Cloistered and Connected

Mar 12

Mother Anne Francis Ng'ang'a, VHM, with Bro. Dan Wisniewski, OSFS, Director of Oblate Education & Formation, celebrating the Feast of St. Francis de Sales.

“Cloistered nuns, we can go to places no one else can, through prayer. To hearts, to minds, to dark alleys, to bedrooms, that's how you open doors. We’re being sent out. That’s our ministry.” ~ words from the Toledo Visitation Monastery (Pray to Love: A Contemplative Life, Anne Goetze)

Popular culture has provided us with many colorful images of Catholic Sisters, from joyful singing on an Austrian hillside to overenthusiastic guitar playing on an airplane. But whenever I hear the word “nun,” the image that comes to mind is a contemplative woman tucked inside a cloistered monastery - silence as the soundtrack.

In 1610, when St. Francis de Sales established the Visitation Order with St. Jane de Chantal, he envisioned a bit of a radical model for their community at that time: a hybrid of contemporary and active ministries. The Sisters would be essentially monastic but active to the extent that they could go out among people to care for the poor, the sick, and the dying.

Despite Francis and Jane’s original hope, the Visitation became a cloistered, contemplative religious order. However, their founding intention was seeded in the name and spirit they gifted the congregation. The joyful mystery of the Visitation of Mary to Elizabeth would animate this community of women who, in humility and service, would bring the love of Christ to others. Visitation Sisters would experience a deep connection with God and minister to the needs of the world without ever leaving the cloister… and they would do it through their prayers and their presence.

Centuries later, when the Visitation Order was founded in America, a number of houses also embraced a ministry of education to young women as an expression of their charism. As schools and monasteries grew up together, students, faculty, staff, and families learned that to be cloistered didn’t mean to be invisible. The Sisters were visible in the constancy of their convent, the permanence of their vows, and the assurance of their prayers.

The Visitation Sisters’ devotion to the often unsung, but sacred, ministry of showing up has made a deep impression on my life: a listening ear when I cried over teenage friend drama in the school infirmary; the voice of encouragement, holding my hand in the parlor as an adult when I struggled through a family challenge; the bearer of hope in a letter when I mourned the death of a parent. From the treasured example of these moments in my life, I have learned that spiritual companionship is a gifted way I can be of loving support to others in their lives.

I believe the same is true for many other Visitation alums and colleagues across the country who were educated by or worked alongside the Sisters. As their spiritual sons and daughters, we have learned that to “be Visitation” is to be in Christ-bearing encounter with another, extending God’s love in our physical presence or through our prayers, unbound by space or time. For four centuries, the hearts of Visitation Sisters have “gone to places no one else can” in physical presence or spiritual accompaniment so as to bring others in loving union with God… all without leaving their monasteries.