by Hildegard Pleva
Contributor
Americans are changing jobs, if not careers, more frequently than ever before. Statisticians and sociologists argue about the significance of this trend, but the effects are observable. Where once people remained in one job, plying one trade or profession, living in one town for most of their lives, it is not uncommon to see rapid, frequent and fluid movement from one career to another, one coast to another, or from one life style to its complete opposite.
Mine is a Boomer-generation story. First child of two young survivors of the Great Depression married in the midst of World War II, I first met my Dad at 6 months of age upon his return from the Pacific. My sister and I were raised in a culturally Italian, three-generation household with four adults, none of whom went to church. Yet we were sent to religious education and Mass at the parish across the street. My liberal thinking parents preferred public school for us, but I gathered the courage to ask to go to the Catholic academy for girls where the Sisters of St. Joseph of my parish also taught. I was pretty much in love with them.
About the time of my first Communion God began to speak to my heart. This was facilitated by an aunt whose devotion was not lost on me and who began to include me in her practice. My first memory of church is a morning Mass of Holy Thursday, with procession carrying the Eucharist around the church protected by a golden canopy all suffused with tutti-frutti colored light streaming through stained glass windows, magnified in mystery by the smoke of incense. At the age of 7, I just knew something was present there that I had yet to know.
Later friends would ask where my faithfulness came from given the lack of example in my own home. It came from the influence of my aunt and of the sisters who taught me, encouraged my growth in faith and intellect and provided models of adult women who lived for God alone.
Of course, I was bitten by the vocation bug. I was thrilled to be able to serve at intimate early Lenten morning Masses just for students. It was joy to have my classroom right next to the convent chapel in my senior year, and there was all that talk about who would be entering the convent upon graduation each year. But I was afraid to approach my parents. My father was stern and demanding, certainly not the type of father I could wrap around my little finger. I knew no such idea would be tolerated and feared the humiliation of what would come.
So life went on with boyfriends and proms, academic achievement and acceptance by Hunter College of the City University of New York, tuition-free according to my parents’ plan. Upon graduation in 1967 I had set upon a path that within the next six months would take me away from my home for the first time, see me begin my professional career as a teacher, necessitate moving to another state and conclude with marriage all at the age of 22. Most of us did it without thinking much about it.
The first great career change came 15 years later when, as the mother of three sons ages 5, 8 and 11, I found myself exiting from an irredeemable dysfunctional marriage as a single parent without a job. A master’s degree and a permanent teaching certificate were parlayed into a second-grade teaching position in a local Catholic school. This environment served well to bolster the faith, which had never left me, and provided a secure space to endure the craziness of divorce and hone my professional skills. As my sons grew and college expenses loomed, this setting also permitted me to pursue a graduate degree in library science, which facilitated the second career change to public school librarianship.
Throughout these years my spiritual journey continued apace. The desire first felt in childhood to know this God who was so present never left. All of my education in the faith had taken place in the pre-Vatican II period. Since our church has never offered much in the way of adult education, I worked to find ways to update myself intellectually and to energize my interior spirituality on which I depended so much in those very difficult times. Jesus said, “Ask and you shall receive.” I was blessed with a spiritual director, gifted teachers (mostly sisters) and then by my introduction to the Redemptoristine Nuns, whose monastery was only a 20-minute drive from my home.
By 1998, my sons were grown, finished with high school – two out of college – all well on their way. I spent a lot of time at the monastery joining in Mass and Liturgy of the Hours and their lay associate program. I was active in ministry in my parish and as a presenter at weekends for women at the retreat house run by Redemptorist priests next door to the monastery. One of the nuns was providing personal spiritual direction. I continued to want to know more even to pursuing another graduate degree in religious studies. The call was to go deeper.
Secular institutes turned me down because at the age of 50 I was too old. More years passed, but there was still the call. I knew two active congregations of women who might have entertained an application given my professional credentials, but I felt that the life of a teaching sister would not be much different from what I was already doing. Silence and contemplation seemed to be the route to that deeper place. Gradually I had also come to realize that orders of contemplative women had never abandoned the ancient tradition of accepting older women. I was anxiously trying to muster the courage to approach the nuns with a request when I heard God say to me, “Won’t you let me do this for you?”
I was 54 years old, but the nuns knew me well. I told them that even at that age I might add 10 years to the life of a small aging community. I asked for a live-in experience of two months in the summer. After those weeks I did not want to leave. I returned to my work, asked for a formal application and was notified of my acceptance on Christmas Eve.
As it was 40 years before, presenting this to my parents was my greatest worry. But now I had my sons. They told my parents that they had a hard time understanding it too, but that I had done so much for them and for others that now when I said this is what would make me happy, they could only support me. My parents were angry but speechless. They were present when I entered on July 22, 2000, the feast of Mary Magdalene the patroness of my integration into contemplative life in a community of women.
Years ago I wrote a little comedy skit about what it is like when a mother enters a monastery. One-liners told of young women having to come to a monastery to meet their future mother-in-law, of sisters answering the phone and hearing, “Can I talk to my mother?” and my receiving calls asking for breastfeeding and child care advice. Truth is my community has always been most gracious to my children and accepting of my relationship with them. For my part there is a stab in my heart when I have to be absent from some special event and most particularly in the very beginning when holiday time came and I knew my separation from them had changed their holiday experience for ever. But now it is wonderful to see them creating their own family traditions. I did miss entertaining; setting a beautiful table with china and silver, being a hostess, enjoying the conversations of gathered friends and family.
The call was to go deeper: a direction requiring single mindedness, silence and solitude, that going apart spoken of in contemplative life. These are certainly present. Yet, little did I know that it is the regularity of every day, the obligation and rigors of living in common with previously unrealized diversity of others, the call to “union of hearts and mutual charity” which is primary in our rule of life; the atmosphere of our charism to be a “living memory” of Jesus; the requirements of the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, that solidly construct and pave the steep path of the deeper inner journey.
Today, 15 years in, I can report that there is no skill or talent developed in my previous lives that I do not use in this life. Multiple careers can be gift to the community that accepts an older woman. By my own experience and in serving as vocation and formation director I know that this phenomenon is fraught with concerns and many issues to consider. It is not easy for candidate or community. I remain grateful to my community for its courageous welcome, for its patience with me, for its acceptance of individual differences and for the freedom offered to develop both mind and spirit. Most of all I am grateful for the opportunity they offered to me to change careers, to walk another path, to try daily to walk in deeper union with them and with the loving God who said to me, “Won’t you let me do this for you?”
[After raising three sons and enjoying her profession as a school librarian, Hildegard became a contemplative Redemptoristine nun in 2000. Her community shares a monastery with Carmelite nuns in Beacon, New York. Her writings have been published in Review for Religious, Cistercian Studies Quarterly and the journal of her international order, the Order of the Most Holy Redeemer (OSsR). She blogs at Contemplative Horizon.]