Jul 24, 2026 |
By Jennifer, CA.
This summer will mark eleven years since I left the monastery, hoping to re-enter after a year; but that never happened. I am now happily married to a wonderful man and we have two of the cutest little ones! Praise God! Everyone’s story and process of grief is different, but I’d like to share my thoughts at this point in my own journey.
I struggled with depression and anxiety when I left religious life, which I now see as a clear indicator that well… cloistered living is not my vocation. But it was a heartbreaker enough at the thought of being sent home for a time. In fact, when I met who would be my future husband only six months later, I did not realize the supportive guy standing right in front of me liked me, and desired to be more than just a friend.
The way for me was definitely bumpy, and spiritual direction and therapy alike could not seem to get through to me that I was not letting God down. There was a lot of guilt and despair in my heart.
After being friends, then dating two years, we spent a lot of time stating that we wanted to get married. And right before my boyfriend proposed, the Holy Spirit gave me the gift of peace when I found out from my novice mistress that I could never be a religious. It was like a long-awaited permission from my superiors to get married. Yes, there were still some temptations to feel guilty, but I feel so much freer to love this man, as husband and wife for almost five years now! And the peace continues to grow. Praise God!
A year and a half ago, I had the opportunity to be in the same part of the country as the monastery, and I made my first visit since leaving, and introduced my dear husband to the Sisters whom I had lived alongside for three incredible years. I am so grateful to God for this little reunion, and we continue to keep in touch.
What I have experienced and learned for myself is that God loves me unconditionally, He is not mad at me for leaving the monastery, and that He still has incredible plans for each and every one of us!
Mar 19, 2025 |
By S.E. Greydanus, reprinted with permission from Homiletic and Pastoral Review.
Nearly everyone reading this has probably heard something on the subject of vocational discernment. For those accustomed to Catholic terminology, these words may evoke images of a retreat for young people praying to find their path in life, or a novena asking for divine guidance about a major decision, or “come-and-see” visits to a religious order. As the term is generally used, it refers to making one’s life choices based on the will of God, as perceived through prayer and careful consideration.
While at first glance this method appears constricting—to shape one’s life entirely based on the wishes of another—we Catholics, if taught properly, learn early on that conforming to God’s will is not like conforming to the wishes of another human being, whose whims might have nothing to do with our good. God’s will for us is identical with our own fulfillment and happiness—the kind of long-term fulfillment and happiness that is reached by a difficult path, but ultimately brings deeper satisfaction than short-term rewards. Images used to explain this concept include success in art or athletics, where the many pains and efforts involved are crowned with a beauty approaching perfection. (1)
Yet, even if we did learn this lesson, perhaps we could use to be reminded from time to time. For many, vocational discernment is a subject fraught with anxiety, even anguish. Countless souls, especially young people, who are honestly seeking to “follow God’s will” find themselves tortured with questions about whether they are doing something wrong, failing to follow His plan, and possibly ruining the rest of their lives by making some mistake in this area.
The Lord who made peace His bequest to us (John 12:27) and bids us through St. Paul, “Have no anxiety about anything” (Philippians 4:6), assuredly does not wish that seeking to follow His plan should be a cause of so much inner disturbance. Stepping back to examine the problem, and to consider how the Church’s teaching on vocation applies, may be helpful in finding peace amid this tangle of questions.
The Problem
How did discernment become such a stressful subject? Others have written better than I could (2) about the anxiety-inducing type of advice, which I have also encountered firsthand, that warns young people of the dire consequences if they fail to correctly figure out God’s will for them, as though God were making a guessing game out of our lives. This way of thinking runs counter to an attitude of trust, which assures us that our Shepherd, our Father, is directing the course of our lives, and that we need not fear choosing wrongly when we choose for love of Him.
