Aug 11, 2015 |
By Cinnamon.
Unusquisque:
1) Latin adjective (masculine singular), from unus (one) + quisque (each). Eg: Each one looks to You to give food in due season.
2) Tongue-twister from the Dominican prayer book, bane of my life in the early weeks of postulancy (see also: gloriosissimae; necessitatibus; famulorum famularumque).
I don’t know whether, in your former community, you tangled with this monster during the formal grace in Latin as I did (it’s pronounced oo-noos-QUISS-quay, by the way, and getting it right for the first time is a real buzz) but if you were in Dominican formation I bet that you’ve encountered these other eight-hundred-year-old traps for the unwary:
- Courtesy of the angels who started handing out bread at the junior end of the refectory table, you get to go first in everything! Want to wait invisibly at the back and watch the senior Sisters to find out what they do? Actually, you’re leading the procession. Good luck!
- You (finally) make a perfect profound bow. Everybody else makes a head inclination. Hopefully they’re all keeping custody of the eyes and missed it.
- For anyone who’s not naturally a soprano:
no further explanation is required. I used to do my choir practice down the local cemetery, figuring that my paint-peeling rendition of this beloved chant would take years off Purgatory for any Holy Souls who happened to be listening.
- Processions in general. Did anyone else crash into furniture on the way around the chapel? Execute an impeccable turn, and then realise that a partner had been left stranded because you were supposed to bow to her first? Meander off too far to the side and get patiently towed back in by one elbow? (Or maybe it’s just me. Who am I to judge?)
Also, unless your written work rivalled the perfection of the Summa, you will have found yourself on the receiving end of that other profoundly Dominican gesture: the uncapping of a red pen. Veritas. The deepest instinct of these Hounds of the Lord is to find out what’s wrong, and, for the glory of God, fix it. While still in the convent, I read the results of a survey about religious beliefs sent out to different communities of nuns in the 1960s: lots of sisters dutifully filled out and posted back their responses, but, surprising nobody except the authors, the Dominicans corrected the questions before they answered them. (It certainly didn’t surprise me. I’d just failed an essay for the first time since my early years in high school.)
And you know something? I miss it all fiercely. As Dom Hubert Van Zeller points out, a yearning for the externals of 
the religious life doesn’t mean that my vocation was to stay in that community –Ā of course I miss the processions of white habits, the candle-lit vigils before Jesus in the monstrance, the solemn Salve. It’s also obvious that when my health began to shatter under the demands of monastic life, all of those beautiful things weren’t enough to keep me there. So why, then, did I spend the better part of two years afterward fighting an irrational desire to turn up on the community’s doorstep one morning and ask them to let me have another try?
When I left, the most important thing that became forfeit was not my hope of wearing the veil that would set me apart for Our Lord, and the scapular for Our Lady, and nor was it the chance to spend my days with a lively, intelligent group of devoutly Catholic women of whom I had become fond. It wasn’t even the privilege of living in the cloister and chanting the Divine Office with them at the heart of the Church. What I surrendered was twofold: to be a bride of Christ, and a daughter of Saint Dominic. In my heart, I’m both. Officially, I’m neither. Worse is the thought that, if I died today, in heaven I’d be neither.
Of course, if it turns out after further discernment that I don’t have a religious vocation at all, I could become a tertiary, but I suspect for me that would feel a bit like winning the silver medal. Here’s why. The desire to be a sister first hit me in my teens when I was barely practicing the Catholic faith, and before the year was out I’d fallen head over heels in love with Jesus. Listening recently to the TEDx Talk on discernment that Jenni gave, I realized for the first time that, somewhere in those early days, I skipped a crucial step in the process: I wasn’t afraid of the path ahead. On the contrary, I was awed at having been noticed by God, and wildly excited about getting started in the religious life. Forget your people and your father’s house, for the King has desired your beauty!
