My friend is "discerning her vocation;" can someone please tell me what that means?

Over the past few months, I've had many interactions with friends of mine that go way back - 20, 25, even 35 years - and they have asked some very good questions about this whole "discerning a vocation" business. I also picked up that a few of them had some concerns, which is a natural reaction, I think, if the process and the spiritual life inherent in the process is unfamiliar to them. Not to mention the actual concept of monastic or religious life. And for some, me returning to the Catholic faith and wanting to live a life within that context has been troubling.

With all this in mind, I figured it might be good to do an FAQ.  Please click on the links I've provided for more info on specific topics and experiences. If you have any other questions, please send me a comment. Thanks for reading!

1.  I have been discerning a religious vocation (to become a sister or a nun) for almost four years, now. In that time, I have met with several and very different religious communities of women, both active in ministry and contemplative in a monastery. My path has been guided by spiritual directors, both women religious and priests, all of whom have been tremendous lights on my path (thank you!). I have at this point discerned that I am called to a more contemplative life.

2. What do "discernment"  and "vocation" mean?  

Essentially, in this context, discernment is the process of learning who I am and who I am meant to be in God's loving plan. It is not, as I've written about before, figuring out a code of symbols, right/wrong, or doing what someone else wants me to do. It must be from the heart, guided by the Holy Spirit, supported with prayer, with the help of spiritual directors and friends, and tested with experience. Discernment is a process, and it takes time.

Religious life isn't a means of escape or hiding, it's not a "less than" alternative to other forms of life. It is something that, if entered with a true vocation, brings joy and vitality to a person's existence, just as any true vocation will (marriage, parenthood, and singlehood being other vocations). Vocation is what one is called to live from within, one's "bliss" if you will. Remember "follow your bliss?" If you do, you will find your vocation in life, and there are usually vocations within vocations.

3. I hear you're going to Andover, MA to do a "live-in" with the Poor Clares in January, 2016. What's that all about?  

The Monastery of St. Clare
Andover, MA

A live-in is part of the "tested with experience" aspect of the discernment process. It's a period of time to live with the nuns and live their life - trying it on for size, if you will. And they are also discerning whether I would be a good fit for their community. Every community is different, so a live-in is a crucial part of the process. 

Poor Clares are monastic, Franciscan women living in community. Read more about that below!

I have done one other live-in, two summers, ago, with the Carmelites in San Diego (you can read about my reflections on life there). What a blessed experience that was! It has never left me, and likely never will. Still, I felt a call to come back East. To stay, I don't yet know!

4. What is monastic life? What do you do all day? Are you locked up for life? 

Living in a monastery is a way of life that includes a regular schedule made up of daily work as well as frequent prayer in community and individually. Generally, a monastery is a quiet place, but there is no "vow of silence" that people wonder about.

Don't worry, I'm not joining a cult. The iron grate doors won't slam behind me if I enter the monastery, never to be seen or heard from again!  The sisters have relationships with their family and friends outside the monastery. There are visits and phone calls and emails. 

Each day, the sisters work, pray, read, relax, exercise, recreate with each other, meet visitors, etc. All the chores of keeping up a monastery are shared by the sisters, but the main ministry of this life is prayer. Hundreds of prayer requests come in each month by phone, email, letter, and in person, so correspondence and writing prayer cards are a large part of the work. There's a website to be updated and maintained, news letters for the Poor Clare federation to create and send out, liturgical vestments to make and sell (this is their livelihood). 

The purpose of living in a monastery is to create and maintain an environment which disposes one to live the "interior life." By that I mean, a deep interior life of union with God. I have discerned that this is all-important to me. This deep interior life is focused on Christ Jesus as the Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End, as Savior, as Lover, as King and as Humble Servant. The sisters are therefore to imitate Him as humble servants to each other. The interior life of prayer also fosters creativity, which is something I yearn for.

There are cloistered sisters, who generally don't leave the monastery except for doctor's appointments, family funerals, or to vote, but who can receive visitors. There are also extern sisters (which is what I am currently interested in), who go out for grocery shopping and errands, drive the sisters to their appointments, etc. but who partake of the same contemplative life as the cloistered sisters. The externs are allowed to visit their family outside the monastery as well as receive them as visitors.

