Sacrifice Of The Family

[Guadalupe23]

Hey all,
I was just on a discernment retreat over the feast of the Epiphany (hosted by the Little Sisters of the Poor...it was amazing!) The silence, reflection time, and prayer before the Blessed Sacrament really confirmed in my heart that God is calling me to the religious life.

When I got back, I shared this with my mother and she got very quiet but was very supportive. Later she came back and asked that heartbreaking question, "Some of these orders that you're looking at...are they going to cut us off from you completely? I don't think that is right...that we can't communicate with you."

My heart broke because there was such pain in her face. I am one of two children...the oldest of the two. And my mom has no one but the two of us. That's when it hit me again, my entering a congregation is a sacrifice of myself for God, yes, but it is a huge sacrifice for the family as well!

Anyone have any thoughts on this? Has it happened to anyone here as well? I would love to get a mother's or a father's perspective! How do I help my mother cope? Dios te bendiga...

[Saint Therese]

The separation from family is a big sacrifice. But just think, Jesus said if you give up family, friends etc for His sake you'll be rewarded a hundredfold, even in this life! Also, I think fulfilling God's will for you in your life will help your family to do God's will for them in their lives.

[laetitia crucis]

I think the amount of communication between the sister and family varies between communities.

For example, the community I was in allowed for phone calls home once a week while in formation (and your family could basically call you whenever they needed to), and after your profess temporary vows you went home twice a year (usually for about a week or so each time). And your family could come visit you, too -- even when you're in the novitiate. You just have to clear it with your superiors. Oh, and you could always receive and write letters. After you were missioned, then there weren't any restrictions on phone usage (unless you were calling long distance and that convent didn't have a long distance plan... hello, phone card!) or e-mail usage.

The Sisters of Life allow for the postulant to go home twice (I think for a week each time also) before she enters the novitiate. Then after she professes vows, she goes home once a year I believe. During postulancy and novitiate they have "visiting/calling days". In the novitiate they have less of these, and are only able to read mail during Christmas and Easter. (At least in their canonical novitiate year -- one of my good friends is a novice with them currently. )

The Franciscan Sisters of the Renewal go home once a year to visit after professing temporary vows, too. (I think... can't remember exactly. I remember one of the Sisters told me about her home visit when I went to a "Come and See" with them a few years ago.)

The Missionaries of Charity go home once every ten years after professing vows.

The Franciscan Sisters of the Immaculate do not have home visits. (The Friars do after professing final vows, however.) Though, I'm pretty sure if there was a family emergency or need, they would allow it. (i.e. a wedding or funeral and the like.) Although they are allowed to call home and receive phone calls.

And the community I'm currently discerning with allows the postulant to come home one week before she enters the Novitiate. Then in the novitiate there are three "visiting days" during the year. Mail/phone calls is also restricted to family and I think the sister can write home once a month but is able to receive mail from whoever and whenever. After the sister professes First Vows, she is able to go home for visits twice a year (usually two weeks in the summer and one in the winter, I believe).

Soo.. at least my from discerning experiences, I've found that most Orders allow family communication. I haven't heard of any that restrict that completely.

[laetitia crucis]

P.S. -- You had also requested a parent's perspective. A few months ago I think someone posted an article by Robert Miola about his daughters entering religious life. I couldn't find it in Phatmass search, so I googled it: [url="http://www.firstthings.com/article/2009/07/sisters--daughters"]Sisters and Daughters[/url] by Robert Miola

Both of these Sisters are in the Order I was with and are now on mission in Italy. They're wonderful Sisters!

Here's the text:

Sisters and Daughters
by Robert Miola

It started back in May 2001, at a graduation party in my daughter’s tiny New York apartment, just off Broadway, five flights up. Christine has won prizes in classics and Italian, a set of other honors, and she has no use for any of them. She has dropped two decades of aspiration and academic achievement, two decades of building a self in society, two decades of dreams about the future, without so much as a whistle.