Thanks to prosaic things like tertiary studies and the resultant debt, the better part of a decade passed before I got my wish. Enough time to get over the honeymoon, commit myself to some serious study, collect a few battle scars and get a realistic idea of what I’d be facing when I entered. It always surprised me, though, when people said, “Wow, that’s a big step to take! Aren’t you scared?”Ā No, I’m not, was the honest reply – it’s just the next obvious step. Giddy romanticism dispensed with, I was still eagerly looking forward to entering: I’d discovered the Dominicans at World Youth Day, and found what I was looking for in a religious Order. Then, a few months after I entered, I finally met Saint Dominic.
I’d been struggling through an assignment about the founding of the Order (having, as previously mentioned, failed the first one) and, one morning, simply pushed all my other essays aside and buried myself for several hours in the life of this gentle, luminously holy man. The shy scholar who sold his books to feed the starving; the preacher with bleeding feet, on his own among thousands of heretics; the beacon of chastity whose sheepish deathbed confession was that he had sometimes enjoyed preaching to young women more than old; and the devoted spiritual father who promised after his departure to help the brethren by his prayers. By the time I put my books away and hurried off (as quietly as one can hurry down a cloister while dodging the squeakiest floorboards, that is) to help prepare lunch that day, I’d become a Dominican. An ordinary desire to follow Christ had crystallized into the desire to follow Christ just as Saint Dominic had, in contemplation and preaching of the Truth.
So, I’m starting discernment again from scratch, trying to find the place where my home on earth might be. And this time, I am scared. I know what can go wrong, and how badly –Ā but also how beautiful it can be. That’s in the future, though. For now, I remember and continue to pray the exquisite Dominican prayers I learned in the convent –Ā not in some useless pretence of monastic life, but because their meaning has become intertwined with my personality like silk threads woven into a piece of cloth, and I wouldn’t know how to pull them out if I wanted to. I’m still a Dominican inside. Please God, one day I’ll sing His praises in heaven as one, too.
Praedicator gratiae, nos junge beatis.
Jul 29, 2015 |
How to deal with anxiety, from the pen of a paranoid schizophrenic.
By Stephanie Grace Cesare.
Jeremiah 29:11:Ā Yes, I know what plans I have in mind for you, Yahweh declares: plans for peace, not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope.
Trust has been a major problem in my past, but if we believe in God’s goodness, how can we not trust in Him completely? Every second of our life God knows and allows to happen to us. “There is a spiritual world all around us, can you not see it?” – Jane Eyre.
Because of my condition I am always worried that the worst thing possible is going to happen at any second. The only way I could overcome that was to believe in God’s loving providence: to actually live second to second with a great belief that everything was in some kind of play book for my life. It is when the waves start crashing in on us, when we think we are alone and will drown, that God says, “O you of little faith”. In that moment the Apostle Peter cried, “Lord, we are going to drown, don’t you care?”Ā Whenever we take our eyes away from God, that is when we become anxious, scared, feeling we are on our own and will drown in worries: that is when we need to cry, “LORD!”
This is where suffering must be understood.
Luke 11:11-15 says, “What father among you, if his son asked for a fish, would hand him a snake? Or if he asked for an egg, hand him a scorpion?” Suffering as the saints know it has infinite worth. God allows suffering to come upon us for this reason, that we may fill up what is lacking in the wounds of Christ, and that we may actually participate in God’s salvific mission for the world. God works through us when we accept life’s difficulties
2 Cor 12:7-10: “Wherefore so that I should not get above myself I was given a thorn in the flesh, a messenger from Satan to batter me and prevent me from getting above myself about this. I have three times pleaded with the Lord that it might leave me but he has answered me, “My grace is enough for you.” For power is at full strength in weakness. It is then about my weaknesses that I am happiest of all to boast, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me, and that is why I am glad of weaknesses, insults, constraints, persecutions and distress for Christ’s sake, for it is when I am weak that I am strong.”
