WHEN I was small, one of my favorite movies was Sister Act. It was about Dolores, a lounge singer who got involved with the wrong kind of people and had to hide in a convent as part of her witness-protection program. Being that she was liberated, ostentatious and outspoken, she posed a challenge to the nuns.
Flash forward some years later, I found myself entering a convent for what they call a “Searching.” This means you may want to find out if life in a convent is for you. So you stay with them as one of their own and experience the life in the convent.
I had to wonder how like the movies the convent would be. In any convent, the voice of the mother superior is taken as the voice of God. She guides you to what you have to do, and that is unquestionable. Fortunately, for me, the “voice of God” in the Dominican sisters of Pompeii was not the surly, and rigidly conservative sister in the movies. No, not at all! The “voice of God” from the Dominican Sisters was cheerful with thick Italian accent and held by Sister Bertola.
The active cloistered life taught me a few things about being a God lover.
1. You pray first. Prayer sets the pace of our everyday life. As soon as we woke up, we prayed. Before breakfast, we prayed. So with after breakfast. In the afternoon, prayer is singing songs and reading from our booklets—so with the evening prayers. This means that whatever we do from waking to sleeping is for God, and with God. He never leaves our side because He never leaves our thoughts.
For me, this made life free of worry and anxiety. Any other time, I would be thinking of future days and plans, but since there was no time to do this, I only could give my worries to God, and say my prayers. The prayers guide our thoughts on what is good.
2. The level of cleanliness never goes down. We clean our own convent from top to the tiny crevices. All the women get down and dirty (no pun intended), scrubbing and washing every inch of our home. With this daily discipline, we get to see that each little act of work is also a form of worship. There is also a reward in keeping everything spic and span: your surroundings are as clean as your heart. In my own house, when things get messy or dirty, I know it is because I am starting to neglect a certain aspect of my life or a certain aspect is going awry. Being clean means that you keep your life and all the things about it under control.
3. Always be aware that you are a representative of Christ and that you are speaking to a representative of Christ. All the ladies are wearing some kind of habit that means that they are not just people, but representatives of Christ. It then becomes harder to disrespect them because you are aware that the person you are talking to is walking with God.
Too many times, we forget that we are all equally sons and daughters of God and, sometimes, we treat each other unfairly. We should be aware that we are all spirits living in this world temporarily, and that we should act according to our divine destiny of goodness.
4. Everyone gets a fair share and everyone is free to share. There is ample food for everyone but each gets a fair share. There are no rules on how much food you should get but everyone is aware that each sister should get their own piece of the pie. Sisters also don’t overeat because they know that there should still be some for the others.
I think in the real world, we are groomed as an individual, and as such, we are taught just to make ourselves happy. Even in life, we are taught to take as much as we can.
Living in a community, your main concern is if everyone has had enough. You take your share as your right, and you make sure that others also get their own. If this were the way we would think, especially about the street kids and the destitute, then we too would make sure that others had enough before we enjoy any surplus. What a wonderful world that would be!
5. There is a time for everything: to pray, to serve, to preach, to help. The sisters’ life may seem regulated and boring, but they actually have a very balanced plate of activities. Between prayers and ablutions, we get to either read, visit the sick in the hospital, visit the slums and spread the word of God, play with streetchildren and try to guide them, and do other charity work that has been set up. The common denominator of all our activities is that we live to serve.
If we had this mind-set of loving and service as we walked into our office or our houses, we would be able to powerfully help the people we come across everyday. When that happens, the burdens that we feel for “having to do something” becomes a joy because it is a work of love.
6. The joy of purpose: the smiles are because everything they do is for God. While most of us wander out here what our purpose is or make do with getting by the daily grind, they have found that all they do, all they are, and all they will be have a place in God’s service. What other joy is there, than to know why you live, and to fulfill your call every day?
I may not have joined the convent life for good, but I will take these values into the real world. I want to walk with the certainty of my purpose, living for God and loving everyone I see. I want to spend my time wisely and work with joy. I want to keep my thoughts as clean as my house. Most important, I want to always have God by my side, as a constant prayer in my heart.