Hidden: A Life All for God

[Music] [Music] [Music] it is 3 o'clock in the morning and the sisters of the order of the Cistercians of the strict observance or Travis teens as they are commonly called are beginning their day a rhythm of life rooted in prayer reading and studying Sacred Scripture Lexi o Divina as it is called and work all of it steeped in a deep contemplative tradition of silence and solitude these Trappist een sisters live their lives in obscurity hidden from the world in a life that is as mysterious as it is genuine and all for only one reason God [Music] the monastic rule of Saint Benedict dating back to the fifth century is the foundation of life at Mount Saint Mary's Abbey located about 40 miles southwest of Boston life here is a continual prayer whether meditating and praying in church spending time in Lexi o Divina in the quiet early morning hours of the day or working in their state-of-the-art high-tech candy factory everything is centered on fostering a deep personal relationship with Jesus Christ this really is a way of having nothing in the world but God there is the sense that this is where this is where I can find God this is where I can grow towards him he's my companion I mean it's not that I see him he's always with me it's in my heart he's in he's in my sisters he's in what happens God would be the one in my life someone names the one reality before all other day and today night on tonight season after season life for the Trappist teens is disciplined and yet remarkably routine all of it filled with an extraordinary Wonder and awe of God ever-present part of the air they breathe a divine presence which is unmistakable and permanent life in this cloistered monastery is all about preferring nothing but Jesus Christ living in what the sisters call a school of mutual love trying to find Christ in every moment of every day so it's not like as if you're living up in the sky but it does have a magic to it I mean it is a little bit of heaven it is truly and I think that it really makes you realize more and more that there is such a place as heaven because it has begun a little bit here and now when you followed the cold you believe you have to be happy whether you're single or married or religious or consecrated life because that's that's what you're made for I come from being independent an achiever and to a place where a lot of those things have to be let go so that I can become white not somebody who does but somebody who just is and that transition is is hard [Music] but the balance comes when I ask myself why did you come it's him what do you seek it's him why'd you stay I can't live without him sister Francesca what do you seek oh god you are my god for you I long for you my soul is thirsting after more than a half-dozen years of formation here at Mount Saint Mary's sister Francesca Maria Molino is making her solemn profession this is the day she takes what are called her final vows to enter fully into the community today marks a culmination of one thing yes I will follow you and love you all the days of my life my heart is ready Oh God my heart is ready the desire to be with God they would be on the no other reason to leave everything to leave your family to leave a good job I had everything I could want I I lacked nothing and yet it wasn't enough I wanted to know God to really know God to really dedicate all my energy to that and how how to do that and then God provided me with provided me with this vocation you have to give up these things you get attached to just to go into unknown spaces where God is and that's probably the hardest will you strive constantly for perfect love of God and neighbor by zealously following the Gospels and the rule of Our Fathers Saint Benedict has lived in this community but I know that even being here that I'm serving the great needs of the world in a very hidden but but that is my vocation and I didn't choose it I know that for sure it wasn't that I decided to enter a monastery it was that God asked this of me our God offered it to me and I just said yes it's a life that's 100 percent community and 100 percent solitude not fifty-fifty as you grow in it you realize that the heart of community and the heart of a true solitude is communion with others as if God was asking this of me and God had a plan for how I could serve the world and to know him more closely who was I to say I have a better plan thank you very much I'll try something else will you by the grace of the Holy Spirit live for God alone in solitude and silence and spend your life with your sisters persevering in prayer and generous service I will you can have a profound communion with others in the silence because the silence is about communion with God where you're meeting Jesus alone and you're meeting Jesus in others and but it's always meeting him and being with him may God who has begun this good work in you bring it to fulfillment in the day of Christ Jesus living a monastic life requires balance finding God throughout the day whether it is during prayer study or work here at Mount st. Mary's the sisters support themselves by making candy Trappist een quality candy is sold all over the world this is a state-of-the-art highly regulated facility here the sisters change out of their habits into work clothing designed to maintain the plants sterile environment the mission of finding God in all things and sharing in the divine work of creation is the foundation of their labor I believe very strongly that this job that I've been given is my way of living out the vows that I made to God and