Patricia Ciavarella
Vocation Story

“Still, the Still Small Voice in My Heart”
 

I can not remember a time when I could not sense, in myself, the desire to be a nun.  In my memory, the desire has simply always been. I can not pick out or remember a moment or time when I was not aware of “the call”, as the saying goes. When asked how a woman knows she is called to be a nun, Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta responded, “She knows, she knows.”  I understand what she meant.  I knew.

I didn’t always live in accord with that knowledge and I did not always respond to the still, small voice that can be heard only with the heart.  When I was quite young, I talked with those who I believed would know about that voice.  They, after all, at one point had heard it themselves…and had followed it.  They would guide me.   It was a tumultuous time and The Church, they told me, was in a period of vast and sweeping change. I was told the stories of the many people who were leaving religious life. There were so many reasons but the same result, many were leaving; few were coming.  “Don’t go!” was the clearest and most oft repeated advice I received.  I listened.  I believed the people I asked knew better than I. I didn’t go and I stopped listening to the still small voice inside because I came to believe my hearing was impaired.  After all, “no one” else was hearing what I was hearing….or so I was told. 

The years went by.  Life went on. I’ve had a successful career in healthcare logistics and information management.  I had my share of happiness and my share of heartbreak. Then one Sunday morning, I opened a newspaper just as I had done so many times before. I remember the moment well. I picked the magazine out from between the Sunday comics and saw a most unexpected article being featured on the cover.  It looked like a good read and I was immediately interested.  I had no idea that reading that article would change my life, forever.  How odd it was to see this story in the Sunday magazine of a major secular newspaper. Still, there it was, a multi page article on cloistered nuns living in the Eastern United States of America.  Carmelites, Sacramentines, Poor Clares and…..THEM.  I couldn’t believe my eyes.  They were beautiful in their black and white habits, long veils and pinstriped aprons. The article said they were strong, independent, educated women who chose to live according to an ancient rule of life.  The article recounted how they were able to take care of their own needs, doing for themselves what many people might still consider a “man’s job” – I chuckled at the thought of them fixing their own cars dressed as they were.  I conjured up a pretty interesting image in my mind.  The fact is, I hadn’t heard of anything like this before.  They looked like “regular nuns” to me and I was pretty certain that the very refined and similarly clad sisters I had as teachers did not fix their own cars and ride around on power mowers.  Frankly these women did things I just never imagined sisters would do. They baked their own bread, maintained their own grounds and published their own books. I was very impressed by their resourcefulness.

As impressive, to me, as these kinds of works were, the work was not what their monastic life was about.  This Holy Rule of theirs required them to remain essentially hidden from the world for one purpose and one purpose alone – they were to seek God in the peace and silence of the monastery, in the company of their sisters and there they were to offer themselves a living sacrifice interceding for needs of the Church and the whole world.  Everything else that took place did so only as a means to support the life blood of these women  – prayer – the constant, abiding praise of God and intercession on behalf of His people.  It wasn’t a long article, I was certain there was much more to know about them….still, what I had learned in that moment rocked my world. They were called The Benedictine Nuns of St. Scholastica Priory. That’s who had captivated me.  Years later, I wouldn’t recall that name, but I would always remember the photograph. It would eventually lead me back to them. 

I had never seen anyone look so happy.  I saw people everyday in my work – patients, nurses, doctors, aides, technicians, married, single, dating, uneducated, highly educated, mothers, daughters, fathers, sons, religious, atheist, crabby, sweet, friendly, hostile, capable, …….none, not one had the look of joy that I saw on the faces of the women staring out at me from that page. God knows I hadn’t seen habited religious women in a long time. They were an odd sight, and I still couldn’t stop looking at that photo.  They had captured something and taken me inside. I wondered to myself: Where had they been when I was “looking”?   Why didn’t I know about them?  I was stunned but managed to read the entire piece.  I could barely catch my breath at times.  I found myself needing to stop and just “breathe” as I read.  Then I heard it, there in my heart….it was STILL there, that still small voice….the nearly forgotten but familiar sense rising up from deep within me.  That voice that only the heart hears.   “Go.”  “GO???? “What happened to “Don’t Go”?  Silence Then again, “Go.” “OK”, I said. I WILL go.  “Now?” Silence.

And with that simple exchange between my heart and the voice of my Lord, the course of my life was altered beyond my wildest dreams. The next several years would bring me to experiences I had never imagined would be mine.  Stolen by the suffering this life can often bring, that beautiful moment was buried.  I didn’t know it at the time, but like the seed that falls to the ground and dies, this moment too would be alive again one day.   While I made my way through a maze of life’s struggles, Jesus protected the seed He had planted in the fertile soil of my heart.  In due time, it would bloom and grow.  Finding myself at the end of a long, tumultuous, painful, necessary and utterly miraculous experience of healing, ready to begin life anew as a healed, whole and free woman, I was asked this simple question:  “What will you do with your life now, Pat”?  I answered the question without any hesitation or doubt. It was a simple answer and the only one I had ever really seriously considered in my heart.  “I want to be a nun”, I said.  I wish everyone could know, at least once in their life, a share of the joy I felt as I said the words I thought I would never speak aloud again.  I wish you could have seen the look of astonishment on the face of the Franciscan Friar who asked the question. “Really?” he asked. “Really”, I answered.  So what are you going to do about it?” he asked.  “Funny you should ask”, I said.  I once read an article about a community of nuns…they were Benedictine, I think….”  “Can you find them again?” he asked.  “I don’t know if I can” I answered, “but God can”.

God, I have found, is not so concerned with amounts of time.  A lifetime can take place in a moment.  A moment can last a lifetime.  The time it took for me to finally arrive, sure seems like a long time to me but God doesn’t seem to notice.  Jesus still says “Come.” I can only humbly suggest that it seems to me that God is far more concerned with our giving and our loving than our timing.  I had given him my heart. I had given him my consent when I said “OK, I’ll go” I meant it, He knew it, He would bring it about. Practically, I would need a miracle.  Fortunately, God is the Miracle Worker.

And now….Now is His time.  Now is always His only time.   It’s the perfect time.  Six months ago I didn’t know I would be writing this story.  I did not know that I would be telling so many people that I was about to enter the place I have long considered “home” in my heart…..and yet, by God’s unchanging, unfailing, love and grace, the time is here. It’s not too late, the notion that it might be too soon is well, just not applicable in my case….no, the time is right, the time is now.  I’m still here, my heart still hears His still small voice and I still say “Yes!”

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