How times change! I found it interesting to read through the “horarium” (the hourly schedule for sisters) that was used early in IHM religious life. It reflects a time in history when the main purpose of all religious life around the world was to develop personal holiness. Service to others was a “secondary” purpose. But times—and theology—change. In the 1950s and 1960s, service to others was understood as not being somehow separate from holiness, but a path for holiness.

If you were a novice with the IHMs in 1902, here’s what your day would look like!

IHM sisters performing their “charges” – serving meals in the sisters’ infirmary

1902 IHM Novitiate Directory

[Sisters arose to the sound of the bell at 5:00 a.m.]

As good order is the life of a well regulated Institute, the Sisters shall make it their duty to observe most strictly the following regulations. They shall rise in the morning at the first sound of the bell, without in the least giving way to sloth, thinking that it is God who calls them. Entertaining themselves with holy thoughts, they shall dress with greatest modesty. Afterwards, make the sign of the cross, and recite the usual morning prayers, offering to God all the actions of the day. Then, prostrate, they shall say three Aves and ask her blessing while in spirit kissing her hand. And having kissed the floor, before and after the three Aves, they shall kneel and with arms extended, say one Pater and Ave in honor of their yearly Patron.

Assemble in the chapel for meditation
Assist at Holy Mass
Breakfast
Manual work/study until 11:45
Particular examen [of conscience]
12:00 (in silence) go to dinner
Te Deum in Chapel after dinner
After Chapel, repair to refectory, kitchen, or other departments for charges [daily chores]
After these charges, recreation
Study/manual labor from 1:30-3:00
3:00 Spiritual reading (from a book selected by the Novice Mistress)
3:30 One-third of the rosary
4:00 Free time
4:30 Visit to the Blessed Sacrament and the BVM
5:00 Study or instructions
6:00 Supper, followed by recreation
8:00 Silence
8:30 Night prayers
9:30 Last signal shall be given, when all unnecessary lights shall be extinguished and each Sister is strictly commanded to be in bed.

Source: Building Sisterhood: A Feminist History of the Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, published by Syracuse University Press, 1997. Photo: page 192.

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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 National Catholic Reporter has a new article posted by Sister Sandra Schneiders, IHM, called Discerning Ministerial Religious Life Today (September 11, 2009). In this article, Sister Sandra helps explain why it is that all nuns do not wear a habit, live in a cloister, or pray the horarium. Essentially Sister Sandra is filling a gap in people’s experience of women religious. Many people have had experience of or heard about sisters who live a monastic form of religious life and sisters who live an apostolic or ministerial form of religious life. But it’s not always easy to explain how we got the two or how the two are similar and how they are dissimilar.

This essay is also a kind of continuation of a discussion on religious life by Sister Sandra in recent publications: the essay Why they stay(ed), the personal email that NCR published, We’ve given birth to a new form of religious life, and the address she gave to the IHM Congregation, God So Loved the World … Ministerial Religious Life in 2009.

In this latest piece, Sister Sandra, a member of my own IHM community, responds to the question, What is ‘apostolic Religious Life’? which, as she notes, has been answered though often times with misinformation. The question appears in various forms, often around three main questions about lifestyle:

“Is culturally conspicuous, uniform garb (habit), fixed group dwelling from which members exit only by necessity and from which non-members are excluded (enclosure, cloister), and a daily schedule including shared meals, work, and especially the oral recitation of prescribed texts and vocal prayers, e.g., divine office, litanies, at several fixed times a day (horarium) essential to Catholic Religious Life as such?” The short answer is “no.”

The article goes on to provide a longer answer contextualized within history, scripture and theology.

This is a very important piece of writing and I recommend that you take a read, especially if you are considering religious life or know someone who is. Use it as a starting point to explore some of the issues and insights that Sister Sandra has raised. Whether or not you agree with what she has written, she has done a good job at naming the significant issues that can create confusion and misinformation.

Discerning Ministerial Religious Life Today
(National Catholic Reporter, September 11, 2009)

Please read the article and then join in the conversation below. (NB: The conversation actually got started on another post here so I moved those comment over here.)