Some examples in my life… God is in the details. To let go and realize every detail of the day is God’s will, will give you an extreme amount of peace. One day I realized I wasn’t going to be able to have a job because it was so stressful so I gave it up to God. I am a cosmetologist and I am supposed to take the next person on the computer list no matter what they want done, so I said, “Lord, please send me the people that I would be able to handle.”Ā This went really well. Every time I went to the list I had the confidence that the Lord would help me with the next customer. He must really want me to have this job so I trusted.
I was in a religious community when I was having signs of schizophrenia and had decided to leave. I went into an extreme depression that landed me in the hospital several times. I didn’t know how a good God could push me away from him and not want a girl who dreamed all her life since the age of reason to be his spouse; to be incapable of it! How could a good God abandon me like that? “And I will dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life” – that just wasn’t true – or, “She has chosen the better part and it will not be taken from her”Ā – hmm, what about that one? I was telling God how to make me holy rather than trusting that he knew the best way. Then one day, I read that God sent the man who had asked to be his disciple to go home and be a witness to his family and home town – “How can I do that?” I thought. Well, I have had the chance to help those in the world with me more than I ever had in the convent with my peers, family and customers. I am planning on volunteering at a nursing home so I can talk to the infirm about God while doing their hair. I never had this in the convent…the chance to get close to people and love them. To get to know them, unlike I would ever have in the convent. That’s when I realized I was called to the single life and so be a witness.
One night I was crying hysterically over the fact I left the convent when my parents came home from Louisville with a note from a homeless person on the street to me. It said, “I have chosen you to bear fruit.”Ā That was the quote at my clothing in the convent on my card. It made me realize that I have a mission greater than I could ever imagine as long as I did God’s will.
I was chosen, but how and for what? The most anxiety you go through is not knowing your calling in life and the second is not trusting and giving up your will to God. Mother Teresa said, “If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans”Ā.
The teenager days are usually the most arrogant. I’m going to be rich, I’m going to change the world, I’m going to be famous. There is nothing wrong with having these goals, as long as we give our will to God, but many do not and go into despair when they do not accomplish what they desire. This has caused many college-age students to commit suicide because their goals are so high. Many people come out of religious life and this can be devastating to live a humble life of a lay person or the married state. In Abandonment to Divine Providence, Fr. Caussade explains that it is not in seeking holy things or circumstances, but seeking holiness in all our circumstances, that makes saints.
We will never have peace unless we trust that doing what is in front of us is God’s will and that doing it well (little detail by little detail) will take away the anxieties of life and will lead to greater, wonderful things. Think, when you offer your life to God in your daily duties, of how much more God in his generosity will give you to accomplish in your life. He is all goodness, so do you not believe he will give you a grand adventure – one that will bring you to heaven?
In living each moment the way God calls (the little details) God will give greater things for you to do. I love St. Therese because she taught the little way to heaven. Doing every little thing because it is most humbling and therefore more meritorious in the eyes of God. Once we realize the great worth of these small details, the more at peace we will be. Believe in PROVIDENCE! Just realize that our daily duties are so important when done with love – how much more at peace. God will always outdo us with love, and the more we offer up these small things, the greater the things he will call us to, and we will be at peace in his love.
Psalm 131, song of quiet trust: “O Lord my heart is not lifted up, my eyes are not raised too high. I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvellous for me, but I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a child that is quieted at its mother’s breast; like a child that is quieted is my soul.”
Our Lady of Guadalupe to Juan Diego: “Listen, put it into your heart, my youngest and dearest son, that the thing that disturbs you, the thing that afflicts you, is nothing. Do not let your countenance, your heart be disturbed. Do not fear this sickness of your uncle or any other sickness, nor anything that is sharp or hurtful. Am I not here, I, who am your Mother? Are you not under my shadow and protection? Am I not the source of your joy? Are you not in the hollow of my mantle, in the crossing of my arms? Do you need anything more? Let nothing else worry you, disturb you.”