to the community to serve the community to serve God to serve the people of the world to and the more difficult it is to do that the more it goes against the grain somehow or the more it just seems impossible the more it's God's Way of leading me forward and God's Way of teaching me to lean on him which is really placing myself in God's hands and so I trust and I believe that he has his hand in all of it and in order for the life to really work there has to be a balance so that is you can't pray too much and not work is its measured so that the whole day is balanced but after a while the life becomes a whole I mean at the beginning here when you come to the like our life you know you can't wait to get finished so that you can come into church and pray but after a while your prayer sleeps and you know it to your work and to everything else so that after a while it's up you know like a seamless garment and oh yeah I think that the balance between work and prayer is something I'll be learning more about in the years to come because the longer you're here the more responsibilities you assume I'm always very edified by the way some sisters managed to balance huge responsibilities and their prayer life very effortlessly I have a feeling that's going to be a learning curve for me because I'm a very big accomplished letting things go or not doing that one more thing that I could do is extremely challenging for me for me fitting together prayer and work is is a huge issue in my life and an area where there is no little conflict and difficulty especially now I think up until now I wouldn't say that I found a harmony and a balance to my satisfaction it pushes the envelope and it makes me realize that if I want to be a person of prayer and if I want to grow in this continual awareness of God's presence which is our core then I really need to work for more than 60 years candy-making has been the main source of income for the sisters they came here from Ireland in 1949 back then the community relied on bread banking and a herd of dairy cows for the income they needed that changed in the mid 1950s when the sisters terminated the bread industry and added the candy business to the herd of dairy cows four American sisters were among the sisters sent from the abbey of Glencairn who established the foundation at Mount Saint Mary's which became the first monastery of Travis teen sisters in the United States sister Carol pull ahem is the only founder still living I'm 91 I'll soon be 92 sister Carol remembers clearly back then the sisters knew nothing about making candy candy we had dear friend Joseph Kranz man who first helped herself it was his candy Department and we had any helping us make Carl's we had no machinery we just wrapped them by hands but we managed to make it and then we expanded and then we got very big now in the autumn of her life sister Carol still finds meaning in the silence and solitude of the monastery well first of all you have an attraction to God and even an intimate relationship with him you wouldn't be paired from us for any reason whatever you that's your life [Music] life here at the Abbey is a simple one seven times during the day the sisters gathered together to pray [Music] vigils begins at 3:20 every morning then in what is called the great silence the sisters bask in the quiet and devote an hour or more to prayer and Alexio Divina every day includes the celebration of mass to be a little bit more free on this and to enter and to link the whole phrase together VDC say just try that little phrase together sitting down singing practices are frequent will stand up by the laws here we go nothing coming from this have you resigned or what here we go once a month the sisters joyfully work with their giant master father Gabriel a Trappist monk from st. Joseph's Abbey in nearby Spencer Massachusetts [Music] okay now two things two things number one the ten you rushing oh sure and throughout each day the sisters steady rhythm of life continues [Music] [Music] I know how much you have been enjoying hearing each one's vocations story and so today we're going to hear from one of our newest members Jennifer good afternoon everyone so when I was in the fourth grade and at that point I met a religious sister for the first time in my life and she was a Dominican and within the first few weeks of school I went home and said to my mother I want to be a sister like sister Anthony and she was sort of like who are you you can't be my child because we are not that type of family okay and so it's like yes I'm not sure what I'm going to do but I want to do something big and important for God I have long desired to know God more deeply and more fully and it's in Ephesians to know the love of Christ which is beyond understanding and I've sort of been holding that with me for many months now to know more deeply the love of Christ that is beyond understanding and I was like I want to be a trap Steve I'm like this is it and my parents were like you definitely have gone crazy why are you like like stay in school Jennifer the end of their day arrives in the early evening and is marked by the final period of prayer called complan which starts at 7:05 [Music] then off to bed and some seven hours later another day of prayer Lexi Oh Davina and work will begin each sister sleeps in a small room called a cell it is austere and uncluttered only a crucifix hangs on the wall meals are shared together in the monasteries refectory while one sister may read sacred and inspired writings the community eats in silence the formation of the sisters