Dedicated to God (22 page)

“I told him, ‘Dad, I’m a little worried about my laziness, entering the religious life.’ ” Sister Mary Gemma remembers him replying, “Oh, you can overcome that.” “But my dad was a very disciplined person,” Sister Mary Gemma says, “and I think he couldn’t see why anyone else couldn’t be the same way he is. I think in that sense he didn’t have an understanding that people were made differently. I think he was a little that way; if he had a headache, we all had a headache and had to go to bed early, something like that. ‘We have a headache, let’s go to bed.’ ” Sister Mary Gemma says her hardworking father probably assumed she was, too—or could become that way.

Her mother, meanwhile, thought that Teresa was not equipped for cloistered monastic life. “She saw that I liked to talk,” Sister Mary Gemma says. “She saw that I was kind of lazy. In a way, I had a stormy relationship with my mother. I was struggling with myself and I was taking it out on my mother, stomping, slamming doors, and so she had doubts about my vocation. She didn’t think I would persevere, quite frankly. She was happy to give me to God, if that’s what God wanted. She was just afraid I wasn’t being realistic about whether I would be able to live the life.”

Three months after returning from California, Teresa entered the Corpus Christi Monastery. Her three years as a postulant and a novice were painful. Sister Mary Gemma attributes the challenges to the age difference between her and the next youngest nun and to the culture gap between her and the rest of the community. When she joined the monastery in 1976, she was the first new postulant in fifteen years. At the time, the nuns still made their own straw beds with rye and wheat that they cut and dried themselves. It was the first time Teresa had slept on a straw mattress. “It was very hard for me in the beginning, I must say. I know I found it hard to wait until recreation when I came. It was just so wonderful when recreation came and I could just start talking.” During recreation, Teresa told stories; she asked and answered questions, and the older nuns began to grasp just how different her experiences were from theirs. “The kinds of presents I got for Christmas, the sisters were horrified—‘You got
that
many presents for Christmas?’—because they would get one gift,” she says. “That just showed them that the culture was already changing. Kids were more spoiled than they were back then because the parents had a little more money than the parents in the generation before. So they felt that I really had to struggle because I had culture shock myself.”

Teresa’s eagerness to talk did not endear her to one nun, in particular—a teacher in an active order who had transferred to the cloister. “Quiet!” the nun called out, shushing Teresa when she thought she talked too much or too boisterously. “And that used to make me so mad!” Sister Mary Gemma says. “And sometimes I would get impatient with her at recreation. But I always told her I was sorry afterwards. She was always so kind and forgiving and would say, ‘I’m sorry, too.’ ”

Teresa’s visits with her family in the parlor exacerbated her loneliness, her longing for her former life. They talked of their camping trips; Teresa missed the outdoors. Her Novice Mistress advised her to take comfort in her surroundings and to look to the sky because the sky is always changing.

Three years after she entered as a postulant, the twenty-two-year-old who had been renamed Sister Mary Gemma panicked. She made temporary vows, then thought, “Oh, my, what have I done? I can’t leave for three years. It was like by then I’ll be too old to get married. No one will want me.” Sister Mary Gemma outlined her anxiety to a priest; she felt “torn both ways,” as if she were “fighting God” because she longed to fall in love, get married, and raise a family. “This priest did settle me,” she says. “He said, ‘You definitely have
a vocation. The very fact that you’ve been fighting God so long and He got you here anyway is a good sign that you have a vocation.’ He said he didn’t think I would have ever actually entered if I didn’t actually have a vocation. And he set my soul completely at peace. And I’ve never wanted, I’ve never wanted, I’ve never wanted anything but this life since then. I just needed that confirmation.”

Sister Mary Gemma believes that her yearning for married life was typical, “a normal way a woman would feel,” and not necessarily any indication of a true calling to religious life. She discovered, too, a critical precept for understanding her own personality: Verbalizing the inner, conflicted dialogue to a spiritual advisor could set her secret temptations “to flight” and defuse the power of her worries.

Still she struggled. She remembers on two occasions sitting in the choir chapel with the other sisters for the Divine Office and feeling a huge sob forcing its way to the surface. “And I thought, ‘Oh, now, not here, not in front of everyone.’ I just started sobbing right there in church.” Sister Mary Gemma believed the outbursts pointed to self-esteem issues she needed to overcome. “I would say I was still working through them after I made final vows, but the sisters were able to see I was going to be able to be okay in time,” Sister Mary Gemma says.

