The poem our Sisters chose to illustrate this year is Edwin Muir’s beautiful and thought-provoking meditation on the kingdom parable of the weeds and wheat (or, in this case, the corn and tares).
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The next room in our tour of the Holy Family Wing isn’t really a “room” at all - but it is a very cherished part of our new community spaces nonetheless. The portico (covered porch), which extends its cloister walkway “arms” around the entire new wing, has become a popular site for prayer, recreation, and simply enjoying the beauty of God’s creation.
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In honor of the two angelic feasts this week (the Archangels on Sept 29th and the Guardian Angels on Oct 2nd), a group of Sisters created a sidewalk mural depicting these heavenly guardians.
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Now that the Holy Family Wing is becoming a part of daily life here at St. Joseph’s, we wanted to share with you a little more about the significance of these new community spaces - plus some “candid camera” shots of the different rooms in use!
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Beginning tomorrow (April 23rd), our first group of Sisters will begin their annual 8-day retreat. As we’ve shared before, we like to refer to the nuns on retreat as “Marys,” while those who take on extra duties to allow for this are called “Marthas.” The roles will swap for the second retreat, which falls in mid-May this year.
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Some of our younger Sisters were out on a walk recently and were delighted to discover these little signs of an early spring. Perhaps nowhere in the world are crocuses so thoroughly appreciated as here at St. Joseph’s Monastery … the first yellow and purple blooms are always heralded with great excitement.
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Some months ago, a young woman named Madeline contacted us to ask if we’d be willing to do an interview for her new podcast, Consecrated. She shared about her love for the religious life and her eagerness to make this beautiful vocation better known and appreciated in the Church.
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Among the most colorful “nun myths” are those that have to do with our lives of penance and self-denial. Popular imagination throughout the ages has painted a grim picture of the deprivations in store for any young woman unfortunate enough to find herself in a monastery.
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Over the next few weeks, our Sisters will be taking turns making their annual 8-day personal retreats. Please keep “Marthas” and “Marys” alike in your prayers!
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Many a young woman who is feeling the call to religious life has struggled with the thought of giving up marriage and children. Very often she feels torn between a deep desire to belong to God and an equally deep desire to be a wife and mother. Can the two possibly be reconciled?
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With the Christmas season coming around, worry about this “Nun Myth” may be on the mind of many parents and family members of cloistered religious. While most people are making plans to travel home for the holidays, the families of nuns know that they will always be missing one member around the table.
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“Sisters, you sounded like angels at Mass today. Do you need a music degree to enter here??”
“I don’t think I could be a nun… I can’t carry a tune in a bucket!”
“Is there a vocal audition as part of the application process?”
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??”
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While most people would not phrase it so bluntly, this assumption lies at the root of many critiques of contemplative life. After all, isn’t it like being on a “perpetual retreat,” detached from the cares of the world, dreamily unconcerned about anything but one’s own growth in holiness?
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“Are you sure you want to enter a monastery? You have so much to offer the Church and the world!”
“How could someone as beautiful and intelligent as yourself want to lock yourself away for life?”
“What a waste!”
This third “nun myth” is more than just a myth — it can actually be one of the Devil’s insidious ways of blocking a religious vocation! Like many other misconceptions, it seems quite reasonable at first glance: the religious life, especially the cloistered contemplative life, is a very high calling, and it would seem that only those who have reached a considerable degree of holiness should even be allowed to consider such a vocation.
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“I don’t know … you just don’t seem like the ‘nun type.’ You’re so outgoing! Isn’t it the quiet, shy, pious girls that usually enter a cloister?” This very common myth sounds at first like a “no-brainer.” It seems quite reasonable to assume that those who are called to a life of silence, solitude, and prayer would all be introverts.
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We nuns hear many of the same misconceptions time and time again. More often than not, such “nun myths” are simply due to lack of knowledge; after all, for most people the world within the monastic enclosure seems just about as familiar and accessible as the surface of Mars!
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One of the special graces of our 8-day retreats is the chance to be more attentive to the little things, to the small and ordinary, yet beautiful and amazing, ways that God shows His love for us. One of the Sisters on our first retreat tried to capture this “retreat-vision” by taking a camera with her on one of her Sunday afternoon walks and snapping photos of the details that caught her attention.
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The other day at recreation, several of us nuns were commenting to each other about how struck we’ve been, during this extraordinary time when Masses are cancelled throughout the world, by the core of our vocation as contemplative nuns.
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