Jun 24, 2015 |
Church of the Holy Sepulcher
By Guadalupana
In May I was able to go on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Ā My fourth year anniversary of leaving religious life fell while I was there – May 24th AND Pentecost Sunday of this year. I surprisingly wasn’t able to remember the exact date of my departure from the convent and had to actually look it up in an old journal before embarking to Israel. Ā Perhaps that’s a good sign? Ā However, my heart still remembered at times how it felt and aspects of the leaving process were very clear when I brought them to mind. Ā Going shopping in my habit the day after learning I wasn’t called to vows & peeking out of the dressing room to show another sister my outfit, going for a couple of days of prayer, being rebellious & wearing pink toe nail polish under my tall white socks during my last couple of days, the goodbye brunch, having the opportunity to say goodbye to some sisters in person but not many, throwing a hair brush across the room after a sister attempted to make my short hair look a little better, and having the novitiate sisters crowd around me before getting into the van to head to the airport after I had changed into one of my new outfits. These are a few of my last moments in the convent. Ā Although there is still at times pain and sorrow when I recall this, there is peace and God’s love was present with me then as it is with me now. Ā This now brings me to the topic of the Holy Land.
Before leaving for the Holy Land, we were told by a priest that we would be going on a pilgrimage to endure a journey and meet God on it. We would be going on an outward journey to go on an inner journey. We would be going to the place where God’s Heart met man’s in the flesh and we want to leave inspired. The priest told us that he wanted us to meet the living God, to fall in love with Him, to make our peace with Him, and for us to go forth to set the world on fire. This is the Christian life. We needed to prepare for this and be ready to meet Him. How true these words became for me and are still becoming for me as I continue to journey through all that transpired while in the Holy Land.
The Sea of Galilee.
It was so powerful being in the places of Our Lord. Sometimes I can think too much, but while there, my heart became more alive again. I would lose all control of my emotions at times with the Lord performing “surgery” on my heart. He loves us so much…He loves me so much. I crucified Jesus by my sins and, like St. Peter, have denied Christ (I have in a way denied Him when I’ve doubted His mercy & love for me at times) but yet Jesus chose to go through such suffering & die out of love for me. Ā Jesus…God…came to earth out of love for me to be my Savior, for me to know how much I am loved by God, for me (like Mother Mary) to rejoice in God my Savior, to be with me as I journey to Heaven. It was like a dance between my insecurity and God’s patient & tender love for me. Multiple times during the pilgrimage, my insecurity would arise in my heart with God then gently reminding me that I am loved and that He is there. It’s like the parable of the sower (see Luke 8) with the seed (God’s Word & truth of His love for me) needing to go deeper into the soil of my heart. I started Pentecost Sunday (literally: it was around midnight) near the courtyard of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher going to Confession and then going to Calvary (YES, the spot where Jesus died out of love for me) to be with Him. It was so spiritually peaceful, beautiful, real. I could have stayed there all night.
Calvary on Pentecost morning.
We had already visited Calvary once before this during the pilgrimage but on my last day I just had to go again, making it visit number three! I almost didn’t have peace about leaving the Holy Land and desired to return to Calvary again to be with Him and to say goodbye. While there, I told Him that I didn’t want to leave. Quietly in my heart I heard, “You’ll find Me in the Eucharist”. After this time at Calvary, I had peace about leaving. At each Mass, I get to return to Calvary. With each Eucharist, I receive my Savior Who died (and rose) out of love for me. Wherever I am, He is also with me, loving me. Someone joked after my return home that I had gone all the way to the Holy Land to be told that I’ll find God in the town where I live. Wherever I am is my Holy Land, for Christ walks with me and journeys with me on this pilgrimage to Heaven.
Jun 3, 2015 |
By two Leonie’s Longing writers.
Among the reasons for leaving religious life, the one that gets the least attention is that ofĀ being asked to leave the community.
Perhaps you know you: were too young, unhealthy, didn’t fit in, broke a rule, were unhappy, had conflict with your superior, had a misunderstanding, etc.
