When I first started considering religious life, I googled: “How do you become a hermit?”
I have always wanted to do things “all the way,” to a hundred percent; if I’m in I’m all in, and with religious life I assumed that “all in” would mean total isolation. My next interest was the Carthusians, who live most of their lives in strict separation and silence; the fact that there are no English-speaking Carthusian convents, however, put a damper on things, so I moved on to the websites of other cloistered nuns – Norbertines, Benedictines, Cistercians, Poor Clares, Dominicans, Carmelites, all of them wrapped in heavy habits and a deeply prayerful joy.
I did want to be open to all possibilities, though, and my longstanding love for St. Francis began to draw me towards an active apostolate. The more I examined my heart, the less sure I was that cloistered life was the only option. “But would that be radical enough?” I asked myself – “could I really be giving everything if I’m not physically cut off from the world?”
Eventually, I made a discernment visit to a cloistered community, and it to my own surprise I realized I did not have peace when I imagined myself on the other side of the grate. One moment from that retreat particularly struck me: when the retreatants filed into the public section of the chapel for morning prayer, while the nuns remained on their side of the enclosure, and then the door behind us creaked behind us and a man came in. Maybe he was homeless, maybe he was just poor, but I immediately thought of the muffins that had been set out for breakfast and how I wished I could give him one.
And as I reflected upon that moment, I realized that these nuns behind their grille couldn’t help this man in the way I wanted to. Beautiful as their calling is, preciously and uniquely as they carry on the work of Christ by their unceasing ministry of prayer, I wanted something else. I wanted to greet the man, to interact with him.
I wanted to give the man a muffin.
And as I continued to discern, I realized that what I want to give the world does not involve a grate between me and it. Deep as the desire for solitude and silence runs, there is also a deep desire to be a face to people’s faces; to meet them where they are, in their daily lives, and give them so much more than a muffin. I want to give them Christ: Christ through prayer, yes, but Christ also through the common things of normal human lives. Christ on the street, Christ in the home, Christ in the workplace, Christ in the school.
When I met the Little Friars and Little Nuns of Jesus and Mary, I realized that I had found what I was looking for: a real prioritization of prayer and silence combined with poverty and evangelization in the spirit of St. Francis – going out with nothing, as Jesus sends His disciples, to meet people where they are and bring them closer to the fullness of relationship with Jesus, the life of sacramental communion with Christ and the effort to imitate Him.
While I am not physically separated from the world by a wall, I am called every day to the difficult separation from my own fallen attachments, preferences, and merely human desires; what I need to be divided from is not without, but within. I am increasingly finding that the attempt to live the Gospel to 100% – in community life, in personal prayer, in active evangelization – is precisely the kind of radicality that Jesus called His first disciples to.
And that’s just the kind of “all in” that I’ve always been looking for!
Sr. EMJ