Over time, I have become increasingly convinced that the problem has another component. So often, the question of discernment focuses solely on finding one’s way to a single life-changing moment, generally a wedding, ordination, or profession of religious vows. In discussions of potential life paths, one hears language like, “our vocation, whether to marriage, the priesthood, or religious life”—again and again. The rest of life, it is implied, either prepares for or flows from this all-important day.
No doubt, considering these paths is important for “seekers,” many of whom do find their place in one of the above vocations, responding to a tug on the heart. The danger here is that a too-narrow focus on one day, one goal, sometimes even to the point that only that day matters—or progress made toward it—has a way of devaluing all the rest of life.
The consequences do more harm than one might think. If everything depends on the day a ring is put on my finger, and I am not currently moving toward that goal, I am simply wasting time in the present, however good, virtuous, or even necessary my current activities may be. A person may have no way of further hastening the desired goal; for instance, if the goal is marriage, one can socialize and pray in search of a potential spouse, but cannot produce a spouse by sheer efforts. One can still live wholeheartedly for God, working for Him, taking time for Him, giving to Him all the little things that make up one’s life. Yet how likely are we to take this approach if we think that His will for us consists solely in arriving at a single turning point? Ironically, we may become so absorbed in frustration over not being able to do what God may will for us someday that we overlook what He calls us to do now!
The pain is especially great for the increasing number who remain among the single laity. If following God’s will is all about reaching a great life-changing day, and no such day ever arrives, all sorts of bleak conclusions quickly follow: I was not chosen; I have been left behind; I have no place; God has forgotten me. Often, if they come from a Catholic background, these single men and women have grown up hearing a great deal about “finding one’s vocation” in the same sense in which one might speak of finding one’s place in the world. To be told, in effect, that they have no vocation can be devastating.
In fact, the pastoral needs of the single laity are, as can happen when the world changes quickly, a growing vacuum in today’s Church. Luanne Zurlo calls attention to the scale of this need:
Pastorally, singles have fallen through the cracks. At the same time, the number of singles in society and in the Church has exploded. The U.S. Census Bureau reported in 2015 that 109 million (45 percent of American adults) are unmarried, of whom 69 million (63 percent) have never been married). To compare, in 1950, some 33 percent of American adults were unmarried, 20 million or so having never been married. (3)
On occasion, this dramatic spike in singles is attributed to the younger generation’s inability to make serious commitments. Whatever degree of truth that explanation may have, to explain the issue entirely thus is to dismiss the many fervent, generous young adults, some of whom I have been privileged to know, who have sincerely wished to enter one of what might be called the main vocational paths. Some find that, despite their best efforts, the door never opens; they never find a suitable spouse, or a religious community to which they are called. What can we tell them regarding their vocation? Has God forgotten them?
On this the Lord has spoken clearly. He who attends to each of the sparrows and has numbered all the hairs on our heads (cf. Mt 10:29–30) does not leave out of His providential design any person He created in His image. For each one He has a plan and a purpose. To better understand the relationship between His purpose and our vocational discernment, we may do well to reflect on the concepts of “discernment” and “vocation” in the teaching of the Church and in the lives of the saints.
The Teaching
A search for these two terms in Scripture yields some thought-provoking results. “Discernment” is used to mean something like understanding, the ability to perceive truth; someone who is wise or understands what should be done can be described as having discernment. (4) This could be applied by extension to determining the choice of one’s particular life path, but in itself is a broader concept. “Vocation,” also rendered “calling” (“vocation” comes from the Latin vocare, “to call”), recurs several times in the letters of St. Paul, referring not to a specific type of life but to the calling given to all Christians to live the life of Christ, e.g. “I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all lowliness and meekness, with patience, forbearing one another in love” (Ephesians 4:1–2; emphasis added). In both cases, what has become narrowly defined in regular usage is used in Scripture in a way that applies to every Christian.