“I’m not interested in that any more,” she says. I am proud of her. She has achieved the success we both hoped and worked for—through private schools, travel abroad, summer programs, enrichment opportunities, and family activities. We step out on the roof for some air. One distinguished female scholar, who was on the committee that awarded her a prize for her senior thesis, sidles up: “So what are you going to do with all that Greek and Latin now?” “That’s really up to God, isn’t it,” she replies coolly, meeting her eyes. I keep reminding myself of Thomas Aquinas’ dictum: The end of all learning is love of God. “She is just skipping the middle steps,” I tell myself and others again and again. Who wouldn’t be proud of that?

But I am disappointed, too. She won’t be going through the long-anticipated rituals of academic accreditation, and I won’t be offering all the cheers, consolations, and advice I have stored up. And I am worried. Is this a free choice or an unhealthy compulsion, born of some deep-seated neurosis or fear or wound? Will she be safe and healthy and happy? Can we see her, and how often, and on whose say-so? She will never have a husband. She will never have children. What about all that nurturing love and motherly good sense she showed her brother Dan and younger sisters, Rachel and Rosie, babysitting, helping her parents, organizing chores, providing entertainment? And, of course, she will always be a beggar, despite her talents and the tens of thousands of dollars spent in tuition. (The IRS and the alumni surveys have yet to provide a category marked “No income now or ever.”)

So, a second-generation Italian American Catholic, I have mixed feelings. No easy, comfortable path for my eldest daughter, no grandchildren, and no success in the new world, at least as people conventionally construe both success and that world. But it is some consolation to think that there may be larger rhythms at play here. My mother reminds me that her mother, Francesca Cappadona, spent her youth in a convent in Italy.

Christine found her vocation during her year abroad in Rome, which had coincided with the 2000 Jubilee. “In Rome I tried to be normal, to stay away from daily Mass,” she says, “but I was miserable. I needed to go to church. And all around the city I kept running into those blue habits. Those women were so joyful and peaceful and free.”

I tried to reason with her: “You are going into a Servants of the Lord novitiate, and that is by definition a time to try things out, to discern. Take it easy and see if it is right for you.” “No,” she told me firmly, “I love passionately and want to give everything now—no holding back.”

“You should use the talents God gave you and the education I paid for,” I respond, all but oblivious to the folly of that coordination. “You can work in a soup kitchen and feed twenty or you can write food-stamp legislation and feed twenty thousand.” She shakes her head and looks at me with amusement and, perhaps, a touch of pity.

In January 2004, Sr. Maria del Fiat (formerly Christine Miola) is walking in step with three other sisters, carrying a heavy backpack of books up the hill to the Centro di Alti Studi. Elderly Italian ladies, wrapped in shawls, call out to chat and hug and scold Sr. Fiat in mock anger for not visiting often enough. She laughs with them and asks about their aches and pains. They give full reports and talk about their husbands, children, and grandchildren. They invite us for coffee.

When we arrive at the Centro she introduces me to her students, seminarians as well as sisters from South America, Europe, and Africa. “Who knows more Latin, you or La Maestra?” Fr. Mario asks me, with a mischievous grin. She begins class with a prayer and then gets right to the Latin drills, conducted in Italian. That afternoon I give a lecture on early-modern Jesuit martyrs. I tell them of St. Philip Neri, who used to greet seminarians at the English College in Rome with the phrase, Salvete flores martyrum, “Hail, flowers of martyrs.” I tell them of Edmund Campion, ministering in disguise and secret to Catholics, evading detection but challenging all of Protestant England to debate: “We shall never despair your recovery while we have a man left to enjoy your Tyburn, or to be racked with your torments, or to be consumed with your prisons. The expense is reckoned. The enterprise is begun; it is of God, it cannot be withstood.”

I have given the lecture a hundred times but this one is different. The air crackles with an electric attention and energy. A half hour later I see four seminarians from the back of the room standing together in the piazza. “ Salvete flores martyrum,” I say in jest. Andres, a handsome Argentinian priest with a beautiful tenor voice, closes his eyes and responds immediately, “ Utinam”—Would it were so.

That night I meet my daughter in the small convent chapel, cut out of a mountain side, for Vespers. It is cold and windy but the stone chapel is warm with candlelight; the nuns kneel in silent adoration. Sr. Fiat plays a small organ and leads the hymns, Tantum Ergo, Salve Regina, her voice high and clear. The psalms and antiphons echo in the Italian night. The sisters kiss their breviaries before closing them.

