (as compelling as stuff can be). Three, the more clutter there is around me, the more constricted I feel (even if subconscously) and that’s not a good way to be when you want to be free to go where God calls you to go.

So back to the closet … I ended up horrifying myself because I generally thought that I had a basic number of clothing items — but oh no. Once I piled everything up on the bed it was like Mount Everest! Where did all this stuff come from??? When things are scattered about in this or that drawer, in a closet, or (heaven forbid) tossed hither and yon, it’s tough to see how much you got. Now I’m no Imelda Marcos of clothes (not by a long shot), but I had way more than I thought and way more than I wanted to have. I think the problem is that I only wear about 20% of what I have so it feels like I don’t have a lot — and I’m good with not having lots of stuff. But I discovered this other 80% of things that were usable stuff but which I just didn’t rotate into the wardrobe.

So now that I have duly horrified myself with all this *stuff*, I’m determined to do something about it. I’ve got a system down. I weed out the stuff that I haven’t worn for a while and really don’t *need*. Then I neatly fold each piece and place them in a “give-away” bag. I put the bags in the porch and leave them there to “forget” about them for a few days. I do this because if one of those items was really important I could rescue it; otherwise if I don’t even think about it, I know it is time for it to go to a new home. Within a week, I take the bags over to The Brown Elephant and I’m done!

What are some ways that you practice (or want to practice) living simply?

It’s been a while since I wrote about the stages of formation in my series, “Decoding Formation” (see the sidebar on my blog for the previous posts). But now it is time to look at novitiate. I’m going to write this in several parts because there are a number of things I’d like to address. As in the previous stages, there is some variance across communities in terms of what exactly happens during novitiate. And know that I come from a community of active women religious, not a community of contemplative nuns. So there may be things that are particular to contemplatives that I am totally missing — contemplative nuns: please feel free to comment with your experiences!

After Candidacy/Postulancy, a person is ready for the big step of entering the novitiate. ” Novitiate” is the stage at which a person is a novice (meaning “new”) in the community. The community and the person have discerned that the fit is a good one. The “dating” is over (so to speak) and now comes the official engagement period. Just as a couple is committed to one another during an engagement, so the woman and the community are committed to one another. She is now ready to become a member of the community — not a full member for she is not yet under vows, but a novice member. As a novice she is still learning about religious life and the ways of the community, and at the same time she participates in the day to day life and mission of the community. Whereas in the previous stage the Candidate/Postulant usually supports herself and continues with her “former” life, now she is part of the community – what was once “mine” is now “ours”. During novitiate (and for the rest of her religious life), the novice receives what she needs from the community. As mentioned above, she is not yet under vows, though she lives as if she is — the vows of povery, celibacy, and obedience become not just something she knows about but something she lives.

During novitiate, a novice has a novice director – a professed sister who is responsible for the formation of the novice. The novice typically lives with the novice director and any other novices in the same convent/house. Other professed sisters may live in this community.

When a woman is preparing for novitiate, she and the congregation must be attentive to both the congregation’s Rule of Life (or Constitutions) and to Canon Law which provides guidelines and safeguards for the novitiate. I’ll develop this a bit more in my next post on novitiate: Novitiate – Canon Law.

Continuing my reflections on Saint Teresa of Avila …Teresa was in the convent school with the Augustinian Nuns (see previous post) for about a year and a half. She says that although she grew closer to God, “I still had no desire to be a nun, and I asked God not to give me this vocation” (Life 3.2). But, she notes,

“By the end of this period of time in which I stayed there I was more favorable to the thought of being a nun, although not in that house, for there were things I was afterward to understand were most virtuous that seemed to me to be too extreme…. These good thoughts about being a nun sometimes came to me, and then would go away; and I could not be persuaded to be one.” (Life 3.2)

I love Teresa’s honesty here. I think many people struggle with their vocation (not just to religious life). For some, they know clearly what they are meant to do; but for others like Teresa (and myself), it’s not immediately clear. We have to test it, wrestle with it, ponder it, and ultimately live into it. No one way of discerning is better than another. Somehow or another we end up where God is calling us, though it may be a matter of moments or years. It is so important to hang in there and to continuing to pray and to serve others.Flash of light or cloud of unknowing? — which image fits your experience of finding your vocation? Or what other image fits for you?