Gate at the bottom of the Froville Arcade
entrance to The Cloisters
Samuel Yellin - Metropolitan Museum of Art

Some monasteries still have the old fashioned "grilles" to separate the religious community from visitors. The Poor Clares in Andover do not. The parlors, where the nuns receive their visitors, are set up like living rooms with comfy chairs and tables to talk, eat, laugh together. 

Living in community is like living in a family. Life isn't always the way you'd like it. People do and say things that get on your nerves. Living in community, like living in a family, can purify some of those faults, those hang ups, that we all have, IF the vocation and prayerful intention are present. The key is communication and forgiveness. Sometimes, it's necessary to walk away and cool off, then realize your own part as well as the part that others play in a difficult personal interaction. It means allowing others to be human, and letting others do what they need to do to come back to the table and talk. So for those of you who think it means gliding around on polished floors and smiling sweetly 24/7, think again! I have my own rough edges, as does everyone else, and that's part of living the Christian life in community - loving and forgiving over and over.

6.  What happens after the live-in? After the live-in, I will return to my current home for a short period of time. If we discern that entering that community is good, I will do so. Even at that point, however, the doors are always open for me to leave. After entering, I would be a postulant (someone who asks) for a year, and it is all discernment. Learning the life, going deeper, etc. If we discern that things are still good, I would enter the novitiate, where I would take the Habit with a white veil and choose a name in religion (Sister So-and-so). I would be a novice for two years. Again, all discernment, able to leave if it is learned that this isn't the path for me. After the novitiate, I would take three years of yearly temporary or simple vows, with the black veil. At the end of those three years, final or perpetual vows would await me. That is the point where there is "no going back." So really, from the first moment of inquiry with a particular community up through final vows, there are almost seven years of discernment, not counting the time spent discerning in general and with other communities, etc. prior to that.

Before entering any religious community, there is a process of interviews and a psych evaluation as part of the application. This isn't something that I or any community takes lightly.

St. Clare and St. Francis

6. What is Franciscan? There are many good resources on Franciscan charism (mode of spirituality), but you can start by knowing that St. Francis of Assisi was a passionate man who gave up wealth and adventure to become a poor man of God. He founded his own order of monks and nuns with his friend and spiritual sister, St. Clare of Assisi. Her nuns became known as the Poor Clares, so named because of their life of poverty. 

To understand this, it's necessary to know that in the middle ages, when St. Francis and St. Clare were around, women's orders were based on the Rule of St. Benedict (another monastic way of life). The monasteries owned land as a means of income, and when women entered, they were expected to bring a dowry, just as if they were getting married. St. Clare founded her own Rule of Life for her community of women (the first Rule founded by a woman), and part of it was the insistence that her nuns lived completely and utterly dependent upon God's providence, rather than be managed by a man and his money, or engaging in worldly business themselves. This also had the effect of opening up religious life to poor women who had no dowry nor hope of becoming a nun. 

Franciscan spirituality is known for its joy and recognition of God in all of Creation, as well as this spirit of poverty. For more succinct info, please check out the Mt. St. Francis Center for Spirituality's website.  I also offer the excellent write up on the Boston Poor Clare's website.

7. Why Catholic? This is a good question. Elsewhere on this blog, I have written about my "Resurrection experience," as I like to call it. I experienced a very personal encounter with the Sacred Heart of Jesus - not a vision, but like a door opening or a light switch going on in my heart. I realized in a fraction of a moment that HE LOVES ME and HE DIED FOR ME. My heart burst open to receive the Love God has been wanting to give me all my life. I was transformed, like St. Paul, yet I was also remembering who I once was as a girl.

As a child growing up Catholic, I wanted to be a nun for the first 13 or 14 years of my life. After my father died, I slowly lost the vocation, and in fact I became more and more lost in the world as I got older. Yet there was always a hunger for something... elusive. I tried everything: travel, adventure, boyfriends, film school (oy), teaching, even marriage.  Ultimately, I wasn't fulfilled. I wasn't finding what my soul craved. After my ex-husband and I split, I moved to California, and soon after I had this intimate experience of Christ's Love. From that point on, I knew I was His alone, and was always meant to be. 

