We are pleased to present an excerpt from “Brides of Christ” from Sophia Institute Press by the Benedictine Sisters and Jamey Toner.
This is one of the most frequent questions that a cloistered nun hears from visitors to her monastery. Everyone recognizes that a nun lives apart from the world in order to give herself more completely and exclusively to God; all know that her day is devoted to prayer and penance. But what does that mean in concrete, everyday life? How does it look? Does she kneel in her cell all day, bathed in celestial light? Clad in her medieval-looking habit, does she ply the distaff and the spinning wheel? Does she do anything at all for fun?
The mystery of the cloister invites wonder and speculation, and our community offers a whimsical response in our little book, Brides of Christ. This book has its origins at a crucial moment in our community’s history: the foundation of our first daughterhouse. A few years ago, we found that we had outgrown our Abbey in Gower in northwest Missouri. In order to accommodate the ever-growing numbers of young women wishing to share our life, we were building makeshift cells with cardboard boxes in our unfinished basement. It was a vocation crisis, in the best sense of the word! Expansion was necessary. So Mother Abbess sent out seven Sisters in the spring of 2019 to bring the life of the Benedictines of Mary to Ava, a little town in the Ozark mountains of southern Missouri.
The sisterly bonds of affection between the Sisters at the motherhouse and the Sisters at the daughterhouse immediately sparked a lively correspondence, sharing and comparing the ups and downs of monastic life in the two houses. Several of the Sisters found that a picture was indeed worth a thousand words. This initiated an exchange of doodles that charmingly captured the beautiful, uplifting and often humorous events that fill a day in the cloister.
Meaningful as these drawings were among ourselves, we realized that they might have significance for people outside the monastery as well. Here at last was an answer to the perennial question, “What do you do in there all day?” With lyrical verses accompanying the drawings, the little book Brides of Christ offers a glimpse of our monastic life.
The story follows the progress of a young lady entering the monastery and passing through the stages of formation to become a nun. She begins as a postulant learning how to walk and speak like a nun, but more importantly how to pray and contemplate as a nun. She dons a wedding dress on the day of her investiture, which she then exchanges for the simple monastic habit and receives a new name as a bride of Christ. More lessons follow in sewing vestments, singing Gregorian chant and tending the gardens and farm animals. On the great day of her profession, she makes her vows to Christ, marking the culmination of her years of formation, but just the beginning of her life with Christ, which will find its ultimate fulfillment in Heaven.
Although this young Sister is a fictitious character, her experiences are quite true to life. As we flip through the pages of Brides of Christ, we Sisters recall many charming events from our history, such as the day the calf attempted to eat the postulant’s veil. Happily for both the postulant and the calf, the veil was rescued before the calf could ingest it!
Among the new candidates depicted in the book is one sporting a pair of wooden shoes, reminiscent of our reception of two young ladies, blood sisters, from Holland. The younger sister did indeed bring her wooden shoes, which she proudly continues to wear while performing chores at the barn.
The drawings of the wheelchair races recall fond memories of our dear foundress, Sister Wilhelmina. We remember the zeal with which she would hasten to the chapel for Holy Mass, reciting her own poem, “Run! Run! Run to Heaven fun!”
For those of us at the foundation in the Ozarks, Brides of Christ is a little visit to our motherhouse. The pictures of the grounds and gardens, the monastic church and the cloister are full of happy memories for us from our days at the Abbey, especially the ceremonies of investiture, when we received the religious habit and a new name, and of profession, when we sang our vows to the Lord and promised obedience to Mother Abbess. These pictures of our motherhouse also increase our anticipation for the permanent monastery that we are building for our foundation. God willing, next year we will have a new home for the Brides of Christ.
So what do we do all day? We seek union with Christ, our Bridegroom. Like any bride, we keep our Bridegroom company: as brides of Christ, we sing our prayers to Him throughout the day and unite ourselves to Him at Holy Mass. Like any bride, we have chores to do around the house to make it a pleasant and beautiful home: as brides of Christ, we accomplish these tasks in silence, so that in the depths of our heart, we may be attentive to Him. Like any bride, we cherish the family that our Bridegroom gives us: as brides of Christ, we have a common love and a common goal that sweetens and strengthens our life together. Happily, therefore, we strive for union with Christ in this life and look forward with joy to life everlasting with Him in Heaven. In the words of St. Augustine, “To fall in love with God is the greatest romance; to seek Him the greatest adventure; to find Him, the greatest human achievement.”
Author Bio
The Benedictines of Mary, Queen of Apostles seek a life of union with God in prayer as guided by the Rule of St. Benedict and strive to imitate Our Lady’s hidden life of love in the heart of the Church. heir monastery, the Abbey of Our Lady of Ephesus, is in Gower, Missouri.
Jamey Toner, who co-authored this book, studied literature at Thomas More College. He lives in rural Massachusetts with his wife, Ellen, and their increasing number of children and chickens.