A friend recently asked me if I know of a community for men that will accept people with mental illnesses that are managed? I personally do not know but thought that the “wisdom of the crowd” could help us out. Please respond with your suggestions. Many thanks!

I’ve touched only a little bit on the subject of religious life and persons wishing to join a community who have a managed mental illness. (See Can You Become a Nun if you have a Chronic Illness?, When a Sister is sick or dying …, and Chronic Illness and Becoming a Nun REVISITED.) As you can tell from my previous posts, it’s not a clear-cut issue. My general sense is that communities discern with candidates on a person-by-person basis. There is no absolute rule that says if you have x, y, or z illness you cannot become a religious. A lot has to do with how well the individual is living with it and to what extent the community has the ability/support systems/understanding to support the person. These considerations all takes place within the mode of discernment, of prayerfully and expectantly seeking God’s Word to oneself and also to the community.

While there may be some communities who are more open to discerning with persons with managed mental illness, all communities must be open to where God is calling them and to help persons discern their calling. I’ve seen wonderful generosity of spirit by religious communities who have discerned with a person even when it was clear that the person did not have a religious vocation with that community. These communities have used their wisdom and discernment expertise to help these persons come to a true sense of who they are and where God is calling them — in some cases that has been to marriage, missionary work as a lay person, college, or another community.

I look forward to your suggestions regarding men’s communities. Again, thank you in advance.

A while back I began a “series” called Decoding Formation.

• Decoding Formation: a basic introduction
• Decoding Formation: who me??
• Decoding Formation: Initial Inquiry
• Decoding Formation: Aspirancy/Pre-Candidacy

Here’s the next segment of the series. As mentioned in a basic introduction, each religious community may have its own particular nuances to the formation process, however, the basis for the formation process is discernment and the pattern for formation is similar.

Wow! So now’s the time that a person has been accepted into the religious community’s Postulancy or Candidacy. The Postulant or Candidate is not under vows but she has made a more formal commitment to enter into the mission and life of the congregation. From the various women and communities I have known, it seems as if there are many different approaches to this period of formation so be sure to check out particular communities for what they envision for this time. If you’ve experienced Postulancy/Candidacy and had a different experience, please share with us (especially those who are cloistered … my experiences comes out of being a member of a non-cloistered community).

Beginning Candidacy is a big step in the woman’s life and in the life of the community for it signals a formal commitment to one another, not just a casual relationship with no strings attached. True, a Candidate may choose to leave at any time or be asked to leave, but basically there is a mutual desire to know one another more deeply and to share one’s life.

At the heart of Candidacy is the deepening of one’s life of prayer and integrating this life with the community. The Candidate may live with the community itself or in a house of formation. This house of formation might include others in formation for that community as well as the formation director. Or the house of formation might be a local community which is willing to continue their regular ministries but also place the formation of the Candidate as a priority in their community life. In any case, the Candidate prays with the community, lives with the community, and enters into their life of mission. In some cases she may continue working or studying as she was prior to becoming a Candidate. In other cases, she may leave all that and begin a specific program that the community has in place.

During this time a Candidate will be engaged in studies around religious life, theology, scripture, personal growth, and the charism and history of the congregation. She may do this in a variety of ways: taking a college course, joining other people in formation from a variety of communities to learn about religious life, joining with others in formation in the same community to learn about that particular community. While learning about the community is something all Candidates do, the other studies really depend on where one is in one’s life. For example, if you already have a degree in theology, you might spend this time focused on a particular or related area.

One of the things I found most helpful during this time was the opportunity to get to know our IHM sisters who were retired and living at our Motherhouse. These are women who have lived The Life, some for 75 years and counting! Not only could they talk to me about the history of the congregation as they lived it, but they shared their experiences of walking with God, of prayer, of mission and service. These women had the kind of wisdom and hospitality that made you feel holier just being in their presence. I’m sure that part of my formation and coming to understand myself as a religious came through osmosis, through just being with these women. To this day, our IHM Motherhouse is truly HOME to me and the women there continue to inspire me, challenge me, and call me to be my best self.