Or maybe you were like me and you weren’t told why you needed to go. You were simply asked to leave.
Even for those who have either discerned themselves or with the community to leave, there are still those looming questions, the “what if’s”Ā or the “if only’s.”Ā These questions, especially for those of us that are still wondering why, can echo in a seemingly empty soul.
Nature abhors a vacuum, and the evil one is all too willing to fill in that empty space of unknowing or uncertainty. He relentlessly lied to me and I had incredible difficulty fighting it. My sense of isolation and shame didn’t help.
These lies can include:
God doesn’t love you.
You weren’t good enough.
There’s something wrong with you.
How could you ever think you could be a sister?
They shouldn’t have let you into the community in the first place.
That peace and joy you experienced before entering was fake.
God doesn’t have a plan for you.
Only a really bad person is asked to leave a religious community.
Do these sound familiar?
So what is the truth? How do I combat these lies?
First of all, we must remember one simple fact: GOD IS GOD. Okay, I know you all know this, but sometimes we forget that God is bigger than our sins, failures, weaknesses, etc. Years ago I was told about a homily and it made an impression on me. In it the priest said: “God is big. God is bigger than big.”Ā This is a simple reality, but one we often forget.
Besides this, who are we to call certain events and people failures? God often uses these “failures”Ā to reveal his glory. It is easy to doubt that God is in our messes. But I would argue that it is exactly those places in which he wants to dwell.
These few little truths may help you combat the aforementioned lies:
- God STILL has great things planned for you. (We can’t “fail”Ā our vocation. We can’t “fail”Ā God’s plan for us.)
- Even though we are not religious anymore, that does not mean we are less valuable to God. Lumen gentium argues the exact opposite; there is a “universal call to holiness,”Ā i.e. that holiness is not reserved for priests and religious. Furthermore, it is the laity that is given much of the task of preaching the Gospel and bringing Christ to others. You are given a special mission in your present lay life! You can reach others in a way that you couldn’t as a religious.
- Your fundamental identity as a Daughter of God and your relationship with God is UNCHANGABLE! You still belong to Him and are no less in His Eyes. He is arguably even closer to you in your suffering and pain, your grief and loss, and your shame and isolation. He experienced all of these things and is with you so intimately in these moments.
As we have reflected in the past few months on the mystery of the Resurrection, let us rise up out of those places that are dark, the “tombs”Ā in our soul. Let us believe, without necessarily seeing, the good that God does with our “tragedies.”Ā The Resurrection is proof of this reality that takes place within the human heart, within your heart.
May 20, 2015 |
By Spiritu.
Here’s one thing that works to my advantage: I’ll never need to pay a psychoanalyst to decipher the hidden meaning of my dreams. Last night, for example, I was kneeling in my parish church when the Sisters from my former community unexpectedly walked in. They didn’t see me, but I watched them as they genuflected and took their seats near the front, and I wondered whether or not to go over and join them, since I wasn’t wearing my postulant uniform. Then I woke up.
Nearly two years out of the convent, my subconscious clearly still hasn’t quite let go of what might have been. Thankfully, it’s better than it was: at around the time I would have received the habit, for example, I started waking up in the middle of my Clothing ceremony several nights a week. (At least my community had the understated custom of giving the novice’s religious name at the start of the ceremony rather than the end, so I always got that far!) After about a year back in the world, I’d dream myself standing outside the convent in twilight, just as I had stood in real life while wheeling out the bins each week during postulancy, looking up through a window into the brightly-lit community room where the Sisters were gathering for evening recreation. Now, I wonder what that dream means?
For a long time after returning to the world, I slept a lot, but badly: going to bed at 8.30pm, waking up as late as possible the next day, and getting dizzy with tiredness sometime in the late afternoon. A number of times, I was appointed designated driver home from outings when, despite being stone-cold sober, by 10pm by I was definitely no safer to drive than anyone else in the car. (If I make it to heaven one day, I confidently expect that Saint Christopher will be waiting just inside the pearly gates to deliver a lecture on the subject that I’ll never forget.)