is rigorous some come here and spend many years discerning whether God might be calling them to this Cistercian vocation instead of interrupting and filling in the spaces to be comfortable with what seems like gods silence and wait for him to say to us what he really wants to say because the silences is a big part of the conversation it's learning to listen until the true words come up these young women are in the early stages of formation they are learning about the demanding discipline involved in fully embracing the silence and solitude sister Katie McNamara is the director of vocations it was very clear to me that God was calling me and it came from deep inside my heart and there was no way that I could say no I have believed from the very start as a very young woman that I have been called by the greatest lover the world has ever known into the greatest love affair that has ever existed and that once you've fallen in love with God there's no way that you can't follow I cannot imagine living any other way except this life here it holds everything for me that I have always wanted I think I had always been looking for it but never really knew where to find it and when I stepped across the threshold here of this Abbey 25 years ago I knew that this is home and that this is where I belong the Trappist Dean's at Mount Saint Mary's are an international community many of the journeys ending up here began in many different parts of the world I was born in England and I grew up in Wales I come from a small town in Bavaria originally Scotland born and raised until I was 13 years old I was in Brazil Sao Paulo so from Australia I come from Queensland but they all ended up here knowing one thing for certain it was God who called them to this life in recalling how God touched their lives so deeply and so visibly the sisters are thoughtful and reflective slow to speak what is etched so deeply in their hearts you know all of the sisters have very little in common except that they've all been called to live this life but that's so huge that we've all agreed that we will come here and do our best to put aside everything that does not lead to God and to help each other to do that it's not really something you can do alone I'm originally from Wisconsin I'm a fairly recent convert to the Catholic faith so I had very little religious instruction growing up you would say I didn't know about prayer I didn't know about Scripture I never went to church I wasn't baptized all all the rest of that I don't know where it came from but I always had a deep conviction that there was another world other than this one that I couldn't see and that there were people there waiting for me and that I had to figure out how to get there I don't know where that came from nobody ever would have said anything like that to me but I had a clear sense of something existing beyond what was in front of my face beyond what I could see and as I grew up that clarified for me a little bit more into not just a world but but a person I think you I was around seventeen when I became aware of a very distinct presence in my life that I would call a personal presence not just a general but a personal and unloving presence all I can say is that I knew I knew very much that I was loved by someone infinitely lovable and although I wouldn't have used the word God because I didn't grow up with that word I knew that my life needed to be about finding out about that person and I always promised myself that if I ever did find out more about that person that I would give up everything to to be with him I didn't envision I did not envisage this when I was thinking about that but for me it was all I was always kind of an all-or-nothing proposition that this was the most important thing in my heart and that if I could ever find expression for that if I could ever find a place where other people knew about that and could help me find this person that that would be the place where I should be and that turned into a monastic vocation [Music] I grew up in Virginia I grew up with my younger brother and younger sister mom and dad we were very we're still very tight-knit close family I think the seed was planted quite young in me at a Sunday Mass I was maybe 12 or 13 a woman got up at the end of Mass and said we're looking for new volunteers we had this organization in our parish and we get together once a week and we pray and there's also a component of service and the members also pray the rosary every day and my heart was so drawn to that and I there was something in me even at that age where I really wanted to pray more going to Mass wasn't enough going to daily Mass wasn't enough going to daily Mass and prayer after mass after work was not enough I just needed more and I know that God has called me here and I could live I could get another job I could find great housemates again and but it wouldn't be enough it wouldn't be enough I am a Jewish convert we were a conservative Jewish family I mean we had a kosher home I went to Hebrew school but by the time I was a sophomore in college it was all put aside I mean I wanted nothing to do with it I was experiencing intense spiritual hunger and I used to walk around and these wordless melodies would come up from my depths like lamentations I mean I was I was crying to God and I didn't know him and I was starving my soul was starving I was starving for the Eucharist of course I didn't know it back then but I mean it was God's mercy that really you know did it I didn't know what was happening it was only in hindsight that I that I could see