“I’m 15 years old and was raised Catholic and love the Church. I was wondering is there was any advise on my desire to be either a consecrated virgin or nun. I always think about God and vocations throughout the day and love to pick up books about saints. I really want to be very close to God but I’m afraid I’m doing it out of selfish reasons or that God wants me to be free to experience more things. I have a while to think about it and I know that some way in my life I will be religious. I was just hoping for your advice. Thank you!”

- Lauren

Hi Lauren, I’m glad you wrote. It’s not unusual to have those desires and attractions at your age. It’s a good sign that God is calling you into a deeper relationship with Godself and wanting you to get to know God more.

No matter why or how we are drawn to something or whatever our reasons are, God can still make sense of things and lead us to that which is good. I encourage you to keep praying and chatting with God and participating in Mass. And when you read about the saints, pay particular attention to the things that really catch your imagination — is it the way a saint prayed, or ministered, or lived in community? Spend extra time with those sections that attract you.

At the same time that you are praying with and pondering these things, remain true to your vocation as a student and to expanding your horizons by learning! Everything you are doing now is going to help you as you move into your life’s calling.

If you are interested in becoming a nun or consecrated virgin, find ways to get to know what those lifestyles are like. There are many ways to live either way of life. You’ll find a discernment guide that is helpful for discerning any vocation, as well as information specifically on becoming a Catholic sister or nun in our article How to Become a Catholic Nun.

Also, hang out here at A Nun’s Life to get to know nuns and learn about them. Also check out our list of Blogs by Catholic Nuns to get to know other sisters and nuns who have a blog. Community life, and understanding oneself as part of community and as serving a common good, is essential to this vocation so it is imperative that you get to know individual sisters as well as get a feel for how they live community and if and how you can see yourself in that way of community.

For more on consecrated virginity, check out www.consecratedvirgins.org, the website of the US Association of Consecrated Virgins. The website has a lot of information on what a consecrated virgin is, the process to become one, and more. Also here are a couple of our blog posts on consecrated virginity.

And Lauren, if you’d like to hang out with other people discerning their calling, visit our Vocation Forum.

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AS038 Ask Sister podcast recorded live on August 20, 2010. Sponsored by aNunsLife.org ministry. Topics include: file cabinets in the image of God (do animals or rocks have souls?), vows human or God made, religious brothers, nun terms, obedience and more!

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Ask Sister podcast is a live podcast where you have the opportunity to engage with us and ask questions about nuns, prayer, religious life, or pretty much anything in between!
Here are some of the questions we addressed in this Ask Sister podcast:

• Are the vows that Catholic sisters and nuns take made by God or by humans?
• Do file cabinets have souls?
• Is the vow of obedience always understood strictly?
• What are some of the distinctions between the terms nun, sister, consecrated virgin, and lay sister?
• Are brothers the male equivalents of sisters and nuns?

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These days you can not only adopt children and animals but you can adopt highways, platoons, watersheds, and even microbes!

Now you can adopt candidates for religious life and ordained life! Thanks to an email from Jerri, I discovered that the Diocese of Joliet-in-Illinois as well as dioceses across the country have programs to encourage vocations to consecrated life and to support those who are in the process of becoming a religious or ordained. Jerri says that for the past couple weeks, there’s been an blurb about the program in the bulletin. It reads in part:

ADOPT A SEMINARIAN OR CANDIDATE PROGRAM: This program is an opportunity for the youth group, school, religious education class or parish to adopt a seminarian (a man who is studying to be a priest) or a candidate (a woman preparing to be a sister), and encourage them on their journey by writing letters. This type of encouragement would be greatly appreciated by the men and women in formation.

After receiving Jerri’s email I did some more searching around and found a recent article on the subject from Catholic News Service. “Programs to ‘adopt’ women in formation seen as vocations aid” by Jackie Taylor (March 23, 2009) has some more examples of how the program works and its benefits for both the adopters and the adoptees.

My only caveat to this wonderful program is that I wish it also encouraged vocations for men to religious life as well as other Church vocations like consecrated virginity and hermit life.

When vocations are promoted, we sometimes only focus on religious life for women and priesthood for men, as if two gender-based versions of the same calling. Not so. Ordained life is a distinct calling and can be to the priesthood or to become a deacon. Both forms of ordained life are restricted to men.

Religious life is a very different calling and it is open to both men and women. It includes sisters, nuns, friars, monks, brothers. In addition there are hermits and consecrated virgins — not sure if they technically fall in the “religious life” category but all of these are considered forms of “consecrated life.”

So in the ideal world, we’d have a parish bulletin with the headline “The Adopt-a-Sister-Friar-Priest-Hermit-Monk-Deacon-Nun-Virgin-Brother Program” but who would ever want to title something like that!!??

Hmmm … anyone interested in an Adopt-A-Nun’s-Life program?

Just found this story via my Plurk friends … “Woman is first consecrated virgin in Richmond diocese” by Steven G. Vegh (The Virginian-Pilot © July 27, 2008)

Here’s the first section of the article:

Fresh-faced and vivacious, Bernadette Snyder says she grew up in Virginia assuming Catholic girls like her either became nuns or found a man.