And of course, during this period of formation, discernment continues. The Candidate continue to reflect on and pray about what God is calling her to. She pays attention to how she is growing personally, and to whether or not this life “fits” with her. She continually brings her experiences to prayer. She meets regularly with the Sister who is the formation director or Candidacy director. She also meets regularly with a spiritual director (usually someone outside of the community, though in some cases a member of the community). The Candidate is also beginning to integrate her life with that of the community in the sense that her family and friends are getting to know the community as well. On the community’s part, they are also sharing their lives with the Candidate, allowing her to get to know them personally and begin forging relationships.

There’s so much more I could say but as I read back over this, it is somewhat of a jumbled mess. Candidacy is such a fluid time that it’s tough to nail these things down and be more specific or systematic. Perhaps the best thing to do is to direct you to what congregations themselves say about this time period. Here are a few:

Scanton IHMs
Sisters of Saint Francis of Perpetual Adoration
Sisters of Providence
Daughters of Saint Paul
Saint Benedict Monastery

Next installment: Decoding Formation: Novitiate – Overview

A while back I began a “series” called Decoding Formation.

• Decoding Formation: a basic introduction
• Decoding Formation: who me??
• Decoding Formation: Initial Inquiry

Here’s the next segment of the series. As mentioned in a basic introduction, each religious community may have its own particular nuances to the formation process, however, the basis for the formation process is discernment and the pattern for formation is similar.

Once a person has gone through the period of initial inquiry (discerning and learning more about a particular religious community) she may feel ready to take the next step which is formally preparing for applying to enter the community. The period of time when a person prepares to apply to join a community is called aspirancy or pre-candidacy. This period gets its name “aspirancy” because the person “aspires” to pursue her call to religious life through a particular community. The main work of this period of time is to continue the discernment and prayer that has been ongoing both in the life of the aspirant and in the community.

The person interested in joining begins to more formally study and experience the community’s lifestyle and spirituality. She may be invited to attend certain formation events or community events so that she can truly get a feel for the community. It is so important during this time that the person meet sisters, get to know them, and share her journey with them. Developing and tending to relationships are important aspects of community life.

When I lived in Toronto (5 hours away from the IHM Motherhouse in Monroe), I visited Monroe maybe once a month, but everytime I was there, various nuns would look out for me and be sure I had someone to eat with at lunch or sit with at an event. They made sure they introduced me to other sisters and took me around to the infirmary to meet sisters who weren’t up and about. Though I wasn’t living near Monroe, I met women then who have become my very dear friends. They are the people who helped get me through formation and the various joys and sorrows of life. They kept in touch with me and always welcomed me in Monroe. The events that I went to were important, but more important was the opportunity to get to know these women, to tell them my story and listen to their own. Somewhere in their, I/we discovered that we had a common story and that’s how I knew in part that this was to be home for me.

In addition to the ongoing formation and getting to know one another, there is a formal application process. Once there is a sense from both the woman and the community that the process should continue, the woman may ask to apply to formally enter the community. The application process is not for the faint of heart. It involves getting reports from physicians and psychologists that indicate that you are healthy of mind and body to join. It involves filling out forms with all your basic information, education and employment history, family, etc. Usually there is a series of “essay” questions in which you reflect on your call, your spirituality, your history, who you are, and how God has been at work in your life. Then there are interviews — interviews with formation personnel, leadership and/or sisters at large. Again this is an opportunity to learn more about one another. I say this is not for the faint of heart because a lot — I mean A LOT — of soul-searching takes place. The process of applying gives you a fabulous opportunity to take a look at yourself — mind, body, and spirit — and to integrate your whole self with this call from God. It is amazing as it is terrifying, yet it is all good because you are coming to know yourself better and God and the community. It may feel like you are laying everything out there — because you are — but let me tell you: it is worth it. Whether you end up joining the community or not, this is perhaps one of the most valuable times of your life.

During this time of aspirancy/pre-candidacy, the person maintains responsibility for herself. She financially supports herself and carries on all her ordinary responsibilities. Though she is in the act of applying, she is under no obligation to join. She is always free to leave at anytime. She is not under vows, though she most certainly will be trying to live as if she is as she grows more accustomed to the lifestyle. On the community’s part, there is no obligation to accept a person who applies nor is there an obligation to financially support her. This arrangement allows both parties to remain free in discerning the call. In this way neither the community nor the woman is beholden to the other. Both can freely listen to the Spirit and have that be the center of the relationship and decision.