Results in the Catechism are similar. The Index does not even have an entry for “discernment,” and searching for “vocation” yields the following string of sub-entries: “to follow Christ,” “to sanctity,” “to the catholic unity of the People of God,” “call of all by Jesus,” “call of all by the Creator.” Here, again, the term directs the searcher not to specific life paths, but to a universal calling addressed to all who belong to Christ.
At the very end of this list comes “see also: Evangelical Counsels.” The evangelical counsels, namely poverty, chastity, and obedience, are formally vowed by those in religious orders and other forms of consecrated life. At first it might look as though the Catechism is saying, “Is this what you meant by a vocation—this specially set-apart way?” Yet, if it is, even here is a suggestion that the concept of vocation is something greater. The section on these three counsels begins by noting, “Christ proposes the evangelical counsels, in their great variety, to every disciple” (CCC §915; emphasis added).
Naturally, a layperson in the world cannot embrace these counsels in the same way as a religious sister or brother; yet neither are they irrelevant to those outside the convents and monasteries. A layperson is not under an abbot or prior, but still owes obedience to lawful authorities; those in the world must have material things, but are still obliged to share with those in need rather than simply accumulating for themselves; most are not vowed celibates, but chastity is required of everyone. Those who enter religious communities adopt the counsels on a deeper level, yet to one degree or another the calling, or vocation, to these is extended to all.
The upshot is that God calls each person, perhaps through a specific vowed way of life and perhaps not, but always to Himself. The universal call to holiness, promoted more vigorously after Vatican II but always present in Scripture and Tradition, is not only a true calling but our most central, from which all the others flow. St. Thérèse of Lisieux, after wrestling with all the seemingly impossible desires that divine love inspired in her, cried out, “My vocation, at last I have found it . . . MY VOCATION IS LOVE!” (5) Hearing these words in the film The Miracle of St. Thérèse, my father commented wryly that if that truth was such a revelation for her, the world was badly in need of her teaching; after all, everyone’s vocation is love.
The Great Vocation: Universal and Personal
To those searching for their place in the Church and the world, a “vocation to love” might sound unsatisfyingly vague. But love, of course, cannot remain a mere abstraction; love worthy of the name takes shape in concrete expressions. Ordinarily, living this vocation of love involves carrying out the many small details of our lives with a generous heart, as best we can and with
God’s help. Whatever ways God invites us to deepen our relationship with Him—carrying out tasks at work with a generous heart, a visit with a lonely relative or neighbor, attending daily Mass and regular adoration—are means of living out our own particular calling to the sanctity He desires for us. Each person has been given a combination of strengths and opportunities not given to anyone else, making that person uniquely suited for a particular contribution to God’s Kingdom. If one uses these fully and lovingly in His service, trusting and submitting to such direction as one has been given, one is indeed fulfilling one’s vocation, whatever the particulars of one’s life. This is a true vocation in the sense given by Scripture and the Catechism, our surest authorities.
If further assurance is needed, the saints attest to the universal nature of this calling with the vibrant variety of their lives. Among them we find priests and religious, husbands and wives, and many more who were none of the above: St. Catherine of Siena, St. Rose of Lima, (6) St. Giuseppe Moscati, St. Gemma Galgani, St. Angela Merici, (7) St. Kateri Tekakwitha, St. Marguerite Bays, Bl. Francisca de Paula de Jesus, Bl. Pier Giorgio Frassati, Bl. Carlos Manuel Rodríguez Santiago, Bl. Natalia Tulasiewicz, Bl. José Gregorio Hernández, Ven. Matt Talbot, Ven. Edel Quinn, Ven. Jan Tyranowski (life-changing mentor to the young Karol Wojtyla), and more. These holy men and women demonstrate that holiness is possible in any kind of life for a heart that responds to God’s grace.
