First it was Mary, next Liz, and Rachel followed soon after. Three close college friends, who left the the world of careers and connections to devote their lives to Christ and his Church. That sacrifice is beautiful but also poignant to their friends left behind, to whom understanding often comes gradually, but it is nothing compared to the mingled joy and anguish of the father watching his daughter become a religious sister. And for Robert Miola, writing in the most recent issue of First Things, it was not one daughter, but two.
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 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.”)
Baffling–unreal–to the IRS and alumni board, and often infinitely more so to the ones who love most. But, as this father comes to realize, the radiance and joy of his missionary daughters, their love and peace, lies at the heart of reality. To read Miola’s full essay, log on or subscribe today.
July 17th, 2009 | 3:16 pm
One of the most beautiful pieces we’ve ever published.
July 17th, 2009 | 6:27 pm
I cannot read the entire article because I don’t have a subscription, but I suggest Mr. Miola contact Matt and Rachel Watkins at the “Heart, Mind, and Strength” blog:
http://www.exceptionalmarriages.com/weblog/
They have several children who are considering vocations. It is a wonderful, bittersweet, amazing time for them.
July 18th, 2009 | 10:06 am
I agree, Jody.
I said to my husband not long ago that while I have no problem praying for my sons’ possible vocations to the priesthood, I have a much, much harder time praying that any of my children answer a call to the religious life, simply because the giving them up seems that much more extreme. Of course you have to realize that they don’t belong to you anyway, really, but the level of sacrifice for a parent — not only of other dreams for that child, and of seeing that child’s children, but even of the name you gave him or her at birth — is that much greater and more difficult. A friend’s twenty-year-old daughter is a cloistered Carmelite, and my friend speaks often of how much she misses her, even as she’s radiant with joy and pride. I find this almost unbearably moving. At any rate, even to pray in that direction is a wrench, but you can’t not, I don’t think.
Actually, my own oldest daughter, still only 15, is very much attracted to the religious life at present, so I read Miola’s piece with more than readerly interest. And my youngest daughter is also a Rachel who goes by Ray . . .
July 19th, 2009 | 11:46 pm
I just got back from visiting St. Dominic’s monastery in Linden, VA. The only thing more beautiful than the scenery–set at the peak of a hill among the Shenandoah mountains–is the life of the nuns inside. It reminded me of Mt. Tabor, where Christ was transfigured before the lucky few, and also of the Psalm, “There is one thing I ask of the Lord, for this I long: to live in the house of the Lord all of the days of my life.” But, as Mr. Miola and the commentators have said, the contemplative vocation is a terrible beauty, or as Vanauken would describe different sort of love story, a “severe mercy.”
Considering the contemplative vocation in the abstract, a number of Catholics find beautiful and attractive, but in the concrete, they rankle their nose at the demands a generous woman would take upon herself as a nun. Even good, thinking Catholics–those who love the Church and pray fervently–find themselves saying to a woman with a promising vocation, “Don’t waste your life. You have so much talent. Educate yourself; get an influential job; make a difference.” This is especially the case now, for a number of reasons. Here I note an American appreciation, almost a cult, of action. It places a greater priority on doing over being, production over contemplation. Such a view is natural, I suppose. It requires a supernatural outlook on life in order to grasp how when “Mary pondered all these things in her heart,” she did more for the world than all the rest of us combined. And though her contemplation led her to the foot of the cross, Our Lady was not less fulfilled because of it. Her prayer was so powerful, her heart was so full, that all graces come to us through her.
It would be a straw man conclude from this that women shouldn’t be educated or that they shouldn’t have influential positions in the world. On the contrary, St. Gianna Molla, St. Margaret of Scotland, and Ven. Zelie Martin show that women can be holy in the world. Nevertheless, John Paul II reminded us in Verbi Sponsa that the religious vocation is objectively higher, since it is a more direct way of fully giving oneself to the Giver of all.
The histories of saintly (and courageous) nuns are filled with stories about tender-hearted family members and well-meaning friends trying to keep a young woman from entering the cloister. Despite such obstacles, the nun leaves all things behind, with her eyes set on the treasure, the pearl, the great prize before her: a deep relationship with Jesus Christ as his dove, his lily, his bride. Sometimes the family and friends come to accept the nun and her situation; often they do not. St. Clare escaped through the “death gate” in her family’s castle to become a nun; Blessed Diana used a day trip with her friends as a pretext for entering a monastery (her brothers later hunted her down and tried to force her out); St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein) left behind many Jewish friends and philosophical colleagues to become a Carmelite.
So far we have mostly heard about how it can be bittersweet for the friends and family of a nun–but it can also be such for the nun herself. Yes, the Divine Spouse lavishes great mercies upon His brides who have given up everything to follow him. Yes, they are joyful and radiant and at peace. But we should not think that it was an easy thing for them to leave the world behind. And I don’t mean “worldly” things (i.e., those things that in themselves pull one away from the good Lord), but even those good things and good persons that they remember and love and pray for. These too have a place in the heart of a nun, which makes her sacrifice the more poignant and worthwhile. And the sacrifice is worth it.
Entering the enclosure is not so much turning one’s back on the world as facing the resplendent light of glory. While there are many good things to be had in the world, they will not satisfy the heart that longs to be united to Goodness Himself as His beloved.
(Blessed!) Cardinal Newman summed it up well in saying, “Thou alone, my dear Lord, art the food for eternity, and Thou alone. Thou only canst satisfy the soul of man. To see Thee, to gaze on Thee, to contemplate Thee, this alone is inexhaustible. Thou indeed art unchangeable, yet in Thee there are always more glorious depths and more varied attributes to search into; we shall ever be beginning as if we had never gazed upon Thee. In Thy presence are torrents of delight, which whoso tastes will never let go.”
July 20th, 2009 | 10:14 am
[...] promote thyself! Amanda was so enthusiastic about Robert Miola’s piece that she forgot to direct readers to her own thoughtful and elegant [...]
July 20th, 2009 | 6:07 pm
where in aquinas is the quote The end of all learning is love of God?
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