Having accepted God's invitation to serve him in religious life, I then proceeded to the next phase: finding out which order he wanted me to join, and which monastery within that order. As I discussed in an earlier post, "On My 'Reversion' and Religious Vocation," there are basically two kinds of religious orders in the Catholic Church—active orders (also called "congregations") and contemplative. From the very first inkling of my call, I knew God was asking me to be a contemplative. I believe unswervingly in the power of prayer, and I have a deep desire to pray for, and in the stead of, those who cannot or will not pray themselves. I also believe unswervingly in the "white martyrdom" of the cloistered contemplative life, the freely given offering of one's own worldly life in reparation for the sins of the world. I can't bear the thought of anyone using their free will to choose evil over good and, having chosen it until the moment the soul separates from the body in death, being deprived forever of union with God. If, as I believe, prayer can save one soul from that particular destiny, then I wanted to give my whole life and being to prayer. Contemplative orders are also necessary to the active orders, the orders that devote themselves to some kind of public service in the world. The prayers that arise continuously from contemplative monasteries help to support those sisters and brothers who remain in the world to teach, nurse, and do missionary work. Monasteries are the "powerhouses of prayer" in the Church.
After exhaustive research, reading countless books and perusing countless websites, I narrowed my choice down to three orders: the Carmelites, the Benedictines, and the Dominicans. I was very much attracted to the austerity of the Carmelites, their great poverty and humility, and their equal balance of solitude and community. The Benedictines, whose motto is Ora et Labora ("prayer and work"), work the land and keep animals; they put great emphasis on the Liturgy and, in the larger monasteries and abbeys, are known for their expertise in Gregorian chant. The Dominicans are great students. They place emphasis on the pursuit of Truth (their motto being Veritas) through the study of Scripture and the writings of the Church Fathers. However, they are more community-oriented than the Carmelites.
I also decided to begin my search for the right monastery in my part of the country. If God willed, I wanted to remain within easy distance of my family. I stumbled on the website of a Dominican monastery in Lufkin, just two hours north of Houston, called the Monastery of the Infant Jesus. Surprised that my spiritual director, who was a Dominican priest, did not mention this monastery to me, I asked him about it. He said he purposely didn't mention Lufkin because he didn't want to influence me toward the Dominicans.
An opera stage director I knew put me in touch with the prioress of the Carmelites in Santa Fe, where she had done research for a production of Dialogues of the Carmelites. Then I found a new Benedictine monastery in Canyon, Texas with the help of a vocational placement service. This house was founded by a large active Benedictine teaching congregation in Arkansas that wanted to found a contemplative community.
All three houses were willing to consider older vocations, which was essential for me, being 43 at the time. The usual age bracket for acceptance is 18 to 30 or 35. But with the relatively recent phenomenon of the young "career woman" and the general opinion that a woman just sprung from school should enjoy some years of independence before marrying and having a family (if indeed she ever eventually does so), the notion of a religious vocation is often not seriously considered or even entertained until later in life. Gone are the days when the options open to young women were pretty much limited to teaching, nursing, secretarial work, marriage, or the religious life. The luxury of choices now available to them tends to lure many of them away from the religious calling they may actually have. More and more religious communities are realizing this, and have adjusted their age limit of acceptance accordingly.
And so, I wrote to the three monasteries I finally chose, asking to make a visit, and awaited their answers. . . .
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