For a time, I went to services in an Anglican parish in Burbank where I lived. The parishioners and the pastor there are still very important, loving people in my life. But after a few months, I realized something wasn't quite right for me there. I started "shopping" Catholic parishes and found one in which I felt at home. That parish, St. Charles Borromeo in North Hollywood, resonated with Love. 

All this time, I knew I wanted to be a religious sister.  I had taken personal, private vows to Jesus (poverty, obedience, chastity - the three vows that consecrated persons take when they enter religious life). I had started investigating Anglican religious communities, but ultimately realized I wanted to come home to the Catholic Church.

BUT WHY? Here's the thing. I left the Catholic Church in my twenties. I had reasons. Good reasons, some of them. Some of them were purely selfish and egotistical, though. Coming back to the Church, I had to think very carefully through the reasons why I'd left in the first place. It was not an impulsive decision, in other words. I disagree with a few things the Church currently does, but ultimately, for me, there are three factors that drew me back and which keep me firmly in the Church: 

(a) The Holy Spirit. The Church has undergone tremendous upheaval throughout the centuries, and as some of my friends like to point out, the Church has perpetrated tremendous evil in the world. I am aware of Church history, in fact. But I also see the Big Picture. I see that the Church has done far more lasting good in the world; perhaps more than we realize because we take a lot for granted. I know that the Church would never have withstood centuries of this if it weren't being guided and protected by the Holy Spirit. I also see a general "upward trend" as the Church continues to evolve and grow into its place in the world. In other words, I've realized that "throwing the baby out with the bath water" has done me no good, and in fact is a short-sighted choice. I've found community in the parishes I've attended in L.A., Utah and now New York, and understood more fully the "communion of Saints" Catholics profess. The Holy Spirit has been guiding me in ways that are too many to count, and with joy and gratitude, I am in the Body of Christ (the Church) with eyes and ears very much open.

(b) The mystical traditions of the Catholic Church have, to the great detriment of all beings, not been taught freely until fairly recently. Those mystical traditions that involve contemplative prayer, union with God, transformation in Christ, and the experience of the sacrament of the present moment are found in the Church, be they Carmelite, Clarian, Pauline, etc. That's where I want to be! 

(c) The Eucharist. I live for Christ in the Eucharist. I long to adore and receive Communion every day, though in my current surroundings, that isn't as possible as when I lived in a bigger city with more regular services and opportunities. The Catholic Church offers me what I need and want and adore with all my being: receiving the real presence of Jesus in Communion, the Body and Precious Blood of Christ. For me, that's where it's at. Union with Christ - for me it can't get any better than that. Transformation in Christ - becoming fully HUMAN. That's the entire point of Christianity.

YEAH, BUT WEREN'T YOU A BUDDHIST AND A PAGAN AT SOME POINT? Yes, I was. When I left the Church in my twenties, I wandered around, spiritually. I walked the Pagan path for quite some time, and it was on that path that I felt that deep longing start to rise up. I recognized The Divine in nature (a precursor to Franciscan spirituality), and I had for the first time what I considered a community to share faith with. As a Buddhist, which I practiced for about twelve years, I took to meditation immediately, and was very comfortable with the "Catholicness" of Tibetan Buddhism - the bodhisattvas (who are similar to saints), the incense and bells, the chanting prayers. Quieting the mind and becoming more compassionate with others and myself came to me through the Buddhist path. Ultimately, none of this was enough, though I count both of these spiritual paths as blessings on the way. God was drawing me back into the Heart of Love, patiently and with loving kindness. 

I think that's where I'll finish for now. There is so much more I could say, but this gives the basics in a way that is (I hope) accessible. Again, if you have questions, send me a comment (or email or call if I know you personally!). 

One last thing I'd like to say here is that I am extremely grateful for all the love and support I've received from friends as I've traveled this path, particularly those who maybe don't quite "get it" but who want me to be happy and who do recognize that good things are happening. You are all in my prayers.