By Sister Genevieve Sachhse, OSB

One of the legends passed down in our community which I recall having heard several times through the years is the story of two of our sisters who were teaching in a small school in a southern Alabama town. One of the chores in their weekly routine was that necessary trip to the local supermarket. On this particular occasion, the younger of the two, about twenty-two and quite pretty, was stopped by a middle-aged woman.

The woman quickly identified herself as having seen the two sisters every week. She and her husband were convinced that the young sister was a prisoner of the rather wrinkled older sister because of the strange stories and/or movies they had seen about nuns. In an amazing act of Christian charity the woman explained that her husband was detaining the older sister in conversation at the meat counter and she would help the younger sister escape; her car was waiting just outside containing a complete set of clothes even a wig, since she “knew” sisters had their heads shaved so they couldn’t escape. (By the way, just for the record since I still am asked the question, we did not have to shave our heads although some cut their hair quite short for ease and comfort!)

The sister had quite a difficult time convincing the woman that she was a nun because she chose to be, that she really loved her form of life, and that it was a lot easier to get out than to get in or stay in the convent. Tales of medieval abuses die hard; moreover, because a vocation to the religious life is basically a supernatural mystery, many decide it must be a false and distorted form of life simply because they themselves cannot understand it.

I remember my first Thanksgiving in the convent as I knelt in chapel and let the events of the day seep back and forth through my consciousness. I was overcome by emotion and wept a contradictory mixture of tears of homesickness, awe and humility at the privilege of being a postulant in the community I loved, and somewhat hysterical laughter as I noticed almost as if for the first time how funny my legs looked in those heavy black cotton hose and “nun” oxfords which emerged from the mid-length black skirt.

Strangely enough that total sensation registered with me, and from then on to see those black hose became for me an immediate thanksgiving and I would be swept with that same awesome gratitude and wonder at the marvel of having been given the call to religious life, which even I could not fully understand.

It is easy enough to catalog a list of things and persons for which we are grateful, and this is well and good. But it is far more difficult to verbalize thanksgiving for the gift of being who one is, of having been created and called by God so that specific role in life which He has destined for each of us.

This kind of gratitude celebrates not just those days when prayer comes easily or the work is pleasant, but it also rejoices in one’s nothingness before the student who cannot be reached or the terminal patient whose agony cannot really be alleviated.

To be truly thankful for one’s being is to be filled with the virtue of religion – which is giving to God the worship due Him. It is upon this virtue that the whole mystery of religious life is based.