All this is not to dismiss the dreams of those who yearn to do and become something more, who feel their lives have still not yet arrived at the fullness of what they are meant to be. After all, this feeling is true for most of us! Paradoxically, however, we only achieve our fullest potential by faithfulness to grace, which manifests itself in small ways in the here and now. Fr. Wilfrid Stinissen expresses this movingly:
Every person comes into this world with a dream of doing something great with his life, something that will make an imprint and bear fruit. God himself inspires this dream. He is, of course, the one who makes the human person great. “You have made him little less than the angels, and you have crowned him with glory and honor” (Ps 8:6). If only we could understand that we can only realize our dream by being totally present to the little and insignificant things we have to do at each moment. We encounter the infinity of God only in the present moment. The more we are recollected in the moment, the more clearly does the eternal now of God reveal itself. (8)
This, too, is demonstrated in the lives of the saints. Bl. Carlo Acutis created a gallery of Eucharistic miracles which has since been displayed all around the world. Yet his influence is not primarily due to his skillful use of technology; people seldom encounter him first through his website. Instead, the simple marvels of holiness that grace worked in him, from persistently getting to Mass every day to befriending beggars and lonely classmates, have drawn hearts everywhere. Because Carlo responded to the divine invitations extended every day of his short life, he has changed the world—and has surely fulfilled his vocation.
Taking prudent thought for the long-term future, and bringing these thoughts to prayer, is necessary and valuable. The most important point, though, in considering possibilities for our future is the same as when considering any other choice: One is walking hand in hand with a loving Father who will always lead the way and needs nothing from us but our trusting consent. The choice is not a matter of finding a hidden path, nor of fitting into one category or another, but of loving God, trusting Him, and acting on that love and trust. That principle can take as many concrete forms as there are people in the world.
In the end, all discernment comes to the question, “Lord, what would you have me do?” The answer may be surprising, but an answer will always be provided, and it will always be an answer of the deepest, most personal love.
1. Cf. Thomas Howard, Chance or the Dance? (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1969), 107.
2. Christopher J. Lane, “Trusting in God with St. Francis de Sales,” Crisis, December 30, 2013.
www.crisismagazine.com/opinion/trusting-in-god-with-st-francis-de-sales.
3. Luanne D. Zurlo, Single for a Greater Purpose: A Hidden Joy in the Catholic Church (Manchester, NH: Sophia
Institute Press, 2019), 3.
4. See, for instance: “No one considers, nor is there knowledge or discernment to say . . .” (Isaiah 44:19–20); “The
wise of heart is called a man of discernment, and pleasant speech increases persuasiveness” (Proverbs 16:21); “And
it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, so that you may
approve what is excellent” (Philippians 1:9–10). A list can be found on biblegateway.com by selecting the desired
Bible translation—the above were taken from the RSV-CE—and searching for “discernment.”
5. St. Thérèse of Lisieux, Story of a Soul, third edition, ed. John Clarke, O.C.D. (Washington, D.C.: ICS Publications,
1996), 194.
6. Although St. Catherine and St. Rose, in their black and white habits, are often mistaken for nuns, they were in fact
Third Order Dominicans who pledged themselves to Christ by private vows of virginity.
7. The group that St. Angela organized eventually developed into the Ursuline Order, but this stage came only after
the saint’s death; Angela herself died as a single laywoman. See “Saint Angela Merici,” Franciscan Media,
www.franciscanmedia.org/saint-of-the-day/saint-angela-merici/.
8 .Fr. Wilfrid Stinissen, Into Your Hands, Father: Abandoning Ourselves to the God Who Loves Us (San Francisco:
Ignatius Press, CA), 61.
Dec 13, 2024 |
By Mikayla.
“I am the Lord’s poor servant; to him alone, the living God, I have offered all in sacrifice; I have nothing else to give; I offer him myself.”
Antiphon for the Canticle of Zechariah, Memorial of St. Lucy
On this feast of St. Lucy I would like to take a moment to reflect on the virgin martyrs. The martyrs are the foundation.