Once the application process is complete and there is a sense of readiness on behalf of the woman and the community, leadership and/or formation sisters review the application, reflect on their experience with woman, and enter into a period of discernment. After this time, the community will convey it’s response to the woman applying. When the woman is accepted, she may enter the period of postulancy or candidacy. See next installment: Decoding Formation: Postulancy/Candidacy.

Blog reader “Lilpeep” left a comment for me a little while back. Seeing as how I was delinquent in responding, I thought I’d make up for it by devoting a whole post to Lilpeep’s questions.

Hey Julie, I was wondering, what motivation did you have to become a nun? Why did you choose that type of career/life??

You asked what my motivation was for becoming a nun. Well, I didn’t really plan on becoming a nun. My motivation was to live my life the best way I could as a young, single, Catholic woman. I knew my options were single life, married life, and religious life. I figured that I was destined for married life. I always wanted to be married and to be a mom. But, I decided I’d check out the religious thing just to say “been there, done that” … so I wouldn’t have any doubts about that NOT being my call. Well, that didn’t happen. It turns out it was my call. I think deep down, I recognized that I was most fully myself when I was in tune with God. It just so happened that for me, that meant living the lifestyle of a religious. For others, it may mean living a married life, being a parent, becoming ordained or choosing single life. Whatever lifestyle God calls us to is IT, the best one for us. I realized that to be true to myself meant that I had to let go of something and let God do the driving. I still am quite a back seat driver, but more and more I am able to say “not my will, Lord, but yours be done”.

Being a nun is more of a way of life than it is a career. I think of a career as something that at the end of the day or week, I can come home and do my ordinary stuff. I’m “off duty” so to speak. Just like being married is not a career, being a nun is not really a career because being a nun is part of who I am. It’s like I’ve got this IHM dna now that is as much a part of me as my family is. As with married life, our vows are for life — in good times and in bad.

In a way, I wasn’t the one who first chose this life of being a nun. It’s like it chose me. I know that sounds kinda weird, but it’s true. It’s not something I ever would have thought would “fit” me. Yet, by golly, it does. Once I realized that this is what God was calling me to, I had to take the time and space to choose it for myself, to make God’s call my own, to embrace it freely. After some major resisting, running, and denial, I was able to freely choose this life, knowing that it is the best way I can be me and serve God and the world.

… a continuation of the Decoding Formation series … click here for the previous post: Decoding Formation: who me?? …

Once a person has a fairly good idea that they are attracted to the religious lifestyle of a particular community, she may enter an informal period called initial inquiry. As the name suggests, this a time when a person first approaches the community to learn more about the community and the process of joining.

Each community has a sister who is responsible for relating with women discerning a vocation. The sister is called a vocation director (or similar title). The sister and woman may exchange emails or letters or have phone conversations. They may meet in person in the woman’s sphere of life or the sister’s or someplace in between. It all depends on what the discerning person is comfortable with. There should be no pressure here. Just some time, however long, to become acquainted with the sister and her community. The sister is also there to support the person in her discernment even if that discernment means connecting with other religious communities or even pursuing a call that doesn’t lead to religious life.

This is a wonderful time of exploration, discovering new things about oneself and God, feeling a little scared and excited at the same time, and striving to remain open to the Spirit, wherever the Spirit may lead.

This period of initial inquiry may lead to taking a completely new direction in life or it may lead to entering a more formal period of time in preparation for applying to enter the community. See the next installment on Aspirancy/Pre-Candidacy.

In my last post about Decoding Formation, I gave a very basic introduction to the idea of formation and discernment. Now here’s a little “behind the scenes” look at what it can sometimes feel like when you discover that maybe, just maybe, God is calling you to religious life.

It all starts with that tiny little part of you that decides that you are going to be open to God’s call. After that, it’s all over. Being open to God’s call sounds like a good and holy thing (and it is), but it can also be rather messy, complicated, and downright uncomfortable. God has this way of thinking that he is, well, God, so often his ideas are not exactly what I had in mind when I first decided to be open to him.

