It is not uncommon for us to be asked, “So, when do you go visit your real family?” It doesn’t seem quite “natural” to not be with one’s blood family in some way and on top of that if the idea of religious life is a nebulous, incomprehensible one, it makes it ever harder to understand.
Why would young women who “have their whole lives ahead of them” give it all up to enter a religious community? The purpose of this reflection is not to answer this question. However, what “family” means to us now flows out from the larger context of a vocation to the religious life. This calling is most definitely a gift and a grace. Oftentimes unexpected. God calls and one is given the choice to respond. Our “yes” then converges with others who have similarly said “yes”. We are then called to live a particular way of life in a specific religious community, with certain other sisters He has also called, to carry out the mission He has entrusted to us. These are the people with whom we live and work, every day of every week of every month of every year, until He calls us home. How much closer than that can you get?!?
We sisters have diverse educational/professional back-grounds, our ages range from the 20s to the 90s. We come from all parts of the world, our personalities, life perspectives, our interests and our family backgrounds are all different. Yet, the closeness we feel is hard to put into words. We are truly one united family and these roots are deep.
It’s a journey for every postulant who enters the doors of Carmel. God called and that’s why she’s there. The fact is, she doesn’t know anyone yet. But day by day, as she learns to live our way of life and gets to know each co-postulant and novice and experiences life in Carmel, she grows in her own sense of belonging. After she professes her first vows, she becomes a professed sister and lives with others (who are new to her) and embarks on her first year of serving in one of our apostolates. As she works to integrate what she has learned in the Novitiate, she learns also from the sisters with whom she lives. In getting to know and love these sisters through the ups and downs of life’s journey, there is a closeness that grows through those joys and sufferings. Oftentimes our strongest bonds are forged through struggles – be it with each other, within the apostolate, with our health, etc. As she moves through her years of temporary vows, the roots grow deeper and there is a growing conviction that the good Lord is indeed calling her to profess her vows of chastity, poverty and obedience within the context of this religious family. At her final profession ceremony, when the Superior General announces that the sister is now a “LIFE-LONG MEMBER OF THE CARMELITE SISTERS OF THE MOST SACRED HEART OF LOS ANGELES” the joy that we all feel and the energy in our THANKS BE TO GOD could probably raise the roof off the ceiling of the Chapel.
What does it mean to be a life-long member of this religious family? It means that we strive to know and love each other as we are. Not as we think we should be, not as we hope we would be, but simply as we are. With our strengths, weaknesses, joys, struggles, idiosyncrasies, personalities, etc. This means that we will most definitely run into each other, have inter-personal struggles, struggles with the generational differences, struggles with our personality differences and the ups and downs of our emotions. It would not be human if we didn’t have all these things. Yet, through it all, we show up, we engage and we strive to be faithful to God, to the way of life He has called us to, to each other, to our commitment of service. It’s the real thing. It’s what happens in the context of our “real family”.
There is truly great joy when we see each other. In fact, the communal spirit is so strong that we come together as often as we can simply because we enjoy being with each other. There is an ability to pray together, work together, cry together, sing together, be joyful together, party together, mourn together, struggle together. If life is lived in this manner, how can there not be deep bonds of unity and a family spirit that permeates it all?
And at the end, when the postulant has professed, persevered through all of life and enters into her final stages, we are there together. We sisters accompany our elders on their most important transition – from this life to the next. We have 71 sisters who have died. We remember them in our thoughts and prayers and their memories are very much alive and we feel their accompaniment. Not even death itself separates us.
These thoughts feel inadequate in articulating the family spirit that is such an integral part of who we are as Carmelite Sisters of the Most Sacred Heart of Los Angeles. May these few words lead you to a deeper appreciation of your own families and the gift religious life is to the Church.