Not being a doctor, I can’t offer medical advice, but if you’re in this situation I can tell you a few things that have worked for me:
1) For a short-term rescue if you’re getting faint during the day, forget the sugar and eat a salami stick. I started carrying some around with me (the individually-wrapped ones), and found that the salt, fat and juices gave a much better energy boost than chocolate.
2) The biggest one: no screens for an hour before bed-time. No phone, computer or even TV, as the bright lights apparently interfere with the brain’s sleep cues. (Well, minimal screens, anyway. I cheat. I’m cheating as I write this now, in fact.) This one actually fixed most of my sleep problems in one go, and drastically reduced the dizzy spells next day.
3) Chamomile tea. If you’re like me, the challenge, waking or sleeping, is to find a channel in your mind that’s not playing repeats of Life in the Convent. Slowly drinking a cup of chamomile tea just before turning out the light can help gently disconnect those loops of thought and take you downward into sleep.
And then there’s the 2am demon: what if I’d…/perhaps if I’d…/if only I’d… (Or its evil twin, what if they’d…/perhaps if they’d…/if only they’d…) The only thing that helps here, unfortunately, is time and a conscious effort to understand and process the grief. It’s as though every memory of life in the convent, good or bad, is a sharp edge that needs to be gone over with sandpaper a certain number of times before it gets dull enough that you can handle it. However, it’s 2am and you’d really like to go back to sleep, so what can be done for some relief in the meantime?
Here, I’ll pass on three suggestions from the wise and patient priest who suddenly found a wildly unhappy recent ex-postulant in his confessional back in 2013.
1) If you’re playing certain scenes over and over, perhaps making magnificent speeches where you actually once stood mute, bring your sense of the absurd into play. Imagine the scene with Bert and Ernie in the background reacting to what’s going on, or Mr. T providing a running commentary. If it sounds extremely stupid, that’s because it is… but I actually laughed out loud the first time I tested it on one of my painful convent memories.
2) Or, if that’s just too silly for words, how about this? Imagine you’re sitting at a table so long that the far end disappears into the distance, and slowly, gently slide the people you’re angry with down the table away from you, further and further until they’re so small you can’t see them anymore. Keep them there and turn your mind to something else.
3) If all else fails or – worse – the person you’re angry with is yourself, then turn the light on and write down, very specifically, what is bothering you. Then (my own later addition), decide on something concrete that you will do in the morning to move on from that situation. I will say a decade of the Rosary for someone’s intentions. I will put $5 in the Saint Vincent de Paul box. I will make coffee for my parents/housemates. I will say the Office of the Dead for the souls in Purgatory. Anything, as long as it’s clear, charitable and constructive. Then turn the light off and, for heaven’s sake, go back to sleep.
And me? Self-evidently, I’m not “over” the most vivid months of my life just yet. But two years out is a hell of an improvement over two months out, no longer bittersweetly receiving the habit night after night being but one example. The Sisters still walk through my dreams sometimes (do I ever, I wonder, walk through theirs?), but slowly, a couple of years behind schedule, my heart and mind are catching up to my life in the outside world. Thanks be to God.
Apr 14, 2015 |
By Liz Miller.
“Sometimes the only way the Good Lord can get into some hearts is to break them.”Ā
– Ven. Archbishop Fulton Sheen
It’s been almost 1 1/2 years since I wrote “A Hairy Story,” and yet it feels like eons ago. Firstly, I’ll just say that, as women who have entered and left religious life, it is healthy to take time to look at how we’ve grown since “That Day”. After all, who wants to live “the unexamined life?”
As a young, Catholic woman having left the world, entered the convent and then re-entered the world, my life has gone through such a beautiful string of phases, it’s hard not to recognize God’s hand in it all:
Peace… Confusion… Struggle… ReAbandonment… Discernment
Because I could write a book [and perhaps someday I will… bucket-list maybe?], I’ll try to limit myself to short snippets of insights I’ve gathered throughout my experience thus far.
