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)

An Open Letter to St. Louise de Marillac

Dear Sister Louise,
As a good writer, I feel every letter, especially to someone I've never written to before, needs an introduction. But as I wrote to Monsieur Vincent, I'm not sure that I need to write one to you. Do you already know who I am? Do you and Vincent have conversations in heaven, or even laughs, over your postulants?

It was awkward in the beginning to write to Vincent in a familiar way, yet I do not have that awkwardness writing you. Did you know, Sister Louise, that you're the one saint that I wish I could talk to face-to-face? Don't get me wrong - Vincent is great and so are the million others. But if God gave me a proverbial coffee-shop date with one saint, I would pick you (even though you seem more like a tea person).

You're probably wondering "well, why me?" It's not because, as a good Daughter of Charity postulant, I should pick the foundress of my community (though that may have a bit to do with it) It's for a more personal and maybe superficial reason. See, I think you and I are more alike than both of us may think. Please know I mean that in the most humble way. I certainly don't mean my canonization process is coming anytime soon.

We're both avid perfectionists, both of us probably to an annoying fault. From the almost 400-year old writings/letters we have from you, that's pretty darn obvious. You even write about how there were points where you were even afraid to receive Communion because of your inadequacy! Truthfully, your perfectionism makes me smile....because I think "Yes, thank God I am not the only one!" So my question, Sister Louise, is how did you deal with it? How did you reconcile that scared perfectionist self with the self that is on fire with love of God and charity?

Our proverbial coffee-shop conversation may actually be egotistical on my part, to which I apologize. My poor excuse is that I believe it is during religious life formation is like a mirror of our selves, showing a reflection we've never fully seen before. That reflection sometimes leads to lots of questions, whose answers aren't too easy to find. And as for me, I have lots of questions.

But enough about me - those questions will have to wait for another letter, not an "open" one. Next Thursday (the 15th), we celebrate 352 years since your death. I like to think you already know but, just in case you didn't, your Daughters are strong, a characteristic both borne out of you and their spirit of humility, simplicity and most of all love of Jesus Christ.They're truly servants of the poor, our Masters, but in ways you couldn't have even possibly imagined back then. There's even conversation going around about how we can use our cell phones for outreach in your spirit! Yes, cell phones! The Company isn't perfect, yet I can imagine you being awfully suspicious if it were. I can imagine you telling Vincent "there's something going on here that no one's telling us about...." Yet I think you would be proud of your Daughters. Please keep praying for us. Please keep interceding for us. Please continue to watch over us...and maybe even have a few laughs while you're at it.

I have a deep-rooted feeling that one day that proverbial coffee-shop date will happen - though be it in heaven, where I'll come to you with even deeper questions. Or maybe I won't even say anything, maybe the two of us will sit and drink our coffee (or tea) in silence and smile, as only two really good friends who have spent such time together can do. Meanwhile, though, I remain here on earth, clumsily trying to follow in Jesus' footsteps as you yourself did, and hope that I'm doing you and the Company proud.

In love of Jesus crucified,
Amanda

Discernment

I beg you...to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them, and the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.

- Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

Back in high school, I loved going to the bookstore (heck, I still love going to the bookstore) and looking through novels in Spanish. I would flip through them, see the letters jumbled in an order I didn't understand with their mix of accents and tildes and think to myself "One day, I'm going to be able to read this. And without a dictionary" I was only in my second, third or fourth year of taking Spanish, but I had the die-hard ambition of reading those novels but I knew I couldn't just pick it up and read. I would be looking up every other word in the dictionary, mistaking verbs for nouns, not following the tense. So instead I waited and I learned in the meantime. About four years later, in college, I'd be reading the 380-page novel Iacobus in Spanish. Even later still, I'd be in Bolivia, pulling out Spanish novels in our personal library to read for fun.

I think that's what discernment is like.
It's about waiting.
It's about learning.
It's about frustration as we impatiently want the answers NOW and/or as we get frustrated with ourselves for not knowing the answers.
It's about confusion as we navigate through the jungle of vocation and temptation.
It's about discovery, the discovery of who we really are and why God made us.
It's about mystery as we watch our life unfold before us.