In my own discernment after leaving religious life, I have lately been thinking of how the original form of the consecrated vocation began with the virgin martyrs. I think sometimes we talk about them in a way as if to say, “Well, their society didn’t allow religious so they had to wait until it was allowed, and they are so valiant for standing firm even when they knew it would not be accepted.” There are some precursors in the Old Testament, but as a whole virginity for the sake of the kingdom especially in large groups with a formal community was a very new concept once it started forming after the end of the persecutions in the tradition of the desert fathers. At least we can say for certain there were no vocation fairs (1) proposing the idea once Christianity was legalized. Religious life was not this preconceived notion, it was something that gradually took shape through the lives of the saints. When we look back it’s the virgin martyrs who are the foundation of religious life just as the martyrs in general were the foundation for the Church–“the seed of Christians.” (2)
Sometimes for those of us in transition, or those who perhaps feel called to a consecration to Christ but are not able to live as a religious for some reason, when the vocation fair comes around or the prayer for vocations in the petitions at Mass, we do feel forgotten. (3) For me even when a “singleness” vocation is mentioned it strikes the wrong chord because of how the secular world typically sees what it means to be single. To the secular mind it’s all about not letting yourself be burdened by other people, which is the very antithesis of a vocation. But here I am, single, desiring to be completely given to God but in a spousal way with no formal outlet that makes sense to anybody else. Or perhaps you are in a different situation and feel called to marriage, but you spent those years of your life when people normally meet their spouse in a habit, and socially you have to completely start over. This can be very daunting as well. Whatever your situation is, I think many of us can relate to feeling like we don’t have a place until we find that vocation that we were supposed to be in and it can be recognized by everybody.
To those around her in her own culture, St. Lucy’s call to remain unmarried must have seemed very strange and not a type of life that was recognizable. But she knew herself to be recognized by the Lord where she was. It was not about fitting into some sort of category, but about living to the full the radical vocation to holiness. All vocations are at the service of our primary vocation to holiness. And each person’s vocation is entirely unique. It’s not as if we could say, “Oh everyone’s called to holiness so that means it’s not that special of a vocation. It’s like the participation award for vocations. You didn’t make it in one of the other ones that gets mentioned in the petitions at Mass but you still slid into heaven!” Your call to holiness is completely radical. It is completely unique to you. And it doesn’t start tomorrow when you figure things out. It starts now. Saint Lucy became a cornerstone of consecrated life in the Church not because she knew what was going to happen, but because when God called she said yes in the here and now–even if she didn’t understand what it meant. This radical living of the Gospel by the saints was the seed.
Be those saints for this generation. The saints that are fully given to God in the here and now. It’s not as if St. Lucy and the other virgin martyrs were planning how their choice to follow Christ in this particular way would shape the world. Or even how they had to find the perfect situation in which to do God’s will. Could you imagine St. Lucy? “I can only do God’s will once this suitor lets me live my life of virginity in peace, once Christianity is legalized.” But no. God’s very will was for her to be misunderstood, for everything to seem to fight against her call, and it was in this very struggle that He made His power manifest.
As we celebrate this feast, let’s pray through St. Lucy’s intercession that those of us who are shrouded in the darkness of uncertainty may cling to the light of Christ which shows us the way to heaven. Lucy’s name – meaning light – comes to us in the liturgy at one of the darkest moments of the year physically. She also lived at a rather dark time for Christians as well – it being in the midst of persecution. However, in both cases she brings the light of Christ which she herself has experienced to those around her and to us today. I can’t help but think of the parable of the wise and foolish virgins which also very fittingly ties into this blessed Advent season. (And this parable is not just for the consecrated persons or religious, it’s for everybody.) Let us not be afraid this Advent and in our transitions from religious life to practice the “art of waiting.” Let us follow in St. Lucy’s footsteps, with our lanterns burning bright–no matter our situation, so that when Christ comes we will be ready to give Him everything. Because that is the radical call of every Christian.
- To this day I still love a good vocations fair.
