A habit worth keeping

PEALS of laughter emanate from the parlour as I sit outside in the cobbled yard, waiting to go inside.

Two smiling ladies walk out, and I enter the convent.

Eight nuns in brown robes are standing behind a metal grille laser-cut with doves, stars and curlicues. Biscuits, coffee and fruit sit beside beautiful flower arrangements, and two large golden-hued icons are on display to welcome lay women who may be considering a vocation.

Religious orders all over Ireland are currently advertising open days or monastic weekends in a bid to encourage new people to enter the religious life. Advertising posters abound on www.vocationsireland.ie. “Is God Calling You?” asks one, with a photograph of a Carmelite nun speaking on her mobile phone. “Altar your life, discover the priesthood,” says another.

Religious orders now have websites, blogs and Facebook pages. The Redemptoristine sisters in Drumcondra, Dublin, have a live web cam pointed at their altar and a new ‘Vocations’ iPhone app was launched last year, on which prospective clerics can take a celibacy and vocations quiz, as well as finding information about the priesthood in Ireland. Figures from Conference of Religious of Ireland (CORI) state that there have been approximately 147 new vocations in the past five years in male and female religious congregations, not including diocesan priests, and those who are currently in formation to become priests and nuns.

And like all of these organisations, the sisters of the enclosed Poor Clare Colettine Monastery in Cork are currently canvassing for new members by holding an open day. Sr Faustina was the last sister to join the monastery in 1999.

“We’ve held these days a few times before, it’s not a thing we do often. A small number of lovely ladies turned up today. They were mature women, with a general interest in vocation. The day needs to be flexible enough for people to come, even if they decide that they definitely don’t want to join, that’s still a success for them,” says Mother Abbess, Sr Colette Marie.

The Poor Clare sisters have begun to use social media, establishing a website earlier this year, and allowing cameras into the convent to film clips of monastic life now available on YouTube. However, Sr Colette Marie acknowledges that many women may have been unaware of the open day, and that they may need to enhance their social media presence.

“We would probably need to use modern communications more. Nowadays that’s where young people are, in regards to the internet. If a girl has a vocation, that’s where she’d look,” she says.

The Poor Clare’s encourage women to visit the convent and talk to the sisters, and to eventually complete a ‘Live in’ for a fortnight, where women may participate more fully in the monastic contemplative life.

Sr Anthony (44) completed a ‘live in’ almost twenty years ago.

“The call had been there for a long time and I decided I had to face it. I had visited a few times before that and met the sisters. I was very apprehensive because the whole thing was new. But I was totally surprised – all the nuns were very open and friendly, and the peace and simplicity of the life struck me,” she says.

“I couldn’t have entered and just stayed, and it gave me a feel of the life. I knew it was a step in the right direction. It would be essential to come and stay, give you an insight before you can commit to it. I was praying all the time and discerning. I went to Boston for a year and it was there that I was able to discern that God was calling me.”

“I never wanted to be a nun — I had a pony and really wanted to be a jockey and win the Grand National,” says Sr Francis (55), who entered the monastery on her 21st birthday, after living across the road from the monastery while completing a degree in science in University College Cork.

“A friend of mine got into trouble and joined a sect. It shook me to the core and she left college. I wrote into the Poor Clares for prayers, and got a lovely letter back. I met one of the sisters and she was just so normal and easy to talk to. I came out walking on air and felt really alive,” says Sr Francis, who continued to visit the sisters regularly.

“I started to think about my own life, that I had so much to be grateful for to my parents who adopted me and the love I experienced. It made me really want to go and give something back,” she says.

“I was doing my final year in college and I waited until mid-term break to tell my mum that I was going to become a Poor Clare. I got total acceptance from my mum and dad, and they just gave me a big hug.

“It’s a huge sacrifice to the family when you come in first. But when they come to visit, they see how happy you are, and you have a deeper relationship with the family,” she says.

Eight sisters reside behind the grey painted walls of the Poor Clare monastery, located in the heart of Cork city, beside a hospital and University College Cork. Ranging in age from the forties to the mid-sixties, it is not yet an ageing population of nuns.

“We’re young in terms of nuns. People expect us to be older,” says Sr Francis, who asks me to guess her age. I make an honest guess of 34 – she is a very fresh-faced 55.

In the huge walled garden behind the monastery, nuns’ socks and tea-towels flutter on the washing line. Laughing, these youthful women walk in a line past the vegetable patch and a graveyard with simple wooden crosses. They spend their days in prayer and study, as well as gardening, cleaning and making their own clothes. They answer daily letters from people imploring them to pray for success in exams, good weather for farming and luck for people who are emigrating. They rise at midnight to pray, as this is a particularly ‘vulnerable’ time for people.

“Girls now know more than they would have 20 years ago. For the enclosed life, you need maturity,” says Sr Colette Marie, who on rare trips outside, tends not to notice the fashions but rather buildings that have appeared suddenly, or cars that seem bigger.

The sisters keep in touch with current affairs by listening to a news bulletin every day, and reading one newspaper per week. Family members are allowed to visit three times a year.

“We feel that we are lifting up the world a little bit. The more in tune we are with God, the more we bring people with us,” says Sr Colette Marie.

* www.poor-clares.com/cork

* www.vocationsireland.ie