Choices of the Heart: Why My Heart Chose the Daughters of Charity

Let me set the scene -
Three good friends, two postulants and one discerner. Three amazing vocations directors, one from Baltimore, one from Indiana, one from California.
Setting: Evansville, Indiana - home of many geese, jokingly the "Witness Protection" capital of the country, and home of the Seminary (novitiate) of the Daughters of Charity and a Sisters' retirement home.

All of that made from an amazing retreat.

It really led me to reflect on how much I absolutely love this community. There is no perfect community (if you're a discerner looking for one, sorry but you won't find it) However, the Daughters of Charity are the perfect community for me. There's something exhuberantly joyful about not only fitting into a community, but also them "fitting into you". The Daughters aren't for everyone - some are looking for something more contemplative, others are looking for a community that are only teachers or nurses, others are looking for a community without a habit, others are attracted to the spirituality of St Francis or St John Bosco or St Paul, etc - but they are definitely for me.

So, why do I love the Daughters? Here are my top 10 reasons:

The Motherhouse chapel

10) Our motherhouse is in Paris, France. I mean, come on, have you been there? Okay, me neither. But to know that as a Daughter of Charity, I will be visiting Paris at least once in my life is pretty awesome. On a related Paris note, our Superior General (the Superior General of the Vincentians) grew up just a few miles from me (in the US, not France)

9) They still have a habit. Certainly not reason #1, but there's something comforting about a Sister in habit, even our simple dress in blue. Plus, there's the option of the wearing the coif (veil) or not.

8) Their life is a balance of contemplation and action. St Vincent emphasized that service doesn't mean anything if we don't pray as well. We pray as a community twice a day as well as at meals. We have "Sharing" every week, which is a way for us to share spiritual reflections with each other, whether it be about our ministry or something else. In preparation for a life of service to the poor, the Daughters have Seminary, similar to a novitiate in a religious order - almost two years of contemplation, prayer, and reflection.

7) They're worldwide. Like really worldwide. There are about 20,000 Daughters around the world serving in more than 91 countries. On a smaller national scale, I got to see that in Evansville this past weekend as I visited the retirement home and local communities and met Sisters I had never seen before in my life.

6) The Daughters of Charity have a long list of saints and blesseds, with more on the way. Of the saints, we're the community of the patron saint of social workers, a young woman whom Mary appeared to, and the first American-born saint. Of the blesseds, there's a long list including martyrs of the French revolution, the first beatified Brazilian and a French Sister who served the poor (and rich) without counting the cost.

5) Their history is fascinating. From the founding in 1633 when St Vincent de Paul discovered a sly way of getting around the canonical rule that Sisters had to be cloistered, to the French Revolution when so many Sisters were martyred, to the 1800s with St Elizabeth Ann Seton and her community (which eventually combined with the Daughters) to the present with so many Sisters serving in so many different ways.

4) Despite the fact that their vocation was something revolutionary in the Church at the time (there were no 'apostolic' Sisters before) and they live a radical life, they also cling to what is considered traditional. The Blessed Mother appeared to St Catherine Laboure, a Daughter of Charity, and was the inspiration for the Miraculous Medal. Every Daughter has a deep devotion to the Miraculous Medal and postulants (like yours truly) receive a Miraculous Medal to wear. Every year, the Company is consecrated to Mary.

3) The Daughters are so down to earth. Maybe it's part of their charism - after all, our Founders Prayer says "at their school, teach us to love in the strength of our arm and the sweat of our brow". Or their history - they were the first Sisters that went out in the world to serve others. Whatever it is, they don't pretend to be perfect and don't show themselves as anything more or less than servants of the poor. Another related reason - besides the habit, none of them are the same. There is no "cookie-cutter" Daughter of Charity. One saying goes "when you've met one Daughter of Charity....you've met one Daughter of Charity"

2) Their entire mission is to serve Christ in the poor. Nothing less. And that means doing it in whatever way is needed, where it is needed, etc.

1) I feel a strong urge that God is calling me here. Things aren't perfect (but what is?) but I truthfully feel the most joyful when I am with them. I couldn't imagine myself happy anywhere else.

And that means everything.

Does God want you to be miserable?: Reflections from Jon Acuff

Among the many blogs I follow, one is "Stuff Christians Like" written by Jon Acuff. Why? Because his stuff is hilarious, because it makes you wonder "oh my gosh, are there really Christians out there like that?" and because sometimes it'll really make you think.