In the southwest wing of the monastery, perpendicular to the corridor of cells where the professed nuns live, Sister Ann Frances’s cell in the infirmary overlooks vegetable gardens and a few flowerbeds. Sister Mary Gemma spends much of the day there, as well as part of the night, when the Alzheimer’s disease confuses Sister Ann Frances’s circadian rhythm and she stays awake all night, then sleeps during the day. The infirmary is the only place in the monastery where nuns are permitted to talk freely.

Sister Ann Frances smiles when Sister Mary Gemma appears in the doorway. Sister Mary Gemma sings and talks and reads to the aging nun. Sister Ann Frances’s dependence on Sister Mary Gemma might be poetic justice. Sister Ann Frances is the former teacher who shushed the teenaged Teresa during recreation. Over time, the two nuns developed a close bond, and Sister Mary Gemma has helped care for Sister Ann Frances for almost a decade.

“It’s interesting the way God works,” Sister Mary Gemma says. “It’s just interesting that sometimes the ones that you struggle with the most end up being the ones you love the most.” Sister Mary Gemma says a true friendship
formed while she was still in the novitiate because they were able to forgive one another so readily. As the talkative Sister Mary Gemma has cared for Sister Ann Frances around the clock over the past couple of years, watching the elder nun respond positively and gratefully to the stories and attempts at conversation, Sister Mary Gemma says, “I just have grown to love her very, very deeply. She’s just as sweet as can be.”

Sister Mary Gemma does not relish the rare occasions she must leave the silence of the enclosure. The world outside “kind of encroaches on our recollection,” she says. “When you’re used to this type of environment, it’s kind of a shock. It’s so different.” Once, the extern sister drove Sister Mary Gemma to a doctor’s appointment, and then they stopped at a grocery store. Sister Mary Gemma stayed in the car with the window down and was shocked when a man yelled at a stranger for parking at an angle and blocking what could have been his spot. Sister Mary Gemma remembers the society of her youth as polite; she wanted to close her window but could not without the keys. She was aghast when the woman responded in kind to the man.

Sister Mary Gemma prayed silently for the man and the woman and the woman’s children, also witnesses. “It brought home to me how important our life of prayer is because our whole life is centered on God and a life of paying reverence and adoration and respect to God,” Sister Mary Gemma says. “And you always know there’s a lot of people that are living a completely different life, they’re not even paying attention to God, and then when you’re exposed to it, it brings it home that much stronger. And it’s not necessarily their fault if they don’t know God. They’re just picking up what they heard. You don’t blame them or anything. But it’s just—it was just very, very sad to me to see how the world has changed since I was in it.”

The back section of the monastery’s fourteen-acre property is lined with evergreens and landscaped with fruit trees. Sister Mary Gemma misses nature. She rarely has time to walk to the backyard. She remembers the
Little House
characters saying, like her Novice Mistress, “You’re with nature all the time.” The stories offer a respite, reinforcing values that run counter to popular culture, and offering a mental pilgrimage for a middle-aged nun who still feels like an unfocused soul with a fanciful mind.

Called
Sister Mary Clara of Our Lady of Sorrows

I was Sister Eucharista with my other order, the Felicians. I was there for twenty-two years as a teacher—a primary grade teacher for first or second grade, and sometimes both. I loved them very much; I loved the little children.

I was from Buffalo, in western New York near Niagara Falls. I was born August 11, 1937—Saint Clare’s Day. I also was called Clara. My name was Clare. That’s how it all began. The Lord has a plan for everyone’s life. As the Lord says, “I have formed you in your mother’s womb. I have a plan, and your name is written on the palm of my hand.”

The Felician Sisters were always in the long habit; they were just like I am now. Because of the Felician Sisters and because of their relationship with my mom, it grew on me. It was an attraction. Many times, it’s an attraction; it’s a drawing. I have a drawing for prayer, but it’s the Blessed Sacrament that I have the drawing for.

When I was in fourth grade I had rheumatic fever. After that, I had to be careful, walking upstairs and so on. I was restricted. I had to go to school on a special bus for one year, and after the first year I had to be on the first floor; I couldn’t walk upstairs. In sixth grade, I had to go upstairs. We were in an annex building because there wasn’t enough room, and I remember my sixth-grade teacher talking about vocations, talking about sisters and different orders, but more about the Felicians than anyone else. That’s where I really think the initial calling came. That never left me. I can still see where I sat in the classroom. I can still see the classroom. I can still see the building. I can still see sister.

