Dedicated to God (36 page)

“No one ever sees us go to pray. They don’t see us because we’re behind the wall, but they know we live our life just for God, that we pray, and it’s to be a witness that God is worth giving everything for. God must exist if people are willing to give their whole life for this through a sustained effort. Some people give their lives for things that are not right, like the terrorists; it wasn’t right. But a sustained effort—he has kept the Poor Clares going eight hundred years since Saint Clare lived. God has sustained that. It’s from the grace of God. People must think there’s something there that’s worth it, that’s worth giving up everything for. It’s a sign of the world to come. We hope when people think of us, see us, or experience something of us, ‘They’re living for heaven,’ to think, to grasp, to pull themselves out of the secular world they’re living, and ask, ‘Why am I living? What’s important?’
That’s what we hope to be a witness of. Through our prayers and sacrifices, God is going to use those to give those graces to people.”

When Sister Maria Benedicta makes her final vows as a Poor Clare Colettine, she will then wear the silver ring of a solemnly professed nun. The community will have accepted her as a permanent member. And on the rare occasion that she must leave the enclosure, for an appointment or to vote, Sister Maria Benedicta will find herself a stranger in her homeland.

Called
Sister Mary Veronica

You’re a postulant for the first year, and you keep your original name at that time; at that time, you’re not really a nun, you’re hoping. Not until you take vows would you really be considered a nun, properly speaking. And then you become a novice when you’re clothed. You become a novice, a sister, and from then on you are
Sister So-and-So
. When you take the vows—when the Church accepts you, and then you are representing the Church—it’s ratification, and it’s spousal at that point.

Mother Abbess chooses both parts of your name—your title and your name. Before you receive the habit, after your postulancy and you’ve been accepted, you present three choices, if you want, of possible names. And you might get those, or you might get one completely different. Or some people say to Mother Abbess, “Just pick.”

I had had it inside me to tell her just pick, but I didn’t go along with it, so I wrote down three names. It was really interesting because I said, “Holy Spirit, you’re letting me know I should have trusted,” because when she gave me the name, she said, “I knew what I was going to call you for months.” She knew what she was going to give me before I ever gave her the names. It was actually one of the names I gave to her—Veronica. It’s very interesting because Mother Abbess is very intuitive, but the Holy Spirit works through her, so we both had that name. But I should have just trusted and I think God would have given me more grace if I had.

I don’t think it would make any difference in the name, but I think I would have more grace to be more faithful to interior inspirations and have more confidence—just trust God and have confidence, and be open and trust in other people, too. And the more you trust, the more you will receive from God. The more faithful you are, grace builds upon grace. And the more faithful you are to graces, the more God gives you. Saint Peter said to our Lord, “Ask me to walk on the water.” His immediate reaction was that he stepped out of the boat and he was walking on the water, but then he
started doubting and wondering, and he sank. Our Lord still saved him and pulled him up. But what would the graces have been if he had the faith not to look at the waves and to really trust Jesus? He could have walked all the way to Jesus on the water. Not only would he have done that physical thing, which is a miracle, how would God have blessed his faith? That is what God really wants; it’s not really the outside, it’s the inside, and how would He have strengthened Peter’s faith?

In secular things, let’s say you’re learning how to do something. If you do it halfway, you’re not going to make as much progress as when you put your whole effort into it, your whole heart into it. I think God works in those things, too, in the secular things. He wants to give us graces, but how much effort am I going to put into it? The measure of the effort I put into it, I will receive—I will be capable of receiving. I can’t receive what I don’t embrace or what I won’t accept.

I think it would have given me more grace to be more faithful. I think that people lack the confidence to follow what they really believe is right. They end up doubting, like Peter, and they sink. It’s not like it’s anything that would hurt. And it’s really a thing of trust in God. If I say, “I’ll leave it to Mother Abbess to pick and I’ll know it’s God’s will,” then I should trust God. And if it doesn’t come out that way, that’s not what He wanted.

I would probably have more of a tendency now to say, “No, let’s trust and do it,” rather than doubt, doubt. I think a lot of us could do much more if we didn’t doubt and waver over what we really feel inside. I think we get stopped a lot. I know I have. And I’ve met other people, too, that have said that kind of thing. I mean if you don’t try, you’ll never know! You’ll never know. I don’t know if a person can see that many results in themselves; maybe other people can see the results better than you can. I know if I just keep trying to be faithful, God will help me to trust more and more and more. I trust in that.

Veronica means “true image.” She was the one who, when our Lord was carrying His cross, and His face was so bloody and He couldn’t see from all the sweat and blood in His eyes, she was brave enough to break through the guards and she gave her veil to Him to wipe His face on. After she did this, He wiped His face and His face came onto the veil. They have, in Rome, the actual veil. I have always been fascinated by that Station of the Cross. Of course, I am to pray to and imitate Veronica—Saint Veronica and her
boldness. It took a lot for her to do that, so hopefully I, too, can make reparation to our Lord and wipe His face for all the harms and all the bad things done by all of us. I do many bad things, too, but at the same time, our Lord accepts from sinners. You know, He accepts beautiful gifts from sinners. He imprinted His image on her veil for her act. And not only did He imprint His image on her veil, at the same time He imprints His image on her soul. So each time I or someone else does an act of love or reparation to our Lord, then His image gets imprinted on our soul, and then if we’re doing this on behalf of not only ourselves but for everyone, then His image gets imprinted on everybody.

