Due to recent events, I've seen my Facebook wall, Twitter and other blogs explode with comments/links supporting cloistered nuns, some underhandedly implying that they are the only ones getting young vocations because of their faithfulness to the Magisterium, the teaching authority of the Church (bishops and the Pope). I wanted to jump and wave my hands in front of them saying "HEY, LOOK OVER HERE!"

When some monasteries are filling to the brim with young vocations, it's easy to forget about active Sisters out there faithful to the Magisterium. We do exist, we are often left in the dust and I strongly believe there are more of us that exist than people think.

Recently, while reading an article celebrating the opening of our new Seminary in St Louis, a commenter posted, attacking the Daughters for the use of the word "Seminary", painting us as a religious community obviously in favor of female ordination for "re-naming" our novitiate "Seminary" Talk about a facepalm.

Because we use the word "Seminary", because some of us don't wear veils (coifs), because we do not call our community a "religious order", some Catholics write us off as unfaithful Sisters, without even glancing at our history. 

Many of those attacking us have no idea we're actually not "nuns". We are actually a Society of Apostolic Life, a genius idea of St Vincent de Paul. This idea of his allowed us to work among the poor while still remaining Sisters faithful to canon law, which said that "nuns" were to live cloistered in monasteries. So what's the difference? Historically, we were founded without a real habit - we were meant to walk with the poor, blending in with them. We take annual vows (of poverty, chastity, obedience and service of the poor), not perpetual ones. We live in houses, not "convents". We are a "community" or "Company", not a "religious order". And to avoid confusion over whether we are "nuns" or not, St Vincent named our "novitiate" to "Seminary". 

St Vincent de Paul founded us to be Daughters of Charity, specifically "to honor our Lord Jesus Christ as the source and model of all charity, serving Him corporeally and spiritual in the poor" But he also emphasized in his many conferences to the Sisters that we are also to be "daughters of prayer" and "Daughters of the Church", urging us to remain faithful to the bishops and the Pope. St Elizabeth Ann Seton, centuries later, whom we consider to be our third founder, in her last words whispered to her Sisters "Be children of the Church"

We haven't forgotten Vincent's conferences nor Elizabeth Ann's last words. 

One American Sister recently was awarded the Papal Cross Pro Ecclesia Et Pontifice. Two Irish Sisters received Bene Merenti medals. Bishop John McCarthy raves about the Daughters of Charity in his state of Texas. Pope John Paul II, in a letter to us in 1997, he wrote "as a pledge of encouragement for your assembly’s work and the apostolic life of the institute, I entrust all the Daughters of Charity to the motherly protection of the Immaculate Virgin, Mother of the Church and Mother of the Little Society, as well as to the intercession of St Vincent de Paul, St Louise de Marillac and St Catherine Labouré, and I wholeheartedly send them my Apostolic Blessing." (Fun fact of the day: we actually own a vial of his blood from his assassination and his undershirt) And decades before, our Superioress General, Mother Suzanne Guillemin, was one of the few women invited to the Vatican II Council. 

We love our Church.

For me, it isn't a blind love. If it was a blind love - love without thinking for myself - it wouldn't mean a thing. Ask any active Sister (Daughter of Charity or not) faithful to the Magisterium and I'm sure they would tell you the same. We don't follow those teachings just because we're told to, but rather because it's what our consciences tell us is the right thing to do, the right thing to believe. It's the same conscience that tells us to be Roman Catholics rather than Methodist, rather than Baptist, rather than non-denominational.

We are children of the Church and I, for one, long to not be forgotten by our fellow Catholics. We exist, we're still here, we're still on fire with love for our Church and trying to follow our founders' teachings.

