On this day, three hundred and seventy nine years ago, in Paris, France, a few young women started a revolution. It wasn't a revolution with guns or even with non-violent protests. In fact, these women, young peasants who could barely read or write, didn't understand the immensity of their quiet action of moving in with Mademoiselle LeGras (also known as Louise de Marillac) and forming a new religious community called The Daughters of Charity under the direction of a priest who was slowly becoming famous all over France, Monsieur Vincent de Paul.

But their simple action on this day and afterwards changed Church history forever.

These women were former servants who fell in love with the work of serving the poor and now were dedicating themselves to that mission, yet in a way that would have seemed nearly impossible before. They were now to be religious, to be Sisters. But unlike other religious communities, there was to be no separation based on the background of their family, no such thing as "choir sisters" and "lay sisters" to differentiate between Sisters from poor or rich families. And also unlike other religious communities, they were there not just to pray but for an apostolic purpose - to serve Christ in the poor.

The first "habit" of the
Daughters of Charity

These first Sisters probably didn't know anything about canon law at the time, but Monsieur Vincent de Paul did. He knew that, under canon law, all Sisters were to be cloistered and there were no "if's or but's" about it. He had seen religious communities that tried to bend the rules either crumble or forced into the cloister, even the religious community of his friend Francis de Sales (the Visitation Sisters). But he was determined that his Sisters would survive. So, being the clever man that he was, he took the loopholes to his advantage. Instead of taking perpetual vows, his Sisters would take annual vows. Instead of calling their house a "convent", they would simply call it a "house". Instead of calling it "novitiate", they called it "Seminary". And instead of wearing a religious habit, his Sisters would simply wear the typical clothes of French peasants. He summed it up when he wrote the Daughters were to have "as a convent, the houses of the sick; as a cell, a rented room; as a chapel, the parish church; as a cloister, the streets of the city and the halls of the hospitals; as enclosure, obedience; as grating, the fear of God; and as a veil, holy modesty."

Maybe these first Sisters didn't exactly know how much of an experiment their new community, called the Daughters of Charity, was. But the "experiment" worked. There was no category in canon law for such a community - and, although the Vatican approved their Constitutions soon after their foundation, there wouldn't be a term for their type of community until hundreds of years later when the Vatican came up with the term "Society of Apostolic Life". 

Simply by becoming Daughters of Charity and paving the way for others, these women changed what religious life would become in the Church. After the foundation of the Daughters of Charity, priests and bishops started founding new religious communities, also under an apostolic purpose. Eventually, canon law changed, allowing but not requiring the cloister for Sisters anymore.

Some claim that it was St Vincent's ingenuity that allowed this to happen. While that is true, that ingenuity would have been useless if it weren't for a few peasant girls who decided to leave everything they knew to serve Christ in the poor.

They had no idea that millions of Daughters of Charity would follow after them (some now numbered among the saints and martyrs), no idea that one day their community would be serving the poor all over the world in almost 100 countries. and no idea that they would change the face of religious life in the Catholic Church.

They just knew they loved Christ and loved the poor and that was enough. That was enough to start their own kind of French revolution.

Daughters of the Church

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.

Feast of the Annunciation and the Renewal of Vows for the Daughters of Charity

Today, all over the world, about 19,000 women who have pledged their lives as Daughters of Charity renew their vows of poverty, chastity, obedience and service of the poor. On the feast of the Annunication, the feast of Mary's "yes", women are saying their own "yes" to God's call.

It's almost as if it's a wave - starting with our sisters in Australia, in Asia (Cambodia, Jordan, China, Kazakhstan, Eastern Russia, Korea, India, Laos, Lebanon, Indonesia, Phillipines, Iran, Syria, Israel, Thailand, Japan and Vietnam), in Europe (Albania, Poland, Austria, Belarus, Belguim, Portugal, Croatia, France, Czech Republic, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Germany, Great Britian, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Switzerland, Macedonia, Turkey, Ukraine and the Netherlands)  in Africa (Algeria, Kenya, Angola, Libya, Burundi, Madagascar, Cameroon, Mauritania, Chad, Morocco, Congo, Mozambique, Egypt, Nigeria, Equatorial Guinea, Rwanda, Eritrea, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Tunisia and Ghana), in Latin America (Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Brazil, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Haiti and Puerto Rico), and then in the United States. (By the way, that's an average of 208 Sisters per country!)