A novice has a white veil and traditionally, like in the old times, a white veil was for a woman who was a fiancée; she changed to a black veil when she got married. When you take your vows, you are truly becoming Christ’s spouse and becoming married to Him. You are completely set aside and dedicated to Him at that time, and then you wear the black veil. There are other responsibilities that come with that, because I am supposed to live for Him and on behalf of His people, and that’s supposed to be my entire life. If I’m faithful, and do well, then God will bless the world more.

It is a big responsibility. It’s a very serious responsibility. And that’s why it would usually take you three years before you could take your vows, and then I have three years of temporary vows. So I have at least three years of temporary vows, and then in three years I could take the solemn vows, which is permanent. That will be wonderful.

Epilogue

When I first approached the Mother Abbess with my request to engage with the community, she told me the nuns would need to pray and get back to me.

In reflecting on the contours of this project, I see that it has unfolded at a peculiar pace. That I adopted to a rate more akin to the monastery than to the fast-paced culture beyond the enclosure was key. About a year after the nuns agreed to let me work with them on this oral history and photography project, I moved a little farther away from the monastery. (Before that, I had lived an hour’s drive from the Poor Clares.) There were longer lulls between my visits and phone calls. There were lulls between my visits and phone calls to the monastery, and I received more handwritten letters from the Mother Abbess, who informed me that I was welcome when I had the time. In retrospect, I believe my absence prompted the nuns’ greater commitment to this project. The dynamics shifted; the Mother Abbess solicited my visits.

This was not a conscious strategy to withdraw so that they would solicit me, but I believe that it established a tenor that the community was comfortable with. A few years later, my engagement again waned. I think that this pace suited the slower pace of the monastery, and it led to greater buy-in and engagement from both parties. The project unfolded at a deliberate pace, on terms that were mutually agreeable.

Just as I choose potential subjects, they choose me. After multiple visits, Mother Miryam elaborated on the community’s prayers regarding this project; they believed that God had sent me.

I rarely repeated any details conveyed to me in the one-on-one interviews in subsequent interviews with other nuns. Once, though, I asked Mother Miryam about a comment made by one of the nuns; Sister Sarah Marie said that if a young woman thinks she has a calling, she should visit the monastery to see if she belongs and if, after a couple of days, she starts to miss Wal-Mart, “well, we aren’t going to keep them if they’re missing Wal-Mart!”

I asked Mother Miryam about this comment and was surprised to hear strong dissent. Mother Miryam stated that she missed certain activities, including drives, when she first joined the community. Working outdoors in the monastery’s gardens, she heard the traffic beyond the enclosure’s wall and she wanted out; she wanted to go somewhere, anywhere. “You can miss all those things,” Mother Miryam said. Until that moment, the two nuns did not know that they embraced such divergent views on Wal-Mart—of all things—or on the mega-chain’s impact on a religious vocation. In the nuns’ lives, they would not find occasion or opportunity to discuss philosophical differences of a cloistered calling.

In general, in keeping with their values of anonymity and hiddenness, I believe it was prudent to repeat little of what was shared during those interviews. Yet it revealed a complex perspective of the monastery’s population to learn about these spectrums of opinions.

Early on, I learned that when a member of the community passes away, a biography is written of that nun’s life for the monastery’s records. Mother Miryam told me that it is challenging to draft a nun’s biography, given that they rarely have occasion to tell one another their life stories. I told her that I would give the nuns transcripts of the interviews for their archives, as well as for the nuns to review their own interviews with the option of scheduling an additional oral history session if a nun wanted to clarify anything in her own transcript. The Mother Abbess stated the transcripts would be included in the monastery’s archives and she was grateful for this exchange. I delivered heaps of transcripts in 2009 and 2010. Later, one nun gave me a scrap of paper with the correct spellings of several pronouns she had mentioned in her interview. Another handwrote six pages of clarifications on scrap paper (the blank side of a handout for a capital campaign).

In the spring of 2011, one of the aged nuns died. A World War II veteran, Sister Ann Frances had been bedridden in the infirmary for years; her health declined as her Alzheimer’s disease advanced. I interviewed Sister Maria Deo Gratias, who entered the monastery at the same time as Sister Ann Frances; they went through the novitiate together, and Sister Maria Deo Gratias knew her life story better than the other members because they experienced the training, the transition into monastic silence, together. The Mother Abbess asked if I would like to make photographs of the funeral procession from the rooftop. I did. I think it was critical that I made myself available when they made these offers and suggestions and requests.

Looking back, I wish that I attended more of the events they invited me to—the ceremonies for those who were progressing from postulants to novices to making temporary vows to final vows, and the Jubilee celebrations for those who had made their vows fifty years prior. In retrospect, I think it would have been beneficial if I had been a quicker study of the liturgical calendar, and more cognizant of the impact of my requests and visits on their schedule. All of the nuns knew from experience, though, that it takes time to be socialized into a cloistered community, where communication is abbreviated and silence is observed, and they were patient and gracious. Because of their indirect style of communication, it took a while to realize that they would not ask me if they could take a break in the interviews for a glass of water. I regret that I did not think to bring water for them and that I did not ask permission from the Mother Abbess to bring a special drink for the sometimes-lengthy interviews. (When it occurred to me that although the nuns lead lives of sacrifice, they are allowed to accept donations, I brought them homemade cookies and muffins. One evening, I stopped at the monastery with a delivery of baked goods; my nephew met the Mother Abbess, who greeted us outside, at a side door.)