Happy feast of Saint John of the Cross! Here’s a bit of John’s story from Saints and Feast Days: A Resource and Activity Book by The Sisters of Notre Dame of Chardon, Ohio.

John of the Cross was locked in a cell six feet wide and ten feet long for nine months, with no light except that which filtered through a slit high up in the wall. He later forgave the men who had imprisoned him. How could he do that? He explained, “Where there is no love, put love, and you will find love.”

John’s father had been disowned by his wealthy Spanish family when he married a poor weaver rather than a woman of equal economic status. Living in poverty proved to be too much for him, and he died shortly after John was born. John spent much of his youth in an orphanage, where he was clothed, fed, and given an elementary education. At the age of 17, he found a job in a hospital and was accepted into a Jesuit college. In 1563 he entered the Carmelite Order. Eventually he enrolled in another university, where he did so well that he was asked to teach a class and to help settle disputes.

When he met Teresa of Ávila and learned from her about the reform of the Carmelite Order, John decided to help with it. As part of this decision, he wore sandals instead of shoes and lived very simply in prayer and solitude. In 1577 the attitude toward the reform shifted.

John was caught up in a misunderstanding and imprisoned at Toledo, Spain. During those months of darkness in that little cell, John could have become bitter, revengeful, or filled with despair. But instead, he kept himself open to God’s action, for no prison could separate him from God’s all-embracing love. During this time he had many beautiful experiences and encounters with God in prayer. Later he would describe these experiences in poetry. In 1578 John escaped to southern Spain to join the reformed Carmelites. There he held leadership positions and wrote reflections on his experiences, which showed his deep spirit of prayer. When he became ill, he chose to go to the city of Ubeda, where no one knew him. It was there that he died.

On this feast day, if you encounter a place of no love, put love, and you will find love.

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Join A Nun’s Life community for prayer at 6 p.m. CST (your time zone). This Friday is the Ask Sister Podcast. If you have questions for us, please email them to us.

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.

Happy Feast of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux! Saint Thérèse, also known as the “Little Flower”, was a Carmelite nun and writer. She is patron of missionaries and a Doctor of the Church. She lived from 1873 – 1897, dying when she was not even 24. What is so remarkable about this young woman is that is is precisely through her “little way” that she became so “great”. “She never went on missions, never founded a religious order, never performed great works. The only book of hers, published after her death, was an brief edited version of her journal called The Story of a Soul … But within 28 years of her death, the public demand was so great that she was canonized.”

Read more about Thérèse’s life at catholic.org.

Here’s a great quote from Saint Thérèse … and a challenging one!

“I prefer the monotony of obscure sacrifice to all ecstasies. To pick up a pin for love can convert a soul.”

What “little way” do you practice in your own life?

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Join Sister Maxine and me for prayer on
this Feast day
at 12:00 p.m. noon Central Time (UTC-5)
at anunslife.org/live

Ever wonder how cloistered nuns deal with matters outside the cloister? In many cases, such matters are taken care of by members of the religious community who are known as extern sisters.

Sister Hildegard referred to extern sisters just the other day on a post I wrote about lay sisters. I thought I’d clarify by explaining in a bit more detail what an extern sister is in the Catholic tradition.

Extern sisters are not the same as lay sisters as described in the earlier post. Extern sisters belong to cloistered communities that observe strict enclosure. These sisters are full members of the community, having all the rights and privileges that all the sisters share. What makes them different from the cloistered nuns in their community is that part of their task within the community is to relate to people and the world outside the cloister. They express the charism of the community in their active lifestyle while the cloistered nuns express the same charism through their contemplative lifestyle. These “outdoor sisters” are not under strict enclosure so that they can interact with the outside world (e.g., go grocery shopping, contract service work for the monastery, relate to church folks and pilgrims, etc.).

Sister Mariam, ocd, of the Carmelites of Saint Thomas Monastery helped me better understand the vocation of extern sisters. She wrote to me telling me a bit of the origin of extern sisters in the Carmelite tradition:

Because of the strict enclosure, it was always necessary to have some lay person outside who would look after the Chapel, and do some of the necessary liaison work between the nuns and the outside world. This is still the position in many monasteries, particularly in Spain. However, in France, in the 1700’s (I think) these lay persons were allowed to make simple vows and wear a religious habit, distinctive from the cloistered nuns. With the development of time, they were fully incorporated into the Carmelite Order, and special legislation was made for them. It is a unique sort of vocation, very suited to those who feel called to a life of deep prayer, and service to others, but not to the strict enclosure of cloistered nuns. We even have two “Blessed” who were extern Sisters, who belonged to the community of Compiegne, martyred during the French Revolution.

Visit the website of Sister Mariam’s community, Saint Thomas Monastery in Auckland, New Zealand, for a good description of the vocation of an extern sister today.

Are there any extern sisters or brothers reading who would like to tell us a bit more about their vocation? We’d love to hear from you.