Myth #6 — But You’re Too Pretty to be a Nun!!

“Why would a pretty girl like you want to be a nun?”

“Oh, don’t waste your beauty in a cloister!”

“What a shame … you’ll never have a husband to appreciate that beautiful face of yours.”

This particular nun myth comes up more often than you would think! Many a young woman who is discerning religious life has had to contend with it (as have many young men discerning the priesthood, I might add!). Perhaps the most pithy refutation comes from one of our Sisters shortly before she entered the monastery in the early 1960s. In response to the young man who told her, “You’re too cute to be a nun,” she shot back, “Do you think God only deserves ugly ones??” Or, as Bishop Eusebio of Seattle has told parents with the same objection to their daughter’s vocation, “Well, God has good taste!”

These funny little anecdotes contain a serious lesson beneath the humor. Many people mistakenly view religious as simply unmarried women — as perpetual “old maids,” if you will. Based on this assumption, some claim that beauty (of body or personality) goes to waste when a girl embraces this vocational path.

But the truth is that every consecrated woman is married — married to Christ Himself! By the vows of religious life, she has given herself, body and soul, to Him. If an earthly husband appreciates the beauty of his wife, how much more will the Divine Bridegroom delight in His chosen one? In fact, since He Himself created each person, He knows how to see and cultivate all of the gifts that He has secretly woven into a young woman who vows her life to Him. With the Lord, beauty is not “skin-deep”!