His latest blog post is Does God want you to be miserable?. He explores the question "why do we assume that when we give God our life He's going to make us do what we hate?" which is actually quite a good question about vocation. Why do some people discerning think that, in order to become a Sister or a priest, they need to give up what they're passionate about? Why do they think that they'll be miserable but hey, they'll be doing what God wants them to do, right? Because there's something in today's Christian society - and I don't know what it is or where it came from - that tells us that.

Here is an excerpt from his blog entry. 

I do a joke when I speak to church groups. I say, “Every Christian knows that the first thing God does if you give him your life is make you move to Africa to become a missionary. You’ll go zero to hut in about 4.2 seconds.” And folks laugh, but there’s a crazy truth behind that joke. If we think the first thing God will do to us if we come close to him is the worst thing we can imagine, then we serve the worst God ever. 

If you’re not wired to be a missionary in Guam, if nothing about that feels at all like what God has uniquely created you to do, why would he immediately call you to that task if you trusted him with your life?

Go check out the rest of his post. It's worth the read!

Be Joyful! I Say It Again...'Be Joyful!': Blessed Giuseppina Nicoli

So I posted about the feast day of the Martyrs of Angers, not even realizing that the Daughters had two other feast days within a week - Blessed Giuseppina Nicoli today and Blessed Rosalie Rendu next week. I've already done a post on the life of Blessed Rosalie Rendu, one of my Daughter of Charity "favs", but Blessed Giuseppina Nicoli is even lesser known.

Sister Giuseppina was Italian, as you may have guessed already by her name. After becoming a Daughter of Charity, she spent most of her life ministering to the poor on the island Sardinia (yes, I had to look it up too) She became Sister Servant (the superior of the house) there and did something that may have been revolutionary in its time - she introduced the Sisters to the womens' prison. The Sisters then began to visit the incarcerated and minister to them. She organized the first youth group volunteers and taught catechism to the poor, illiterate and those without religious education.

A few years later, she was called to Turin (Italy) to serve as adminstrator of the province and then directress of the Seminary (noviciate), but soon the community realized that the climate of Turin wasn't doing well to her health and how attached Sardinia was to her and vice versa and sent her back there. Upon her return, she opened a School of Religion for young people and worked with sick infants and children. During World War I, she used her time to care for wounded soldiers.

But perhaps the greatest part of her reputation comes from her work with a group called Monelli di Maria, a group of orphaned, homeless, and abandoned children. Originally, these were just a group of street children that knocked on the Sisters' door asking for food, money, etc. Sister Giuseppina re-named this group something to the effect of "Mary's Street Kids" While she did make sure they went to Mass and were taught catechism, to Sister Giuseppina, serving them meant also serving Christ in the person of her neighbor. So she taught them how to read and write, as well as a trade that would give them a job and off the streets. By teaching them about God and His love for them, she also made them aware of their own dignity - they who had been denied an education because of their poverty, they who had been kicked out of their homes by their parents, they who had been orphaned, they who the world left behind.

Sister Giuseppina died in 1924 at the age of sixty one. Her last words were "Yes! Thank you!" That picture of Blessed Giuseppina Nicoli is probably one of my favorites of any Daughter of Charity in the cornette. She is so full of joy and energy in the picture - as if the photographer caught her at the end of a laugh. And when you think about all she was doing at the time of that picture - working with kids at the orphanage or school or working with the street kids - it really is amazing that she had all that joy and energy. Here's a pearl of wisdom she left us:

Joy is a great remedy. I recommend it to you and I do so very enthusiastically...! Be joyful! I say it again 'be joyful'! When we are joyful, we are less aware of evil and are cured more quickly. Cast all your cares on God; He is the best of fathers and will look after you as well as possible. (Blessed Giuseppina Nicoli)

Yet Another Daughter of Charity Feast Day!

It seems like every month, there is at least one Daughter of Charity feast day. In November, we have three in a row!

Today's feast day is for Blessed Marie Anne Vaillot and Blessed Odile Baumgarten, two martyrs of the French Revolution, part of a group known as the "Martyrs of Angers" (a town in France). Another martyr of the French Revolution, also a Daughter of Charity, Marguerite Rutan, was beatified less than a year ago.

You can find a great homily about these two martyred Sisters here by Fr Richard McCullen, one of our former Superior Generals.

How blessed am I to belong to a community with so many saints!

(Picture from the Daughters of Charity Australia website)