Like the whole religious life thing. Being a nun was not at all on my radar screen. I was taught by a few nuns and even had a couple nun friends … but I did not under any circumstances want to be a nun. So when I was confronted with the possibility (why? because I thought I was being good by trying the “open” thing), I kept thinking, “Who me?? What did I ever do to suggest that I’d think this was a good thing for me??” Turns out that being a nun was the best thing that could have happened to me. But it was a difficult process of letting go of my assumptions about nuns and religious life, coming to terms with my relationship with the Roman Catholic Church, overhauling my relationships with others, and taking a sober look at who I truly am. Even though the process was a bit rocky for me, I wouldn’t change any of it because it helped me to be more in touch with reality, God, myself and others. Even if I didn’t continue in religious life, it would have been one of the greatest blessings of my life.

The initial discovery of a possible vocation is not always this rocky. I for one went kicking and screaming, but others can be very welcoming of God’s call to become a religious. Either way, we all have to go through the process of finding a real answer to the question “who me?” for it forces us to think about how and why God may be calling YOU, not somebody next door, but YOU. That can be an awesome and terrifying thing. At the same time it can be attractive and joyful. These seemingly opposed feelings … terror (“No! Not me! Stay away!”) and attraction (“Yes, I’m kind of liking this. I feel peaceful.”) can happen simultaneously.

The key is to hang in there with all the questioning. Whether it results in a vocation to religious life or not, it doesn’t really matter (even though it feels like that is the main point). The fact is that God is calling you to a deeper relationship with himself. He is trusting that you are ready for this next moment in your lifelong adventure with him. Maybe ultimately you are being drawn to religious life. But what is so much more important than that is being drawn into a relationship with God, wherever that relationship may take you. Embrace the questions, live into the mystery, find a home for both the feelings of terror and attraction, pray, and see what today brings.

For the next installment in this series, click here: Decoding Formation: Initial Inquiry.

My good friend is preparing for her final vows so I’ve been thinking a lot about my own journey to final vows.

The basic elements of the journey of professing vows in religious life are not totally unlike those of the journey of professing vows for marriage. When a couple gets married they usually get engaged first. Engagement is a period of time when the couple publically pledges their commitment to one another, prepares for marriage, and continues to get to know one another more deeply. In religious life, the “engagement” period is known as formation.

Formation is a time when a person pledges their commitment to a particular religious community (that is, they are not still “dating” other communities or people, though they are free to leave should they choose to), prepares to become a religious within that particular community’s tradition, and continues to get to know the members of the community and herself or himself as well. Each religious community may have its own particular nuances to the formation process, however, the basis for the formation process is discernment and the pattern for formation is similar.

Discernment is the grounding of all major life choices, though often we may not be conscious of the fact that we are discerning. In general the term discernment refers to the process of “separating or distinguishing between” or “coming to know or recognize” (Merriam-Webster). In this context, the word discernment is used more specifically to refer to becoming aware of, learning more about, and embracing one’s life calling. Basically, as the Catholic Web site Disciples Now points out, discernment is nothing more than a “fancy word that means figuring out what God is telling us.” Discernment can refer to a particular stage — e.g., discerning a call to religious life — and it can also refer to a mode of being in the world — e.g., to be a discerning person.

A person who is considering becoming a religious (a nun, sister, brother, or monk) is in a discernment mode, that is, figuring out what God is calling them to in terms of making a life commitment. The whole process of formation is one of discernment as a person enters more deeply in relationship with and conversation with God. While discernment to enter religious life may technically come to an “end” when one professes final vows (you pretty much have a good idea of how to answer the question “is God calling me to religious life?”), discernment continues for the rest of one’s life as a person deepens their appreciation of that call or encounters new dimensions of that call or discerns “little” calls within the big call.

So that’s formation and discernment in a nutshell. In future posts I will unpack this a little more and write about the general stages of formation. For next installment of this series, Decoding Formation: who me??.

Questions, comments, queries? Comment or send me an email.

I’m reading Can Religious Life Be Prophetic? by Michael Crosby, OFM Cap. The book is unsettlingly inspiring. (That’s a good thing.)

It is unsettling because in raising the question — “Can religious life be prophetic?” — Crosby is also asking, “Can YOU be prophetic?” This is very unnerving. I don’t think that anyone truly sets out to be a prophet. It is a terribly unsafe choice of careers. Look at what all the biblical prophets suffered at the hands of their own people. Yet it is true that religious life by its nature has a prophetic dimension. Sisters and nuns, brothers and monks, are called to be a goad to the conscience of the Church and of the world. This is the “rugged prose” part of religious life. It’s a part that I find difficult to fully comprehend but which I know is part of the DNA of religious life. Most of the difficulty for me comes in the fact that the more I comprehend, the more I must change my own ways of thinking and my own lifestyle. It’s uncomfortable and very challenging at times.

