This might seem like a random question, but I have been searching, and I can’t seem to find the answer. Can sisters/nuns be in wedding parties? I am not looking to tie the knot anytime soon, but I am a 21 year-old woman, and my 18 year-old sister, my best friend, is very seriously discerning the religious life. I am so excited for her, and I pray every day that she follows God’s will for her life, whatever that may be. I am just wondering, a little prematurely I suppose, whether or not she could be my maid of honor if she were to become a nun before I get married.

- Katie

Hi Katie, Thank for writing. In general, Yes, sisters/nuns can be in wedding parties. Something to be sensitive towards is dress. Sisters who wear habits may be required by their congregation to wear the habit, and not a bridesmaid dress. Those who don’t wear a habit may be reluctant to wear dresses that are “revealing”.

There also may be some communities that have restrictions on interacting outside of the convent which may mean that they can’t be bridesmaids. If a sister/nun is unable to be a bridesmaid at a wedding, one might consider asking her to do something else — if it is a religious wedding, for example, ask her to do a scripture reading.

I think it is really awesome of you to be supportive of your sister. I don’t know what I would have done without my older sister’s love and encouragement. Keep on praying for and supporting your sister. Remember that no matter what, she is your sister, the same kid that you grew up with. Encourage her to be the best person she can be!

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AS019 Ask Sister podcast recorded live on March 26, 2010. Sponsored by aNunsLife.org ministry. Topics include: celibacy, discerning the will of God, choosing a religious name, convent decor, family responsibilities, and more.

Click PLAY below or right-click here to download the MP3.

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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:

• How can I know if wanting to become a nun is God’s will or my own will?
• What is the historical reasons sisters received a religious name? What is the practice today?
• How do I deal with family responsibilities if I become a sister?
• Are nuns allowed to do fun things or to chose a profession?
• What is the difference between chastity and celibacy? How does one prepare for a vow of celibacy?
• What do convents look like on the inside?

Do you have a question for us? Call our toll-free Voicemail Hotline at 888-703-4732 and leave a voicemail for us with your question. Be sure to give us your first name and city from where you are calling. We’ll play your message and respond on the Ask Sister podcast. You can also send us an email or comment below. In whatever way you contact us, please know that your last name, email address, and any other private information will be kept confidential.

Listen to AS010 Ask Sister podcast recorded live on January 15, 2010. Sponsored by aNunsLife.org ministry. Topics include family expectations when a person tells them they want to be a Catholic sister; who to talk to when you think you are called to become a nun; and whether or not a person has to be a virgin in order to become a sister or nun.

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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.

Catholic sisters and nuns live in community in a wide variety of ways. Often we only think of community as living under the same roof, that is in “the convent” or “the monastery” but community actually takes many forms. Simply living under the same roof does not make a community. Likewise, living singly does not mean you are living alone or without community.

Since I’ve been an IHM Sister, I’ve lived various configurations of physical proximity but in all of them have striven to live deeply our IHM community life. I’ve lived singly with few IHMs around me because of the demands of my ministry; I’ve lived with 5 other sisters; I’ve lived with one other sister; and I’ve lived on our Motherhouse campus with nuns everywhere! Each way of living calls forth different aspects of living community.

Because our community like many others is ministerial based, our choices for community life are necessarily diverse so that we can respond to people’s needs. I’ve been told stories about how our sisters years ago heard the news that babies in Korea were dying because there was no one to hold them in the orphanages. The infants needed human cuddling to live and to grow. Our mother superior immediately sent nuns to Korea to minister by “simply” holding the babies. Didn’t think about the fact that we had no convent there or that there were only a handful of nuns she could send. She saw the need and knew that we could help.

I’ve also been thinking about a friend of mine who is in the national guard. She is stationed hours away from her home and family. She lives singly on base and gets together with her family whenever possible. Though certainly a struggle, her marriage and family life is not any less real or authentic. It is now expressed in new and different ways.

Today’s world is full of so many ways to live community and family life. While some of us live this community through physical proximity, many of us also experience community and family in ways that go beyond this proximity. In what ways do you experience this kind of community or family life?

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?