but that was that was where he pulled me it was it was an inner hunger my vocation really begins at the beginning of my life I have to say I don't remember a time when I didn't have a sense of God have some desire for God and while I was in college it was the beginning of my sophomore year that I first explicitly had a sense of call to the religious life it happened after a period of of searching questioning finding my identity as an adult living separately from my parents having the opportunity for the first time to practice my faith of my own volition as it were and coming to realize that my desire for God was a very significant part of my life and so literally one day taking a walk it pops into my head why not be a nun and what that meant for me at that time really when I looked into it was to be consecrated to God to belong to God that was what I desired when I was a very young nun I entered at 19 and deep within me I felt he may have been calling me to a contemplatively but I loved my order and I loved teaching so I sort of put it on the back burner and then I went to teach in northwestern Australia there with the aboriginals people and they were just it was just heavenly they were so simple and I remember it so clearly I remember saying to God as I walked across the grass and the heat very very hot I said to God I'm just so happy it was just a beautiful school beautiful situation and I heard deep within my heart but you haven't given me everything yet so I knew that was the time that I had to be honest with myself and with someone else and speak about it to someone else to get guidance and that's when the journey towards the contemplative life started I was discerning what would lie life look like if God did rule in me [Music] and the answer that gradually came to me was amazing I would know that God is said God lives because he would stand with all the power of his mind and goodness in my soul and I would experience him as the holy one love would fulfill its divine destiny between God and me alone and yet include all mankind this was for me a very fundamental thought that would lead me towards a search of God and deeper spiritual growth and brought me finally in touch with a monastic life but I loved the silence and the peace and it was so beautiful then I had an experience of God and that was really when I got the book my vocation I mean I hadn't visited any religious orders or anything but the experience was that him God was love God existed and God was real if I had wings I would have flown away I mean I felt so light and like I said it was a new day and and everything seemed to change right after college I needed something else I was very active in my church my parish but it wasn't enough I wanted to give more of my life not necessarily religious life either I just wanted more of me to him but I came and I thought this is nice but you wouldn't be really calling me to this this is not my background this is this is not it because I was from the charismatic renewal background jump dance put your hands up in the air and that kind of thing but three years into the search and visiting different communities I couldn't get the place out of my mind the image of our outdoor the sisters everything just came and it was steady but when that image of that altar came it was something from in out it was it was more than I could resist so I had to say yes and take a step forward I had a very distinct sense that this was the place that Jesus was calling me to it happened I wouldn't say the moment I walked across the threshold a monastic spirituality certain aspects touched me in particular but one one most of all really and that was as our constitutions put it only if the sisters prefer nothing whatever to Christ will they be happy to persevere in a life that is ordinary obscure and laborious and I knew when I heard that that I wanted nothing more than Christ and that this was a place where I could pursue that with others who were similarly oriented Cistercian spirituality demands the sisters take time to pray and also take time to work our life is geared to finding God in every aspect of our life but God just reveals himself in a setting like this balance is the key to making it all work together our younger sisters find it very valuable to do strenuous work and to interact with living things you know I don't see working prayer as two very different things for me it's like a many-faceted diamond and so the Sun shines on maybe working in the infirmary maybe working in the business office maybe private prayer maybe serving someone basically when I serve others I feel closer to God in prayer so when serving when call to even do the dishes quietly that to me is being with Jesus and that's to me is what prayer is about it's like a one beautiful diamond that the Sun shines all over the place I do find more and more that I don't feel work is as separate from prayer as I did when I first came here but I think work is a very important grounding influence for me I like that we do manual labor I like that we do things with our hands you do something you can feel and touch and see Kandee work is is primary the the work that we do but so mornings usually I do Candi work and then in the afternoon it varies I do grounds with sister Jane I work with a sheep once a week once or twice a week and I have what's called a compost of charge which I take care of all the buckets with all the leftover food and and in the compost our work is often very quiet and so and simple manual very repetitive types of work I very much just frees your mind