But then, in 2005, I find myself saying with dismay, “You can’t be serious.” Another daughter, Rachel this time, looks at me with deep blue eyes. Her lip quivers. Robert Kaske’s book of medieval sources, my gift to her before she heads to graduate school at Notre Dame, sits on the table, already a relic from another dispensation.

“You are wholly different from Chrissy and wholly unfit for that life,” I insist. “She loves rules and you can’t stand them. You were a feminist at the University of Chicago, and this is a life of submission and obedience.”

She struggles to remain calm. “It’s not a matter of rules or my sister. It’s not even a matter of who I am, and, I’m not sure you know me anymore anyway. Don’t you trust that I have thought about this at length?” Her temperature rises. “Do you really want to argue with joy now and the hope of eternal life later?” she says sharply.

“There are no guarantees for eternal life,” I retort, my temperature rising. “Are you sure you are not just following your big sister?” I charge, half-conscious of the absurdity of the question, posed as it is to my most flamboyant and theatrical daughter, always fiercely independent. “Or perhaps it’s just a coincidence that no one we know enters religious life and you follow your sister in the same choice, in the same order?”

“There are a lot of ways to serve God,” I lecture. “Human love is good. Are you afraid of human love, afraid of marriage, afraid of sex?”

“Daaad,” she rolls her eyes in exasperation.

“Listen, Ray,” I plead, “ten years from now you will wake up and discover that this life is not or ever was right for you; then you will be too strapped with guilt and an ethic of self-abnegation to do anything about it. Why don’t you proceed along with your graduate-school plans or go for a year and enter later if you still want to?”

“I already told them I am not coming. I told them to give the fellowship to someone else.” I feel a fiery swirl of panic, fear, and anger rise up. Scenes from her life flash before me—reading books together on the porch in blankets, her performances in high-school cross-country and theater; her study of medieval Latin paleography in college; her gaining entrance to the Vatican library, officially closed to undergraduates; her pluck; her swing dancing.

I close with brutal sarcasm, feeling cut off, confused, dizzy from worry and anger. I rise from the table, saying, “I’m sorry, Ray. I love you, but I can’t support a course of action I think is wrong for you. I don’t think I can see you anymore. Maybe that is part of your cross.”

“That would make me very sad,” she says, as her blue eyes fill slowly with tears.

In Washington, October 2008, I watch Sr. Panagia (formerly Rachel Miola) in action, poised and purposeful. Of course I have seen her many times after that painful day in 2005—in fact, the very next day, filled with love, contrition, and anxiety—but I have rarely seen her in in propria persona before.

The children seek her out, and she kneels to see them eye to eye, producing holy cards and medals for them from the mysterious folds of the habit. They are mesmerized. Some adults lead her to the side for confidential and intense conversation, sharing their stories and (I assume from their expressions) their griefs. She moves naturally and easily through the crowd of strangers, young and old; everyone wants to talk to her.

I watch Sr. Fiat, my older daughter, prepare for the ceremony, the declaration of her final vows, and I see her pray and tremble in anticipation, watched by her father and her younger sister, in habit. The priests and sisters process in. The cardinal formally and finally accepts Sr. Fiat and five others, after more than seven years of intense prayer and preparation, as spouses of Christ. At the climactic moment at the altar in the crypt, she stands up and says, “Lord, you have called me; here I am.” She makes “an oblation to God of all my being...in order to be a concrete imprint which the Trinity leaves in history that all men may discover the attraction and longing for the divine beauty.” She vows to remain “forever chaste, for the sake of the kingdom of heaven, forever poor, manifesting that God is the only true wealth for man, forever obedient, even to death on the cross.”

My little girl, now twenty-nine, lies prostrate while a priest intones the litany of the saints, calling each to witness and help her fulfill her vow—the Virgin Mary, St. Peter, St. Paul, St. Thomas Aquinas, Padre Pio, Elizabeth Ann Seton, the angels, one by one, St. Teresa, St. Joseph, St. Francis, a divine roll call. Crowned with a wreath of flowers, she completes the mystical marriage by taking a ring on her right hand—my father’s wedding ring. My mother, kneeling behind me, weeps for joy to see their marital love thus renewed. At times it seems the thousand others in the grand cathedral fade away and there is no one else there but my daughters.