Peace: If ever I am distraught about or question my current situation, I must never forget that strong sense of peace I received from leaving the convent and knowing it was God’s will for me. This peace stayed with me for a maximum of 5 days after leaving the convent. All of a sudden, I felt…
Confusion: During the month between leaving the convent and going to college, the questions that ran through my head are very legitimate. Why would God do this to me? I love Him with all of my being, but how am I supposed to reconcile this feeling of having my heart broken? Who am I? Where do I belong in this world? Confusion then led to the hardest…
Struggle: Immediately upon attending University, I experienced a relapse of self-consciousness that I hadn’t felt since high school. At this point, I know I am supposed to attend and graduate college. But I ache to figured out who I am in the world: am I the crazy Catholic girl who wears long skirts and does all the Catholic things on campus? Or am I hiding behind the skirts because I want to make my femininity absolutely clear due to my short hair? The answer was the latter, which played a large role with my insecurities. Praise God that I didn’t have it in me to take the downward path to despair but instead walked tip-toe on the road to…
ReAbandonment: Once I recognized how much I still needed Christ, I found comfort only in His presence. With the help of the chaplain on campus, and my now-best friend who – Providentially – had left the same convent and attended the same University, with the help of the Mother Superior of a Community that is close in location and heart, and Leonie’s Longing, I learned that my life’s not over. In fact, Life Himself has taught me the truth and beauty about my vocation. This was the stepping stone for my…
Discernment: My second semester of college found me at a conference organized by the diocese where my university is. There was a religious community that I was intrigued by, which surprised me because I had distaste for all things religious life prior. Curiosity led to interest which led to a conversation by phone with the vocations assistant. To my surprise, she didn’t want to talk about my having left the convent. For half an hour, we talked about my prayer life. This is the second most life changing event, but probably the first and foremost best change that has happened. Through her direction, I have re-discovered my relationship with Christ because I made time for Him in front of the Blessed Sacrament. I’ve learned how to pray with Scripture and with Christ.
During one of our monthly phone calls, I mentioned to her that I was struggling with worries about my vocation. Am I called to marriage or to the religious life??
Her answer: “That’s not for you to worry about right now… Your vocation is to love Jesus Christ.”
So I’ve found that this is the best and most exciting vocation there is. That being said, there are moments when I wish I could just snag a guy, run away, and get married. There are moments when my heart leaps for joy at the sight of a religious sister. And of course, there are moments when I want to quit school because the road seems too long, the light at the end of the tunnel too far to see.
But then I think of how much the Lord can do with the little I give Him.
Take heart, sisters in Christ! And “always be prepared to make a defense to anyone who calls you to account for the hope that is in you” (1 Peter 3:15); even if that “anyone” is the doubt inside you. We gave up everything to follow Him once… He’ll give us strength to do it time and time again. Let us not forget that a life worth living is a life worth giving – a daily laying down of our own wills in exchange for His; a daily re-version of heart, mind, body and soul.
Here I am, Lord, I come to do Your will.
Then:
Reunited with siblings after leaving the convent.
Now:
Enjoying abundant blessings of studying abroad in the Eternal City!
*If you check out thisĀ video, Ruth Bachman explains well the story of the book after which this post is titled.
By Cinnamon.
the first one) and, one morning, simply pushed all my other essays aside and buried myself for several hours in the life of this gentle, luminously holy man. The shy scholar who sold his books to feed the starving; the preacher with bleeding feet, on his own among thousands of heretics; the beacon of chastity whose sheepish deathbed confession was that he had sometimes enjoyed preaching to young women more than old; and the devoted spiritual father who promised after his departure to help the brethren by his prayers. By the time I put my books away and hurried off (as quietly as one can hurry down a cloister while dodging the squeakiest floorboards, that is) to help prepare lunch that day, I’d become a Dominican. An ordinary desire to follow Christ had crystallized into the desire to follow Christ just as Saint Dominic had, in contemplation and preaching of the Truth.
