Into Silence and Servitude by Brian Titley

Author:Brian Titley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: MQUP
Published: 2017-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

An eight-day retreat followed in preparation for the “day of reception.” Retreats were a regular part of religious lives, and they gave postulants a realistic sense of what was to come. They were periods of intense prayer, silence, and meditation, interspersed with lectures on the vows, discipline, penance, charity, and so forth by the retreat master, who was always a priest.120 Sister Frederic spent much of her retreat reflecting on death and on the state of her soul. Here’s how she recorded her thoughts, which were addressed to Jesus:121 “Oh I beg of You to grant me yet another year in which to do penance, in which to suffer for Your sake, in which to purge my heart and make it a fit dwelling for You. Hold back the avenging hand of death for a little while longer, if it be Your holy will, lest You find me unprepared.”

CONCLUSION

Convent life was a mystery to outsiders, and congregations tried to keep it that way. Postulants were introduced to these mysteries, but did not experience them in all their rigour. The black uniforms, for example, may have been dreary and heavy, but they were never as constraining and uncomfortable as those of novices and professed nuns. Contact with families and the outside world was restricted, but the total isolation that would come after entrance it was not. There were strict schedules of prayer, study, work, meals, and recreation, but astute mistresses of postulants showed flexibility in imposing them while resocialization took hold. The mistress had to move her charges forward without unseemly haste, lest the shock of it all provoked mass desertions.

There were desertions, at times early on, especially among those who had had no idea of what to expect and who may have been misled by recruitment professionals. There were expulsions, too, when the mistress judged a postulant unsuitable for the community. News of acceptance into the novitiate was usually a cause for celebration, but for some there were still doubts about their vocations. The doubtful ones often proceeded to the next stage of formation anyway, hoping for greater clarification respecting their calling or in order to give religious life a fair chance.122

Those who successfully completed the postulancy and were accepted as novices had learned a lot during their short months in the convent. They had learned how to behave like nuns, how to be docile, to pray a lot, to work hard, to repress the desire for personal intimacy, and generally to sacrifice their own inclinations for a higher purpose. In a word, they were worthy to become brides of Christ and were ready for the reception day that marked the beginning of the novitiate.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.