At 29, she is still single, and assuredly not a nun.

“I mean, do you see this in a convent?” Snyder said, glancing at her flowered skirt, peasant blouse and jewelry. “It just doesn’t happen. I mean, really!”

Instead, Snyder chose a little-known third path with a long tradition in Catholicism: She became a consecrated, perpetual virgin – the first in the 188-year history of the Richmond diocese, which includes Hampton Roads.

Wearing a white sundress and big pink earrings, Snyder knelt in May as Bishop Francis X. DiLorenzo laid hands on hers in the rite of Consecration to a Life of Virginity of Women Living in the World.

It’s pretty cool that there is interested in this Catholic vocation of consecrated virginity. It most definitely is not widely known which is unfortunate because people like Bernadette might find their life’s calling within that vocation. It’s important that we know more about this vocation and encourage others to consider it. Pope Benedict XVI recently spoke about the beauty of this Catholic vocation of consecrated virginity. The pope noted:

“The choice of virginal life is an allusion to the transitory nature of earthly things and an anticipation of future good. Be witnesses of vigilant and industrious hope, of joy, of the peace that belongs to those who abandon themselves to the love of God. Be present in the world, yet pilgrims on the journey to the kingdom.”

I do beg to differ, however, with the characterization of nuns in this article (I’m very protective of the image of Catholic nuns as A Nun’s Life readers probably know by now!). I know lots of nuns who wear ordinary, modest outfits which may include flowered skirts, peasant blouses, or jewelry. Why, just the other day I was donning my cycling habit — coolmax tank top, cool biker-dude sunglasses, and black spandex shorts (okay, well that’s something that no one should admit to in public, but I’m trying to make a point here ). There are a variety of styles of dress that Catholic nuns wear, among them are the “traditional” habit, the modified habit with or without veil, and dress that resembles the ordinary, modest clothing of a particular culture.

For whatever reason (intrigue, sensationalism, ignorance, cutesie-ness, etc.) the writer of this article about Bernadette chose to make dress an issue and to play it against stereotypes of nuns as women who only ever wear traditional habits and who lack personal flair. (Note: this is a false stereotype but one which surfaces again and again.)

Okay, i’m done with my nun stereotype crusade, at least for now.

Back to this amazing event … wow, a young woman becoming a consecrated virgin. Way to go, Bernadette! You’ve given many people a glimpse into a wonderful vocation within the Catholic Church. Please be assured of my prayers.

Thoughts, reactions, questions?

Here’s a good article on consecrated virginity with encouraging words from Pope Benedict XVI. A consecrated virgin is not the same as a nun or sister. It is a different way of life within the Church. It always amazes me the diversity of our vocations in the Church. God calls each of us in a unique and powerful way. I’d love to hear from any one reading who is a consecrated virgin and what the life is like.

Consecrated Virginity a Gift for the Church, Says Pope
Calls Charism Luminous and Fruitful

VATICAN CITY, MAY 15, 2008 (Zenit.org).- The call to consecrated virginity has roots in the beginnings of evangelical life, and the Virgin Mary was its first fulfillment, affirmed Benedict XVI.

The Pope stated this today when he greeted 500 consecrated virgins today who have gathered in Rome for an international congress. In his remarks to the members of “Ordo Virginum,” or the Order of Virgins, the Holy Father, quoting the theme chosen for the congress, pointed out that consecrated virginity is “a gift in the Church and for the Church.” He invited the women “to develop, from day to day, their understanding of a charism which is as luminous and fruitful in the eyes of the faith as it is obscure and futile in the eyes of the world.”

“The Order of Virgins represents a particular form of consecrated life which flowered anew in the Church after Vatican Council II,” the Pontiff explained. “However, it has ancient roots that go back to the beginnings of evangelical life when, in an unprecedented novelty, the hearts of certain women began to open to a desire for consecrated virginity: in other words, the desire to give one’s entire being to God, which had had its first extraordinary fulfillment in the Virgin of Nazareth and her ‘yes.’

“Your charism must reflect the intensity, but also the freshness, of its origins,” said the Pope, noting how, “when it came into being, the charism did not involve a particular way of life. Little by little, however, it was institutionalized, finally becoming a full public and solemn consecration conferred by the bishop through an inspirational liturgical rite that made the consecrated woman ‘sponsa Christi,’ an image of the Church as bride.”

“Your vocation is profoundly rooted in the particular Church to which you belong,” he told the women. “From the diocese, with its traditions, its saints, its values, limits and difficulties, you open up to the scope of the universal Church, sharing particularly in her liturgical prayer.” “In this way your prayerful ‘I’ progressively broadens out,” the Holy Father continued, “until in the prayer there is nothing more than a great ‘we.’ In your dialogue with God, open yourselves to dialogue with all creatures.”

“The choice of virginal life,” the Pope concluded, “is an allusion to the transitory nature of earthly things and an anticipation of future good. Be witnesses of vigilant and industrious hope, of joy, of the peace that belongs to those who abandon themselves to the love of God. Be present in the world, yet pilgrims on the journey to the kingdom.”