How to deal with anxiety, from the pen of a paranoid schizophrenic.
with a great belief that everything was in some kind of play book for my life. It is when the waves start crashing in on us, when we think we are alone and will drown, that God says, “O you of little faith”. In that moment the Apostle Peter cried, “Lord, we are going to drown, don’t you care?”Ā Whenever we take our eyes away from God, that is when we become anxious, scared, feeling we are on our own and will drown in worries: that is when we need to cry, “LORD!”
so I gave it up to God. I am a cosmetologist and I am supposed to take the next person on the computer list no matter what they want done, so I said, “Lord, please send me the people that I would be able to handle.”Ā This went really well. Every time I went to the list I had the confidence that the Lord would help me with the next customer. He must really want me to have this job so I trusted.
y peers, family and customers. I am planning on volunteering at a nursing home so I can talk to the infirm about God while doing their hair. I never had this in the convent…the chance to get close to people and love them. To get to know them, unlike I would ever have in the convent. That’s when I realized I was called to the single life and so be a witness.
We will never have peace unless we trust that doing what is in front of us is God’s will and that doing it well (little detail by little detail) will take away the anxieties of life and will lead to greater, wonderful things. Think, when you offer your life to God in your daily duties, of how much more God in his generosity will give you to accomplish in your life. He is all goodness, so do you not believe he will give you a grand adventure – one that will bring you to heaven?
that disturbs you, the thing that afflicts you, is nothing. Do not let your countenance, your heart be disturbed. Do not fear this sickness of your uncle or any other sickness, nor anything that is sharp or hurtful. Am I not here, I, who am your Mother? Are you not under my shadow and protection? Am I not the source of your joy? Are you not in the hollow of my mantle, in the crossing of my arms? Do you need anything more? Let nothing else worry you, disturb you.”
By Spiritu.
apparently interfere with the brain’s sleep cues. (Well, minimal screens, anyway. I cheat. I’m cheating as I write this now, in fact.) This one actually fixed most of my sleep problems in one go, and drastically reduced the dizzy spells next day.
wo years out is a hell of an improvement over two months out, no longer bittersweetly receiving the habit night after night being but one example. The Sisters still walk through my dreams sometimes (do I ever, I wonder, walk through theirs?), but slowly, a couple of years behind schedule, my heart and mind are catching up to my life in the outside world. Thanks be to God.
By Liz Miller.
Confusion: During the month between leaving the convent and going to college, the questions that ran through my head are very legitimate. Why would God do this to me? I love Him with all of my being, but how am I supposed to reconcile this feeling of having my heart broken? Who am I? Where do I belong in this world? Confusion then led to the hardest…
eAbandonment: Once I recognized how much I still needed Christ, I found comfort only in His presence. With the help of the chaplain on campus, and my now-best friend who – Providentially – had left the same convent and attended the same University, with the help of the Mother Superior of a Community that is close in location and heart, and Leonie’s Longing, I learned that my life’s not over. In fact, Life Himself has taught me the truth and beauty about my vocation. This was the stepping stone for my…
e because I had distaste for all things religious life prior. Curiosity led to interest which led to a conversation by phone with the vocations assistant. To my surprise, she didn’t want to talk about my having left the convent. For half an hour, we talked about my prayer life. This is the second most life changing event, but probably the first and foremost best change that has happened. Through her direction, I have re-discovered my relationship with Christ because I made time for Him in front of the Blessed Sacrament. I’ve learned how to pray with Scripture and with Christ.
So I’ve found that this is the best and most exciting vocation there is. That being said, there are moments when I wish I could just snag a guy, run away, and get married. There are moments when my heart leaps for joy at the sight of a religious sister. And of course, there are moments when I want to quit school because the road seems too long, the light at the end of the tunnel too far to see.
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