Many people congratulate me after, as if I had something to do with all that. “You must be very proud,” they say, but the opposite is true. I am embarrassed at how poor a part I have played in their lives. I am humbled into silence to see the girls I helped bring into the world, diapered, assisted with homework, watched on playing fields, paid tuition for—now turned into holy persons of God, missionaries, radiant with presence and power.

What does it all mean? I’ve been thinking about those lines from T.S. Eliot’s Four Quar tets, verses I inscribed to Sr. Panagia the day she took the habit: to apprehend / The point of intersection of the timeless / With time, is an occupation for the saint. Most of us live our lives experiencing normal pleasures and normal pains. Occasionally we experience something beyond all that, something of grace, another reality.

But they live every day in that reality, in the gentle constant presence of Christ. It is our world of power, pleasure, pain, and pride that is secondary, shadowy, and unreal. Unimaginable, one might say, but there they are, laughing and praying, singing and working, emptied of disordered passions and filled with peace. There they are, big as life, robed in grey and blue.

At the reception they talk with excitement of missions they have just visited—Sr. Fiat in Ireland, Sr. Panagia in Guyana. Everything seems new and possible. I breathe prayers for their health and safety and happiness, and for that of all my children. I have no idea what’s next for any of them. But then again, Deo gratias ago, I never did.

[i]Robert Miola is Gerard Manley Hopkins Professor at Loyola College in Maryland and editor of Early Modern Catholicism: An Anthology of Primary Sources.
[/i]

[CatherineM]

There are many jobs that kids can get that separate them from their families for long periods of time. When my oldest was in the Navy, I saw him about once every other year. I don't see either now that I have moved to Canada. You can't plan your life around your family. Just as it says that when we marry, we cleave to our spouses and leave our families, you do the same when your spouse is our Lord.

[MithLuin]

It really does depend on the order. I have a cousin who joined the Nashville Dominicans, and my sister is currently an aspirant (not even a postulant yet ) with the order she entered this past summer. Very different experiences. While the novitiate is always a time of limited contact with the family, my cousin was not permitted to attend either of her sisters' weddings (neither of which happened during her canonical novitiate, but both of which happened during her formation). In my sister's case, she will be permitted to visit fairly often, getting three weeks a year of vacation time, or three months every three years if she is doing mission work abroad.

Obviously, there are some cloistered orders which are very, very strict about contacting people outside the monastery. Poor Clares are not permitted a home visit, even to bury their parents (as always, don't accept generalities; always ask the particular house you are trying to join what their policies are!)

Yes, it is a sacrifice for the family who loves you not to be able to have you around for all the family events you would otherwise have been able to attend. Not necessarily more of a sacrifice than if you had moved across the country or married someone who took you abroad. I mean, there's always sacrifices in life, and this is one. Sometimes, it is very painful. Consider the father of St. Therese, who one by one took his daughters to enter Carmel. This was not easy for him, and one of them chose not to enter religious life until after his death so that he would not be left alone (not the only reason, but a reason, certainly).


Basically, yeah, it's not going to be all fun for your Mom, but if she knows you are happy there, she will be much more at peace about it. And if you join an order that is close to home and open to visits and communication with the family, it won't be all that difficult.

[AccountDeleted]

I see this from two different sides, as a daughter and as a mother.

As a mother...
I have a daughter who is serving her adopted country in the US military in Kuwait, and I never get to see her. When she has R&R, she goes back to her husband's family in Florida, and I am in Australia. Most of our communication is done online. But I know that she has chosen this life because it makes her feel fulfilled and offers something back to the country that she has grown to love. Parents want their children to be happy, and yours will feel pain, but they will also feel joy at your happiness.


As a daughter...
When I was in Carmel in England, I had very limited contact with my family and this was usually via mail or the occasional phone call (once a month to one member of my family). The sacrifice at this point was mostly mine because I am a mature woman and no one was depending upon me or needing me in their lives. But during this sacrifice, I prayed especially hard for my father, who was elderly and ill, and (I thought) a non-believer. He replied to one of my get-well cards asking for more prayers.

