We are called to be Brides of Christ first and foremost and then we take that love
that we have for the Lord and we share it with all of those that we serve. We are spiritual mothers and this is the charism of Saint Cecilia to be a Bride of Christ, to be a spiritual mother and to be willing to sacrifice our whole lives to lay our lives down on the altar as we do at profession and say "Lord I'm yours." "Take all of me, take all of my life." When I started discerning I was a sophomore in college
living in my dream city doing everything that I thought was my dream. So on paper, I looked like I was very happy, but in my heart I felt like there
was something more that I desired but I couldn't put my finger on it. So after I came to the motherhouse and I met the sisters and I
lived the life a little bit- with them I realized oh my
goodness like this is so beautiful! I want to be a part of this! But hold on can I leave behind
what I thought was my dream? I thought marriage was so beautiful and so good and how could God ask me to give that up for Him. I had a conversation with my mom and my mom gave me the best
advice I've ever received. And she said "You know what, just stop discerning and just fall in love with Jesus." So I started making those holy hours every day and someone gave me good advice to just be before the Lord in the
Blessed Sacrament in particular to just pay attention to the
words of Christ in the Gospels. And time and again His words
were this call to totality, this question "Could could
you give Me everything?" More and more I knew that it was this invitation to give myself to Him totally in consecrated life and I knew that I didn't want to
say no to such a beautiful offer. Our day begins, the first thing we do is go
into the chapel in the morning for meditation and then Lauds and Mass and just receive this grace and the
love from the Lord that He has for us that we need for our daily life and then we spend the day
giving his love to others. In our work, in the apostolate, in direct teaching we're evangelizing. We're seeking to open the students minds to receive the gifts that God has given them. of knowing and choosing of their intellect and their will but also striving to develop in
them a relationship with Christ. I see the goodness of the children and how much they love Atrium. It's purely just helping that child to develop a relationship with Jesus that's the that's the purpose of Atrium. A reading from the Holy Gospel according to John. Glory to you O Lord... I just see our sisters taking their students to times of prayer, to adoration teaching them how to pray and some of them would be, you know, standing up, with their hands folded, some of them would be kneeling down they would be in every posture- it was so beautiful to see the freedom they had to use their bodies in
prayer as they were inspired. Our Christian Life, our life as religious, our life as faithful, is simple... God is love and we just need to allow ourselves to let Him to love us. When I first visited, I noticed that with each sister that there is this genuineness. I saw that each sister had
this deep and radiant joy and that it was expressed
differently by each sister. I see that this life works, you know that sisters have lived it for over 150 years and has produced many saints and that will continue to to inspire
women to be saints for the Lord. It really gave me the desire "I
want what those sisters have." The joy is almost genetic, in a sense, from Saint Dominic, our founder. That was one quality that
people found in him was joy and joy is contagious! So if you have 300 other
women that are living with you that are joyful you can't help but catch on to it. Religious life is is very
much like a family, right, and the smooth running of a family. I can't live this life without my sisters. I think we learn from one another and there is this great gift that
we have of being united in the Lord. He is the source of our community life. He is the source of our our unity and we all have our eyes on that same goal. So ultimately we're here
because the Lord has called us. The heart of our community life,
is that call to go together to be witnesses to Jesus. An ordered life brings peace and so all of the things we do that seem so little and can look so insignificant are important because
they're done with great love. Whether we're working in
the kitchen or we're serving all of us, because we're consecrated, they're all acts of worship to the Lord. Our world is so busy and the grace and the gift of the
monastic structure of our life is it provides times for silence. Silence has the ability actually
to pull together a fragmented life. Silence affords us a special
time apart with the Lord to cultivate our relationship with Him and to be open to the whisperings of the Spirit that sometimes speaks in
the silence of our hearts. Everything in our life is sustained
by relationship with our Lord Jesus and so coming to Him every day and relying upon His grace is what
fuels the rest of our activities. So our life needs to be one of constant prayer. One of the mottos of the Dominican Order is: "To contemplate and to give to
others the fruits of contemplation." This was one of the things
that drew me to the order. "To contemplate" is to fix our eyes on the Lord and encounter His love for us. We give to others, not just
the things that we've learned, but the Person that we have encountered. People are hungry for Jesus there's a longing to get to know Him. Saint Dominic was a man on fire with the gospel who traveled the world to set the world ablaze with truth with love of God. For many of us, that that
happens right here, at home or on the missions abroad in Australia, in the Netherlands, Ireland and Scotland and Italy and Canada. So the Lord is inviting us now, today to be renewed in faith and hope and zeal. We know God is faithful. So God is raising up young men and women to answer the call to meet the needs of his children right now, today. The winter of 1999 Pope John Paul II came to St. Louis.
The pope was speaking to the youth and at one point he said "if you are feeling called to
religious life or the priesthood do not be afraid and do not put it off" and I felt like there was an arrow
coming straight from his mouth right into my heart saying "That's You. I'm speaking to you." And when I got here it was like I felt like I was home. I was like this is what my
heart has been made for: the prayer life, the community life,
the life of service, the teaching all of this, all these little pieces oh my goodness my heart has been made for this. I always tell people I can't
imagine being anywhere else or doing anything else. I feel like He made me for Himself and I'm so grateful He gave
me the grace to say yes. Are you resolved with the help of God's grace to undertake that life of perfect
chastity, obedience, and poverty which Christ Our Lord and His Virgin Mother chose for themselves to persevere in it forever. Through His total self gift on the cross Jesus wed himself to His bride the Church and through our vows we have the opportunity to make a total self gift of our life by offering it back to God. Our life is really a gift. It's not something that we earn or it's not something that we're worthy of It's something that the Lord has made us for. The vows lead us to love. If we had to define holiness, we might say that holiness is union with Christ, and charity and the vows- their very purpose is to lead us to be in Union with Christ in love. The love of Christ that impels
us to live our vow of chastity it's that same love of Christ that
allows us to leave all for his sake and that same love that unites
us to the Father's will. The call to consecrated life is a
radical following of Jesus Christ. All people are called to follow Him but as consecrated women we're able to do so with an undivided heart. We're able to follow Him more freely because I've given my whole self to Him and to no one else and it really is an adventure like no other.
