Surprising Grace

(This post is continued from How to Discern a Vocation to Religious Life: Part I ) Of course, we aren’t always in touch with what our deep desires are in the first place. What often preoccupy us are the shrill and incessant voices of what I will call our “surface” desires (for chips and chocolates). One of the things that helped me in my process of discernment, then, was cultivating my awareness of what was going on inside me. (I’ve written about this before in a blog post on getting in touch with the daily “movements” of our hearts .) To continue the story then: once the two-month period I had given myself had passed, besides gathering information about various congregations of religious sisters, I also started a practice known in Catholic circles as “spiritual direction”, in which I talked to someone regularly about my spiritual life, and this person helped me to notice and become more aware of how I was experiencing God’s action in my daily life. In addition, I went to retrea...

A while ago a reader of this blog asked me, “How did you discern that religious life was for you?” As we have talked a little about discerning life choices here on this blog, I thought I might post my response here too and add to that conversation. Do feel free to leave comments or write back about your own thoughts or experiences. ***** Dear Reader, Your question reminds me of a rather interesting conversation my community had earlier this year at the dinner table when one of our sisters said that someone had asked her, “How do you know if you are called to religious life?” The four of us at the table started sharing our own stories of coming to that awareness. We were each from different countries, with age differences spanning 45 years, but surprisingly enough, while the details of each person’s journey varied widely, we noticed some common threads running through each one. The first was that each of us at some point felt a desire for religious life. While some peop...

(This post was written sometime in July.) Goodbyes are never easy. Over the last two weeks, I had the unexpected and wonderful opportunity to be in France with a group of sisters from our Society, and visit some of the places that were significant in the founding years of our Society. The 21 sisters in the group hailed from 10 countries: Indonesia, the Philippines, England, Canada, Belgium, Singapore, the United States, Australia, Ireland and Italy. I had lived with some of these sisters before and was meeting others for the first time. Despite being of such different ages, languages and cultural backgrounds, we shared food, travel inconveniences, laughter and tears. We had deep conversations and were deeply touched by each other's presence and stories. It was incredible to experience the companionship of people who were living out the same spirituality and vows as we were, but in their own different ways. All this made it so much more difficult to say goodbye on the las...

Who are you, and what is this blog for? I think I owe it to you all – who are considering investing time in reading this – to try to answer that. As I was wondering how to do that, another question that I am often asked popped into mind. This one goes,  “Why did you decide to become a nun?”  The two are related, really. Yes, I am a Catholic sister in a society called the Faithful Companions of Jesus (FCJ). I don’t often like to use the word “nun” when people where I come from (Singapore) ask what I do. Technically, “nun” means someone who lives a cloistered life in a monastery, (which I do not); and “sister” means someone who also takes religious vows but actively ministers outside the convent (which I do). But to most people (and in common parlance) all Catholic religious women are “nuns”. So when I try to describe myself as a “sister” to the non-Catholics who make up most of my acquaintance, usually after a bit of confusion people end up saying anyway: “You mean you’...