to be able to think about God just to really be present if I am coding munch am I really present or am I thinking about what I'm gonna do when candy work is over or this afternoon or tonight or what I need to do later do you know am I really in this moment and one of the beautiful things about silence at work is really being able to remember I am here to be with God and is that what I'm doing in this moment or am I thinking about everything else besides what would I am doing work and prayer aren't separated just because I'm working doesn't mean I'm not so attentive to God or why I'm in the monastery or attentive to my vocation I'm a workaholic I love to work so again the transition between working out in the world and working here is very different I liked 9 10-hour shifts because I could get a lot done here it's two to two and a half hour shifts and if you're not done at the bell ring you've got to go so work becomes a way to prayer so sometimes I need it because of the physical activity and that helps the mind but sometimes it just creates an environment that I can just have a conversation with God my favorite job is the compost charge there's nothing to it that will distract me from trying to pray and to have that conversation with God and even if a little bit of pride starts to sneak in all I have to do is take a big sniff thank you exactly where I am and go back to where I need to be I've been falling in love with the Psalms and so for me work especially because it's not a mind work it helps me to to memorize the Psalms and she just recite it the reality is that the call to love God in the cloister of the monastery means the Trappist teens will have limited contact with anyone beyond the boundaries of the abbey that is one of the most difficult parts of answering the call it was quite difficult and painful our family is quite tight-knit so to have this profound experience of God calling me to something that I really couldn't even put into words and then to try to explain that to my family when on some level all they could see was I'm leaving you know I'm leaving and there's going to be this great separation and I can't I can't talk to you whenever I want to I can't visit you whenever I want to I can't I mean it was quite painful it was quite painful I didn't know I'd be so lonely when I came loneliness has led me closer to Jesus because he's helping me in those moments so when anyone asks me why did you do it there's only one reason in my life and the reason is love it's why I entered at the beginning when I was young it's why I followed this vocation which I didn't realize would be quite as hard leaving my country as it was and remember my my mother was very upset because she said you're leaving your country your family the audio love for something you know nothing about and I said yes because I know the reason is love and the love of Jesus obviously and that's what's held me all the way along and the ups and downs the valleys and the mountains and the rivers that we've had to cross but he's the call love so that wherever I've been on the journey of life he's been waiting there even if I wonder a little bit he'll be there waiting to call me back and so that's the reason and that's why I'm here living a regimented life of silence and solitude is not easy confronting and embracing the silence is a significant challenge that was something that attracted me before I came it was also something that terrified me in some way when I was an observer I came for six weeks to live with the sisters before entering to have an experience of the life more intimately and during that time I was struck with a mortal terror solitude and silence and of and of the kind of integrity that that demands there is a real responsibility I mean there's a formation that comes but at that time it was a moment of fear and trembling and and just this deep down conviction that this is the way this is the way walk in it were formed not to be afraid to be silent together it's a solitude of the heart not of the body and and you carry it around with you all the time for me I love it I love it when I'm alone something happens inside your heart that you become almost true to yourself true to myself I love being hidden I want to be hidden in God's heart that's where I live that's where I want to be the sisters all confess that another reality of their life is confronting their own weaknesses and the ever-present duty to grow in virtue the toughest part is to see yourself so clearly to see to see everything in yourself that is not yet converted and that might not be for a long time if ever this this side of the grave to see that and to trust still that you are loved not just by God but by your sisters who see it too it's it's there for everyone to see to trust also in their mercy and their compassion going into those unknowns when God's will reveals itself is something different it's like jumping off a cliff you know and obedience is a really central thing where you we really believe in faith that your life is not your own the most difficult part is being called beyond my comfort zone in terms of interpersonal relationships which reveal which reveal that which in me is in the way which prevents me from loving my sisters as I should one of the most difficult things is just accepting yourself as you are before God and growing always growing growing can be difficult and seeing things in yourself that you'd rather not this is a life in which God is determined to make us like Jesus oh we want to live in peace together to give our life credibility and to