By Fr. John Adamski

(Father Adamski asked Sister Genevieve Sachse to write this week’s column.)

Since this is my first time writing this column, let me introduce myself. I am a Benedictine Sister from Cullman, Alabama, working here in Georgia as a religious education coordinator at Our Lady of the Assumption parish. What am I doing writing this column? The last two years I served our community as the director of novices; that is, I worked with, lived with, prayed with, grew with the young women who are seeking to become Benedictines.

I am convinced that the role of a sister has a value and a message in the world today, and so I’m still involved and concerned with helping those who think they may have a religious vocation to come to some knowledge of themselves and what this religious vocation would mean for them.

As a member of a religious community, my approach may be a little different from that of either Father Hardy or Father Adamski, because they are diocesan priests. When they speak of the priesthood, they are dealing with a concept that is distinct from that of a life vowed to God in a convent or a monastery; although priests may be religious, most people are not aware of whether a man is a diocesan or a religious priest. I will leave the discussion of the essence of the priesthood to them and try to address myself to the essence of the religious vocation.

Many people have very hazy ideas about what nuns or brothers are all about, especially with all the changes in religious life styles, habits, and all the rest. Perhaps the best way I can share with you the present–day attitude toward “convent life” would be through the statement of philosophy which our sisters forged together in many sessions of writing and revision. It took some doing to arrive at a statement we could all be happy with because our vocation is too precious to us to be defined by just any phrase.

The philosophy is only one statement of a group of some 100 Benedictines who work here in the South, and we don’t claim that it is the only one or the best one, but it is our statement of where we are now and how we view our vocation. In later weeks I will take sections of this statement as a starting point and talk about the basic concepts of religious life which it encompasses.

“We believe that we were drawn into the mystery of Christ and have been led by the Spirit to praise and to glorify the Father by a vowed Christian life according to the Rule of St. Benedict. We feel called to a life of holiness, an intense personal relationship with Christ which demands a total giving of self to the Lord.

“Our life, centered on the belief that the Risen Lord is a person in our midst, is transformed by a continuous affirmation of God’s love for us. We profess an openness to the Spirit which leads us to fullness of life in Christ. This faith life in which we seek God is intensified and enlivened by silence and solitude, by communal prayer, and by supportive love of one another which culminates in the Eucharist.

“Our life in the Spirit of Jesus Christ overflows into a life of service: we are called to be holy, to witness joyfully to God’s presence and love, and to be a sign of contradiction to counteract the evils of our day. As Benedictine women we feel called to respond to the needs of the Church today–praying, promoting liturgical works, teaching, proclaiming God’s word, witnessing Community.

“We believe that God is here and can be found, and that a diversity of personas bonded into unity shows Christ to a divided world.”

The primary emphasis of the above statement is the recognition of the awesome fact that we have been “drawn”; we have been “called” by the Spirit of God to this particular kind of life.

We recognized that we have been drawn into a life that is a mystery to most people, that in the natural realm it doesn’t always make sense to them. But it is this very recognition of the mystery of what God has done among His people that impels us to concentrate ourselves to fulfilling the demands of Christianity in a public profession of our intent to develop an intense personal relationship to Christ. The initiative is on the part of God; the responsibility to respond is on the part of the Christian.

Every religious comes to understand her own call in her own special way. For most it is simply a driving intuition which says that this is what she must do; then one must find the reasons why, but often the reasons come after the recognition of the desire. Occasionally the call is understood after a special event, often a conversion experience following which one’s life changes direction.

But however the call is perceived, however the desire for religious life develops, the understanding of this mystery can only be plumbed slowly. The reason nuns stay in the convent is rarely the reason why they first entered. Just as a good marriage changes and deepens over the years, so does the perception of one’s vocation to the religious life. It demands the effort to completely give oneself to God–an effort never to be totally successful but an effort to be rewarded.

Sister Genevieve Sachse,

O.S.B.