Two years later, I was no longer in Carmel, and I was attending his funeral, where I was asked to speak about his faith. The things that I had learned from talking to him in the few months before his death were amazing and unknown to me (that he had attended a Catholic boys military academy when he was young), and the most beautiful thing for me was that he asked to have the Cross put on his headstone, because he died loving Jesus. I believe that my life in Carmel brought my father and me closer together in the love of God, and that he was able to share with me many things that he couldn't share with the rest of our family who are mostly agnostic or atheist. The graces that God grants to those who offer their lives to him, are also visited upon the families, and your family will be truly blessed by both your sacrifice and theirs.

[Guadalupe23]

Wow..all of your replies are amazing and very heartfelt. I'm definitely going to give my mom that article to read, when the appropriate time comes up. I already have it printed out. It was a good narrative of what it is like as the parent to let go (like Therese's father...as Mithluin mentioned!)

Nunsense, I appreciate that insight. I have heard other religious say this, that they actually grew closer to their families as a sister more than they ever did as a lay person! That spiritual bond is so much deeper. I guess, I just worry about her a bit. I'm the oldest and that has been my role...but I know that I'm not the Savior!!! THANK GOD! =) It is not my job to watch out for her, God has done that so well in that department!

I guess the best thing to do is to just keep her informed about the orders that I'm looking at and what their customs are. She seems to appreciate that...and offer up the worried looks she gives me as I speak. Thank you for your input! Such a great support...

[vee]

Something my Mom said when I told her about my possible vocation might come in useful at some point and that is "its a tough job but someone has to do it."

Id also add to try to keep your primary focus on Christ, what He wants, where He wants you to go, and to be open to the reply even if its something you or your Mom might not like the idea of at first. With that view in mind Id be cautious about saying too much to your Mom right now about the orders you are interested in especially when it comes to topics like which one has better vacation time. The most important question is what does God want and which charism best fits you.

[FSM Sister]

The RSM's would say, "You aren't losing a daughter; you are gaining 35 daughters!"

[elizabeth09]

I think that the Carmelite Sisters of the divine heart of Jesus, there home visit is, I think, once a year.

[TeresaBenedicta]

Funny enough, I think this is the thing my parents are least worried about, but I'll admit it being one of the things I've been most worried about whilst discerning.

While I think I'd be okay, for the most part, being separated from my family [I go to school 3,000 miles away from home], I've always worried about my parents. I think that going away to school has helped with this, as has my brother joining the army and therefore being away from home for long periods of time. I've also been preparing my parents for me living permanently on the East Coast, with the possibility of doing mission work over seas.

So, over the past two or three years I've been able to get them to grow accustomed to the idea of me not being home.

In fact, in a sort of weird way, I think that I'd probably be home visiting [i]more[/i] often if I am a religious than if I was married and living on a different coast. Let's face it, if you live far away with kids and a job and a family... it's not likely that you're going to get to go home two weeks every year.

On the other hand, I [i]am[/i] used to talking to my mom everyday on the phone, sometimes multiple times a day. Plus e-mails or text messages throughout the day. While seemingly a small thing, I think I'll miss it a lot. Even just a "good morning" text.

Of course, I don't think I'd be able to do the letter once a month and a visit once a year thing. I don't know. I just don't think I, or my parents, would be able to. But then again, God gives the graces. I don't think I'm called to the cloister, and if I were, I'm sure God would give sufficient graces to both me and my family for it.

[Guadalupe23]

TheresaBenedicta,
The little things, I think, is what my mom is worried about. When I was at military training I could at least send a letter whenever I want to. This is such a small topic in the light of a religious vocation!! But it is a little reality that has to be acknowledged. If God were to call me to a more strict order, never would I allow communication with family hold me back to fufilling His desire. I guess that's what it means when Christ said that once you put your hand to the yoke we can't look back...not even for family. Tough stuff...but I love Him too much to compromise the call!! Surly even mom will understand in time...

[MC IMaGiNaZUN]

Grief is a process, all parents need to let go of their children, unfortunately most parents fantasize about their children being close forever.
My dad was resistent for a while, and that resistence gave way to acceptance, which eventually gave way to absolute joy. Its a process that parents have to go through the hard way, and unless they really think of it, they cannot get through it. So they have to be told directly.
I have another friend, when she told her mom, it was the same way resistence, and now she is accepting, eventually it will be much more joy.