Drawn to comtemplative life

Pair make final vows as Precious Blood nuns

By LASHA MORNINGSTAR
WCR News Editor
Edmonton

As the door closes, it feels as though the outside world is being shut out, barred, from this world of prayer.

Sister Resurrecion laughs when she hears these feelings and impressions.

"Being in the outside world does not matter to us. We are responsible for the world through our prayer life."

Sisters Adorers of the Precious Blood convent sits almost unseen to the unfamiliar eye on a busy west end Edmonton street. Once home to 52 nuns, the contemplative members now number 12.

So it is understandable that when two of their nuns took their final vows Dec. 27 it was cause for celebration. Both are from the Philippines and a new postulant comes from El Salvador.

Why are there no new religious from North America?

"They (North Americans) are so materialistic," says vocation director, Sister Margaret Mary. "This is a new world."

Add the fact the government has taken over the hospitals, so gone are the once-familiar nursing sisters, plus most sisters have shed their habits. So the vocation of nun is almost invisible to the unknowing eye.

The Sisters of the Precious Blood was founded in St. Hyacinthe, Que., in 1861. They remained absolutely cloistered until the 1960s when Vatican II rulings allowed more flexibility.

And now it is the spiritual home of Sister Resurrecion. She knew at 15 she wanted to be a nun and entered a Dominican convent in her Philippine homeland. But she was 15, the eldest girl in a family of nine and her parents wanted her help in supporting her brothers and sisters. As a minor, she needed parental consent. So home she went.

"Everything is here for me. . . . You leave your life in the hand of God and live life one day at a time." - Sr. Resurrecion

She went on to study education at university. And on graduation, she entered an active order of the Dominicans. But after two years, she came down with a puzzling, flu-like illness. She left, returned to her family and resumed teaching.

Did she have boyfriends then? Sister Resurrecion bursts into laughter. "Of course. But my vocation was my first love and I could still feel an emptiness within."

After three years, she re-entered convent life and stayed for six years. By this time, her parents supported her call and encouraged her return to the convent.

Then news came that both of her parents were ill, her father felled by colon cancer.

The postulant nun returned home to help with her family.

Several years later, while attending a relative's funeral, a visiting Edmonton religious, on hearing Sister Mary Margaret's name and address, told her to write to her.

An invitation was extended and Sister Resurrecion arrived in Edmonton November 1997 "to see the life." And she stayed.

The other sister to take her final vows is Sister Teodosia who joined the convent at the same time as Sister Resurrecion.

She knew from the tender age of seven that she wanted to be a nun and she and her mother would walk 30 minutes each day to attend Mass. The second youngest in the family went to college to become a teacher. Her eldest sister supported her as she went through college. She joined the Legion of Mary, "but still something was missing in my life."

She had male admirers, one of them an ardent military man.

Still, the religious yearning was there and she entered a Dominican convent. But the sister who supported her through university lost her job and the convent gave her a dispensation to leave and work to support her family.

"God will understand if I leave," she told herself.

Like Sister Resurrecion, she went to and from between the secular and outside worlds until she came through the Precious Blood door in Edmonton.

"It was like coming home."

The sisters' days are rooted in prayer and meditation. Tasks such as work assignments, answering letters are woven around the core of worship.

The sisters leave the convent only for things such as doctors' appointments.

But is that enough? Aren't you lonely? Don't you miss having a husband and perhaps a family to love?

"No. Everything is here for me. The contemplative life is so hard to explain unless you experience it," muses Sister Resurrecion. "You leave your life in the hand of God and live life one day at a time."

Sustained by donations and gifts from benefactors, the cloister invites searching women to live among them to see if this is their calling.

"The strength is in the individual," says Sister Mary Margaret. "If this isn't their place to be and they stayed, it would destroy them and the community."

A smile lightens her face as she says, "God has to pull them through the door."

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