- Yes, the Apostles are the foundation, but they were all martyrs by blood except St. John who received his white martyrdom, living through its attempt. Also. Yes, that’s a Tertullian reference.
- This of course is not through anyone’s fault, I think it just comes from a diversity of calls with so many different people. Only God knows every call that He’s going to make, so it can be hard for us as humans to include everyone. But that shouldn’t stop us from praying for vocations.
- A reference to Mother Mary Francis’ book Come Lord Jesus: Meditations on the Art of Waiting.
A good article on the life of Saint Lucy: https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09414a.htm
Oct 1, 2021 |
By Mary Rose Kreger.
Eight years ago, I was a young novice, Sister Mary Inez. Today I am happily married and a mom of two. I had an amazing convent experience, but God never meant for me to stay there. Here is my story.
In August 2012, I joined a community of Dominican teaching sisters. The Lord began calling me to religious life during a retreat that spring. When I felt certain Jesus wanted me to go, I quit my job, sold my car, and became a postulant.
Being a new sister was hard. The other postulants and I had to adjust to a new routine of prayer, work, and study. The hardest thing for me was all the silence. Regular silence and profound silence. Silence in the chapel and silence in our airy, white-curtained cells.
All that silence made it impossible for me to hide from myself. It was like Yoda’s cave in Star Wars:
“What’s in there?” Luke asked about the mysterious cave.
“Only what you take with you,” Yoda wisely replied.
Inside the Cave
I didn’t know it at the time, but I brought a lot of baggage with me into the convent cave. Every time I made a mistake, I was assailed by negative thoughts:
You don’t belong here. You could never be a religious sister. No one could ever love you. Jesus loves everybody in the world except you.
These hurtful words stung like physical blows. Adding to this interior misery was the back pain I’d experienced since I was a teenager. In January 2013, I finally told my novice mistress about my struggles.
“I want to stay in the convent, Sister,” I said. My aching body stood hunched over in her doorway. “But I need help.”
Even more, I needed healing.
My novice mistress first gave me permission to see a back doctor. I went to physical therapy and had some X-rays done, but the X-rays didn’t show much. My back pain was invisible on the charts, but still very real.
“Ask the Lord to reveal if there’s a psychological reason for your back pain,” my novice mistress suggested. So I prayed, and soon received an answer.
Easter Revelation
On Easter Monday, I was working in the convent kitchen. I put a few spoons in the wrong drawer, and the sister next to me – my closest friend there – shot me a look of exasperated fury. That minor event stirred up a far more serious incident from the past:
In the winter of 2000, someone whom I loved got very angry with me and hit me. In front of everybody, at a party. They apologized later, but they never explained why.
I was 14 then. I wasn’t sure what to think. What had I done to deserve this? To make sense of it, I decided someone must be to blame: me.
“There’s something wrong with me,” I decided that day. “Something, very, very wrong.”
I didn’t mean my sins. I knew that sins could be forgiven, washed away in the confessional. I also knew God loved to be merciful. No, I believed there was something wrong with me that was unchangeable. Something unredeemable.
And so I began believing an unconscious lie:
There’s something wrong with me. If I did not exist, I would fix what is wrong with the world.
This thought didn’t make sense logically, but emotionally it felt real and true.
Before that winter, I had an optimistic look at my freshman year of high school. Afterwards, I remained cheerful on the outside, but I was deeply depressed on the inside. My back pain started a few months later, and never stopped.
Seeing Sister Mary
I told my novice mistress about my discovery, and how I thought it was linked to my back pain. When she saw my distress, she sent me to see Sister Mary*.
“You need someone to talk to. Sister Mary can help.”
I didn’t want to go. I didn’t want to share my ugly wounds with a complete stranger. But I knew Jesus would want me to go, so I went.