Vincentian Quote of the Week: St Elizabeth Ann Seton & Living in the Moment

Take every day as a ring which you must engrave, adorn, and embellish with your actions, to be offered up in the evening at the altar of God. (Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton)

Vincentian Quote of the Week: St Elizabeth Ann Seton & Receiving Communion for the First Time

Elizabeth Ann Seton was born and raised Episcopalian, a denomination I've heard referred to as "Catholic Lite" or "Diet Catholic". Nevertheless, one of the biggest differences is that the belief of transubstantiation - the real true presence of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist, a belief that Catholics have that Episcopalians don't. Shortly after her husband's death, Elizabeth Ann converted to Catholicism and writes to a friend about her First Communion:

At last....GOD IS MINE and I AM HIS! Now let all go its round - I HAVE RECEIVED HIM! The awful impressions of the evening before, fears of not having done all to prepare, and yet even then, transports of confidence and hope in his GOODNESS. 

My God, to the last breath of life will I not remember this night of watching for morning dawn? The fearful beating heart so pressing to be gone - the long walk to town, but every step counted nearer that street - then nearer that tabernacle, then nearer the moment He would enter the poor, poor little dwelling so all His Own.

And when He did, the first thought I remember was 'Let God arise, let his enemies be scattered', for it seemed to me that my King had come to take His throne. Instead of the humble, tender welcome I had expected to give him, it was but a triumph of joy and gladness that the Deliverer was come and my defense and shield and strength and Salvation made mine for this world and the next. (Elizabeth Ann Seton, letter to Amabilia Filicchi, 3/25/1805)

Elizabeth Ann Seton: Wrestling and Dancing with God

I have always loved reading journals and personal letters of other people, most particularly holy people. I like Henri Nouwen's books, but I devour his journals. Thomas Merton's Sign of Jonas struck me way more than Seven Storey Mountain did. Mother Teresa's Come Be My Light allowed me to connect with her more than anything else would. It almost seems contradictory, considering I've been journaling regularly since I was 16 and, although I may share parts, I have never let another person read them.

There is a deep personal part of our soul that is shared in journals and perhaps in letters. Our soul becomes raw, in openness, a willingness to share our weaknesses, our wrestles with God and our joy. We hold nothing back. To read someone else's journal is to dive into their soul, to dive into the mystery of their being. And for our saints, for those holy people we admire, it is diving into the human soul of someone we may not think of as human, diving into the soul of someone who both wrestled and danced with God.

I've been reading the book Friendship of My Soul: Selected Letters by Elizabeth Ann Seton 1803 - 1809 by Sister Betty Ann McNeil, DC. I've known Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton since 2003 when I first started attending Mount Saint Mary's College in Emmitsburg, where she lived and died. I've been through the museum a handful of times and thought I knew almost everything about her. But in this book, Sister Betty Ann publishes Elizabeth Ann's most intimate letters with her best friends. Elizabeth Ann paints the picture of everything leading up to her husband's death....the ship, the conditions, the smells....and then the sorrow she feels upon William's passing.

In one letter, we find her complaining about the singers at the Opera House in Italy and says that anyone who finds that pleasurable must not have never known real pleasure (when I read this, I looked up at the icon of her on my wall and laughed, trying to imagine her saying that). A few letters later, we find her wrestling with herself and with God over the thought of Jesus' Real Presence in the Eucharist, an idea contradictory to herself, a good Episcopalian woman. You can feel her confusion, grappling over what she truly believes.

Suddenly, Elizabeth Ann became real to me. The book description  "rarely does a story come along where a reader feels effortlessly transported back through time—where words and thoughts vividly convey a feeling of life some two hundred years past." is accurate. Every time I pick up the book, I feel transported back in time, as if I were face to face with Elizabeth Ann herself, as if I could emphatically feel her pain, feel her confusion, feel her anxious doubt.

As you can see, I haven't even gotten to the point where she finally decides to convert to Catholicism. That's where Elizabeth Ann's story really takes off - from losing some close friends because of her conversion, from fleeing New York to Baltimore, from founding the first American religious order and starting a new life in Emmitsburg, from losing so many, both family members and Sisters.