Crosby’s book is also inspiring. I’m learning a lot about the prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel. I’m also learning about what this prophetic call within religious life looks like. I would like to be the kind of religious which he envisions. I’d like to become someone who has so imbibed the Word of God that I am able to put God first in all things. I want to be a voice for those who are voiceless. I want to place others’ needs ahead of my own. I see many of my sisters who have embodied this kind of lifestyle. I pray that I might be able to grab on to their shirt-tails for a while and deepen this lifestyle within myself.

My blog provider WordPress.com has this nifty little feature that allows me to see what kind of hits I get from search engines. I think it is my favorite feature. Today I was looking at it and found that the search term “how to get out of being a nun”. I don’t know who entered that the search term or why, but I’ve got to say: I feel your pain.

Basically I never wanted to be a nun. I had my life all planned out — and it most certainly did not involve celibacy, obedience or poverty (the three vows we sisters profess). Life has a funny way of not going the way we plan it all the time. While I was in my last year of college I got to thinking about what I was going to do and how I wanted to live my life. I was involved in my Catholic faith community at school (after a couple year hiatus exploring other faith traditions) and considered my options as a single, Catholic woman. I was aiming for married life, having done the “single” thing. A third option, however, was something I had never considered. So, in a (misguided) spirit of fairness, I thought I’d look into religious life just to say that I did. Then I could cross it off the list. Well so much for that. What happened was that the more I looked into it, met sisters/nuns and brothers/monks, the more I was attracted to the lifestyle. All the while I was thinking NOOOOOO! How do I get out of being a nun?????

I tried my best to get out of it. Let’s see … there was ignoring it, not going to church, doing stupid things to make me feel like I was not nun-material, yelling at God, not talking to God, looking up old flames, checking out Buddhism (until I found nuns there too), and taking up running (trust me, it sounded like a good idea at the time; I was willing to try anything to get me as far away from God as possible).

Finally, I gave into it. Best decision of my life.

The Scripture readings at Mass really struck me today. The first reading hit me so soundly that I don’t really remember the rest of the Mass. It was from the book of Joshua in the Old Testament. Joshua 24 stands as an epilogue of sorts to the first six books of the Bible. In this chapter, Joshua calls an assembly of all the tribes of Israel at Shechem.

Joshua gathered together all the tribes of Israel at Shechem,
summoning their elders, their leaders,
their judges, and their officers.
When they stood in ranks before God,
Joshua addressed all the people:
“If it does not please you to serve the LORD,
decide today whom you will serve,
the gods your fathers served beyond the River
or the gods of the Amorites in whose country you are now dwelling.
As for me and my household, we will serve the LORD.”

But the people answered,
“Far be it from us to forsake the LORD
for the service of other gods.
For it was the LORD, our God,
who brought us and our fathers up out of the land of Egypt,
out of a state of slavery.
He performed those great miracles before our very eyes
and protected us along our entire journey
and among the peoples through whom we passed.
Therefore we also will serve the LORD, for he is our God.”

Jos 24:1-2a, 15-17, 18b

What struck me was the line “decide today whom you will serve”. This is a question that we face all too often in life. Sometimes the desire for a good reputation, extra money in the pocket, physical achievement, or just getting through the day can end up dominating everything. This passage reminds me to stop and take inventory of who or what I am serving and make a choice for God … which, coincidently, is a choice that helps be become most fully who I am. This is no easy choice. It is challenging for me and many people to shift or keep our focus on God.

The people whom Joshua addressed also had a tough time. They had to remind themselves of all the great things God had done for them throughout their history. It was God, they remembered, who brought us out of slavery in the land of Egypt. It was God who performed great miracles and protected us along our journey.

When I struggle in my faith, I remember the faith of the Israelites who even in tough times proclaimed the great things God had done in their lives. I too recall the great things God has done in my life. Though it may not make things easier, I know that I can stand with Joshua and the Israelites and proclaim:

As for me and my household, we will serve the LORD.

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?