I talked to Sister Mary, and she listened. I told her how I was hurt at 14, and all the nasty things I heard in my head. Over several months, Sister helped me. She offered simple words of wisdom, and a clearer vision. She taught me to put those lies from the Devil at the foot of the Cross.
“The Devil is always accusing us, reminding us of our faults,” she said. “But Jesus offers love, forgiveness, healing.”
The more I talked to Sister Mary, the more the pain got out of my head and into the open. My heart, made numb from past hurts, began to feel again. It was a painful experience, but liberating.
Acknowledging the Truth
Through prayer and meetings with Sister Mary, I saw that what had happened to me at 14 was only one piece in a much larger puzzle. I grew up in a household with sometimes unrealistic expectations of perfection. As a consequence, we sometimes ignored the imperfect situations within our own family. This left me hungry for justice, rightness, the truth.
At 14, I couldn’t see that truth. But at age 26, I could acknowledge that my family was loving and supportive, but not perfect. I could also find comfort in Jesus, who came to heal the brokenhearted.
“Sometimes Jesus allows us to suffer physically, as part of His plan for us,” my novice mistress explained. “But He always wants to heal us spiritually.”
Jesus helped me along the difficult road to healing. I surrendered my wounds to Him, wrote to Him in my journal, and begged for healing and perseverance. Finally, I wrote a letter to the person who’d hurt me, saying that I forgave them and that Jesus had healed me.
Sister, What Do You Desire?
Afterwards, however, convent life continued to be difficult. I felt like I was slogging through quicksand. Still, I kept going, determined to stay where God wanted me, as long as He wanted me, here in the convent.
I visited Sister Mary one last time. “I’m healed, Sister. My back pain is gone, and I can feel again.” I sighed. “So why do I feel so unhappy?”
Sister Mary gave me a long look.
“Sister, what do you desire?” she asked.
I stared behind her, into the grey. “I want…a tangible kind of love. I try to give it to my sisters here, but no one wants it.” At night, I’d peer into the bathroom mirror, just to confirm I was still there. I felt invisible. “I want…to be seen, known, loved.”
“What does that sound like?” she prompted.
The answer came to me all at once. “Oh. Marriage. It sounds like marriage!”
In that moment, I knew right away that I wasn’t called to be a sister. I was supposed to get married! No one could have been more surprised than me. I felt so much joy!
I smiled and leapt to my feet. “I have to go home, Sister. My husband is waiting for me!”
A Future With Hope
One week later, I left the convent. Six weeks after that, I met my future husband for the first time. We’ve been married for six years now, and have two beautiful children.
God healed me in the convent, but He didn’t heal me just so my back would stop hurting, or to free me from depression. He healed me so I could see the truth that had been there all along: I was called to marriage, not religious life. And later, to a vocation of writing, not teaching. Healing allowed me to discover my true vocation and calling.
Saying “Yes!” to Jesus led me to a wellspring of grace and healing. The Lord truly took my broken soul and gave me a future “filled with hope” (Jeremiah 29:11).
* Name changed.
About the Author:
Mary Rose Kreger lives in the metro Detroit area with her family, where she writes fantasy for teens, and blogs about her spiritual journey: before, during, and after the convent on www.monasteryinmyheart.com.
By Mikayla.
As we celebrate this feast, let’s pray through St. Lucy’s intercession that those of us who are shrouded in the darkness of uncertainty may cling to the light of Christ which shows us the way to heaven. Lucy’s name – meaning light – comes to us in the liturgy at one of the darkest moments of the year physically. She also lived at a rather dark time for Christians as well – it being in the midst of persecution. However, in both cases she brings the light of Christ which she herself has experienced to those around her and to us today. I can’t help but think of the parable of the wise and foolish virgins which also very fittingly ties into this blessed Advent season. (And this parable is not just for the consecrated persons or religious, it’s for everybody.) Let us not be afraid this Advent and in our transitions from religious life to practice the “art of waiting.”
By Mary Rose Kreger.
Acknowledging the Truth
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