I invite you to read this book as well, or at the very least, research our dear Elizabeth Ann Seton. She, our first American-born saint, is truly a hidden treasure. Her name may be familiar, but I feel that her story is obscure. Her story is one that we all need - a story of pain, of human struggle, but also of a saintly trust in God. Yet it is also important to remember that saints are real, not just stories. Elizabeth Ann was in fact real, a woman who apparently hated opera and whose heart broke a little at the passing of her husband, with her children still so young, and a woman who spent her life both wrestling and dancing with God. May we learn from her example.

Vincentian Quote of the Week: St Elizabeth Ann Seton & Courage

"If only we keep courage, we will go to Heaven on horseback instead of idling and creeping along!" (St. Elizabeth Ann Seton)

Finally, I Meet a Sister Amanda!

Never in my life have I met a Sister Amanda (which is, God willing, what my name will be in a few years). However, a few months ago, in Emmitsburg, I finally met one. And not only that but she was even a Daughter of Charity!

She survived civil war in her native country and worked in an orphanage for many years smack dab in the middle of the fighting and even helped found a school for girls. Not only that but, at one time, she was even on the Council of her province! 

But....

....

....

It's really too bad she's dead....I would have loved to talked to her!

Yes, I'm talking about Sister Amanda Higdon, who died in 1894 at the age of 62. I found her one day when I was wandering around the old cemetery at the Seton Shrine. She was originally from Alexandria, VA and did all those things that I said - she worked in an orphanage in Mississippi from 1860 - 1870...(for you non-history buffs, the Civil War started in 1861 and ended in 1865!) She then helped found an all-girls school in Emmitsburg and later became the secretary for the Council.  I was inspired to write about her because a Salesian Sister has been writing about some of the first Sisters in her blog. Unfortunately, I don't know that much else about her. Maybe one day, if I have permission, I can dig in the Archives and see what else I find. However, by guessimating dates, she most likely joined around the age of 18 - which would be 1850. It was in the 1850's that Mother Seton's Sisters of Charity of St. Joseph combined with the Daughters of Charity. What a crazy time that must have been. Mother Seton's Sisters had to trade their black habits and caps for the blue habits and white wings of the Daughters. They had to learn more about their roots in France. And of course, some Sisters left because they thought that Mother Seton wouldn't have approved the merging. It was rough times for the Sisters in Emmitsburg and Sister Amanda had most likely not even taken her first vows when all this happened. How did she feel? Was she torn about the merging? Did she see some of her friends leave? Or did she join later, when the merge had already happened?

I feel like there is much to learn from these Sisters that have gone before me! And while that Sr Amanda's real name isn't Amanda (she was born Hannah Maria), I still feel a deep connection with her and feel relieved that I won't be the first Amanda in the entire American history of the community!

Vincentian Quote of the Week: St Elizabeth Ann Seton & Prayer

"We must pray without ceasing, in every occurrence and employment of our lives - that prayer which is rather a habit of lifting up the heart to God as in a constant communication with Him." (St. Elizabeth Ann Seton)

Probably one of the most famous quotes of the first American-born saint, Elizabeth Ann Seton. Elizabeth Ann holds a special place in my heart since I'm a Marylander, where she moved after being ridiculed for being Catholic, where she founded the Sisters of Charity, where she died. She founded the Sisters of Charity of St. Joseph using the rule of St. Vincent de Paul. (Shortly after her death, the Sisters united with the Daughters of Charity.)

Elizabeth Ann Seton's legacy went beyond her own Sisters and stretched into 13 different congregations, making her the founder of the American Vincentian tradition - the Daughters of Charity, Sisters of Charity of New York, Sisters of Charity of Cincinnati, Sisters of Charity of St Vincent de Paul, Sisters of Charity of St Elizabeth, Sisters of Charity of Seton Hill, Sisters of Charity of the Immaculate Conception, the Religious of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart, Sisters of Charity of Nazareth, Sisters of Charity of Our Lady of Mercy, Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth, and the Sisters of Saint Martha. You can read about their histories and connections to St. Elizabeth Ann Seton here.