really live it before God that God can make it a blessing for the world and he puts us in a community and with sisters who we would never choose and the the interactions and the happenings and the trials are all meant to fashion Christ in us my mom said a long time ago people are saying you you have escaped you know to a peaceful life and I said well it's not really an escape because we have this Val of stability and so you if you're not getting along with someone you can't get out of a situation you have to really work through it and she said you mean the sisters don't get a lot more people don't realize that it's your life and that you bring and everyone else brings their own unfinished selves and that we're willing to commit to each other to to grow and to allow other people to grow but that's very painful so it's a struggle the journey but at the heart of it is this tremendous groundedness in in christ the best part in this life is that we are called to prayer which the best part being hidden with God with all these wonderful other people who are all on the same journey who have God as their as a main focus of their life being invited to know Jesus Christ and to follow him and to become like him the best part I think would be the search for God but the search for God is very mysterious because it never turns out the way you planned cuz God is always full of surprises the best part is knowing that I belong to the one for whom I looked for so long I [Music] think what is most beautiful to me is is the morning the time between when we wake up at 3:00 and in-laws which begins at at 6:30 it's called the great silence and it is a very very great thing it is a very great silence and it's it's very real that it penetrates your heart that the longer you're here and I stay in church for about an hour and a half every morning just in the darkness just silently praying I couldn't live without that I'm not sure if I can tell you why inwards because sometimes it's very you know it's very beautiful and and sometimes it just feels like I'm just there and nothing terribly exciting is happening but regardless of how I feel about it on a deeper level it's feeding me and I could never I could never walk away from that you [Music] in the mysterious hidden life of the Trappist Dean's the reason they continued to cherish their life in the monastery is the reality of the divine love they know and experience so deeply [Music] in the quiet when as a community they pray and sing hymns of joy and Thanksgiving when they serve the sister as they live with [Music] break bread with [Music] and work with [Music] from the mundane routine of the compost pile to the garden pruning blueberries to stimulate the new still sleeping springtime growth to the barn shepherding the sheep from which their will will be used to make blankets theirs is a life of mission and purpose the purpose of our being here is to pray for the needs of the world and there is such great suffering and such great need and pain in the world and our response is just to embrace all of that and in our own struggles our own daily life in a very mysterious way we are separated and we are closer and yet I feel that I serve just as importantly or as just as powerfully as I did when I worked with the poor directly I'm here to intercede I'm here to pray for these people in need for for everyone I know that this is the mission and the ministry that God has given me there is a flight to God to the God who loved the world so much that He gave His only Son and I think the more we seek that God and the more we come to know that God the law we desire to embrace the world that he loves so much when Jesus says that the one who gives up everything will get it back a hundredfold he isn't just using a figure of speech it's a very real thing and the longer I'm here and the more I let go of the more I realized that you really do get it back in some way that's more beautiful than you could ever imagine but you have to let go first for a long time I really I was waiting for this certainty I think I had this time of great uncertainty was God still asking this of me or did he change his mind but now it now is it's quite clear it's quite clear to me into the community that God has called me here I had looked for this person for so long that when I finally found him and found that there was a place where I could give him everything it was almost a foregone conclusion I had been a seeker my whole life that once I had found what I was seeking it was an all-or-nothing thing it was this is you and and I love you and and I want to give you my life [Music] Oshin [Music] welcoming me [Music] show yourself our lover he will hear you're feeding your I shall turn Condor is hungry ceiling [Music] trend last of all virgins god I love be faithful keepers from [Music] gentle strong and greed [Music] [Laughter] [Music] I had to write a letter to us to enter and and I couldn't write that letter I couldn't put into words why it was that I wanted to come and the last thought was I can't live a long-distance relationship with you anymore meaning with God I want to end this I I don't want to go to Mass and then go to work and then go to visit a friend I want you at all times [Music] you

Channel: The CatholicTV Network

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Keywords: Catholic, Trappistine, nun, religious sister, Cistercians, God, Jesus, Holy Spirit, religious life, vocation, discernment, Wrentham, Massachusetts, faith, religion

Id: Ntt98rTky-g

Length: 58min 28sec (3508 seconds)

Published: Tue May 01 2018