Sr. Denise LaRock, the vocations director for the Daughters of Charity, wrote a beautiful blog post about the renewal of vows today. You can find it here - http://srdenisedc.blogspot.com/2012/03/feast-of-annunciation-and-renewal-of.html. Definitely worth the read!

The Vows: A Church's Rebellion Against Our Culture

It's quiet in the house. Then again, it's almost always quiet here - a result of living with all introverts. But today it's especially quiet - not a footstep is heard, not any snippet of a conversation, not a creaking of the stairs.

Today, the four Sisters I live with are in retreat in preparation for renewing their vows next Monday. Usually these retreats, since they are universal for everyone in the house, are made in the house rather than a retreat center. Not a word is spoken out of respect for the contemplative nature of the retreat, which explains why our little house on Ward Street is so still today.

If you were observant, you noticed I said something that is not typical of other religious communities - "...for renewing their vows next Monday" Religious orders only renew their vows in the juniorate -otherwise, there are first vows and final/perpetual vows. The Daughters of Charity are not a religious order. Rather, we're a Society of Apostolic Life, one of St Vincent de Paul's genius inventions for us. Unlike the description on Wikipedia, the Daughters do take vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, just like any other religious order.  The difference is they renew them every year (with the intent of forever) instead of making one perpetual vow.

This retreat allows the Sisters to mentally, emotionally and spiritually prepare themselves for their renewal of the commitment to poverty, chastity, obedience and service to the poor (that being the fourth vow). The silence allows myself, not technically on retreat, to reflect on the vows that I hope to one day make.
I believe that my generation longs to rebel against our current culture. We're sick of the materialism, sick of the sex and violence blared at us 24/7, sick of the judgment. I believe that that's why Catholicism has seen a burst of vocations to the contemplative and cloistered life, indeed a beautiful thing. The 20-somethings, such as myself, maybe not even just those in the Catholic world, are aching for something different.

Each of the four vows the Daughters of Charity take - poverty, chastity, obedience, and service of the poor - screams against our modern culture. Poverty is at odds with the materialism of the world, chastity at odds with our sex-centered culture, obedience at odds with individualism and egoism, and service of the poor contrary to our society's need to materialism and comfort. I am, in no way, rejecting the world. There are positive things in our culture, such as our need to keep learning, a need for every voice to be heard and a continuous effort to be tolerant of all races and religions. There are good people in the world and I believe there are more counter-cultural people (against the negative aspects) out there than we realize, maybe even more counter-cultural people than "cultural". Taking these four vows is something truly radical and not easy. It never has been, not even back in the 1600s when the community started. I have a real admiration for those who make these vows, Daughters of Charity and other religious orders alike. The vows are a way the Church rebels against our current culture. In that way, we try to follow in the footsteps of Jesus, who is counter-cultural both in His time and ours.

When I think of the Sisters I live with as 'rebels', it makes me chuckle because these are women who (seemingly) quietly live out their lives as school principals, pastoral associates, homeless shelter directors, etc. Yet the truth is they are rebels. Our culture tells them they shouldn't be working for free, tells them they shouldn't be living on a simple monthly "allowance", tells them they should be with husbands or boyfriends. But these four Sisters - ranging from ages 79 to 51 - say "no, thanks", make a yearly promise to go the opposite direction and, by doing so, rebel against what our culture is constantly telling them to do. It truly is an audacious thing to do.

Not all of us are being called to make these radical vows - poverty, chastity, obedience and service to the poor - but each of us is called to rebel against our culture in Christ's name. We are called to rebel against the negative things of our culture, even if it's simply showing the world our rebellion by something like the vows all religious take. The question is - how do you rebel? How do you embrace the positive things in our culture and reject the negative? How do you follow in the footsteps of the counter-cultural Jesus?

(Picture from the Vincentian image gallery, believed to be a French vow day card)