I really wanted to go into the aspirancy after eighth grade. The girls lived in the aspirancy, like a boarding school, for four years. But my mom and dad said I had to live at home and experience life before I entered the community,
the religious life. They said if I’m still sure about joining and I still want to be religious, they would let me go. So they did; they kept their promise. It was close to high school graduation, April or May, and I slowly approached my mom. I said, “You remember the deal we had?” She said, “What deal?” I said, “Well, you said if I still want to become a religious, a Felician, you would let me go.” She said, “Oh, I thought you had forgotten about it.”

They allowed me to go. But one thing Dad said that I will never forget, he said, “If you ever want to come back, the door is always unlocked.” He didn’t say “open.” He said “unlocked.” It made such an impression to me. For a door to be open, it has to be unlocked. I took it as they would welcome me home anytime. It meant a lot to me for him to say that. But I stayed.

I entered in July and my mom died in March of the next year; ’56 I entered, and she died in ’57. She had a stroke. When I went with my Novice Mistress to my dad on the day of death to organize things or to talk about things, I said, “Dad, I’m coming home. I talked to Sister and she said whatever I want to do.” And he says, “No. You stay where you are. You chose your life. The Lord called you. We can get along. We’re able to be home alone. You can come home, but you don’t need to.” And I looked at my Mistress. Tears were coming down my face. We were going to bury Mom. I had two younger brothers: one in eighth grade and one in fifth or sixth grade, a couple years behind. It was hard. Difficult. But I accepted it.

I thought, I guess the Lord wants me to stay. But it was hard, it was very hard. Sometimes I would be crying. In the dormitory, sometimes I would be sniffling. The sister across from me used to pull the curtain and put her hand through. We would hold hands, hold onto one another, because she knew what I was going through. It was tough. That was the only time I thought that I wanted to go home, because I wanted to be of help to my father. But he didn’t feel that I was needed. He was very strong about that; whatever I chose to do was meant to be for my life.

I came here in ’78. About three years before that, I knew something was troubling me. I knew I didn’t belong with the Felicians. I was searching already then. I had a calling. I had had it with the teaching. It wasn’t that I was dissatisfied with the teaching or my children or what I was doing; it was that I had a different calling. The Lord was saying, “It’s time to switch gears.” So I went for this weekend retreat. Father was there. I went to confession. I said, “I really need guidance.” I said “I’m a sinner, but still I need to talk,
Father.” I said, “I think I’d like to go to the cloister.” He said, “Oh? Where?” I said, “I don’t know.”

I said, “I want to switch, but I don’t know where.” He said, “Do you have any idea?” I said, “No.” He said, “Do you have any friends in any communities?” I said, “Not friends, but I know of sisters at different communities.” He said, “Do you think you’re being drawn there?” I said, “I have no idea. I don’t know.” I know he was really drawing this, pulling this out. He said, “I don’t have time to spend on this. I have to go to another commitment.” I said, “I understand.” He said, “I want you for the next month to forget all about your vocation as a cloistered sister. Get it out of your mind. Do what you have to do, but don’t think about the cloister.” I said, “How am I going to do that?” He said, “Just don’t think about it.” I said, “I’ll try.” He said, “Just give it a good try.” I said, “What if it doesn’t work? Then what?” He said, “It’ll work if you work at it.” I said, “Okay.” I tried. That was April. I knew this was important. I was so busy with the children it wasn’t hard to forget, really. In May, on Memorial weekend, I went to Father, the Dominican priest at the monastery, and I told him what the priest said, that I should come back and talk to him about a vocation to contemplative life. So we did. We spent about two hours together. We talked about my life as a Felician, sharing things about what was drawing me. Then he said, “Do you know where you want to go?” I said, “No, I have no idea.” He said, “I can give you a little bit of help. Not much.” He said, “Go to the extern sister; they have pamphlets about cloistered life. Ask her to find one for you and to give it to you. Tell her I asked her to give it to you.” She found it in the drawer. And one was a brown paper pamphlet, and it was written by a Poor Clare, the Abbess in New Mexico. She wrote a pamphlet,
With Light Step on Unstumbling Feet
, that was about the contemplative life. It spoke about the whole entire contemplative life as a Poor Clare. So I took that and I read that and I was happy with it. And that was it. And that’s why I’m here.