A Threshold of Grace

“Of course you should!”

Those words are my earliest memory of meeting Sister Maria Rose of the Crown of Thorns.

The occasion was the opening and dedication of the newly constructed wing of Our Lady of the Rosary Monastery in Summit, New Jersey. I had cautiously asked whether I should fly a drone over the new wing to capture it from a unique angle.

Her response was immediate.

And exuberant.

From that day forward, every time I saw her, I thought of her fondly as the Drone Nun.

It suited her, somehow.

After all, this was a woman who was born in South Africa, studied law and became a lawyer in Australia, worked as a screen actress, and then entered a Dominican monastery to live within the hallowed walls of the cloister.

And Six years after our first meeting, she professed her Solemn Vows there.

Makes all the sense in the world

Of course.

And I actually mean that.

Because the more religious men and women I meet, the less surprised I am by the winding roads that brought them to convents, monasteries and seminaries.

Again and again, I encounter people who are highly educated, tremendously gifted and, in the worldly understanding of the word, successful.

They aren’t people who failed to find a place in the world.

They’re people who looked deeply at what the world offered and were honest enough to keep asking questions.

Is this all?

What is life for?

Who am I meant to become?

You know what I’ve come to think?

They’re smart.

And they’re honest.

Honest enough to follow those questions beyond the easy answers. Honest enough to continue seeking when the search begins to demand something from them.

And sometimes, a true seeker must be willing to be found.

Perhaps that is where vocation begins…in the mysterious meeting between our searching and God’s summons. We seek meaning, freedom and real life, only to discover that God has been calling us by name all along.

During a Solemn Profession, that mystery takes visible form.

A woman steps forward.

She answers the questions placed before her.

And then she lies prostrate before the altar as the names of the saints are sung around her in the Litany of Supplication.

Heaven is invoked.

The Church prays.

And one human life is placed entirely into the hands of God.

Sister Maria Rose hadn’t arrived at that altar by a straight road.

Few of us do.

There’s an old saying that God writes straight with crooked lines. But perhaps we misunderstand the crookedness. A road can bend without being wrong.

Perhaps some roads must wind.

Perhaps our gifts need time to be discovered, tested and developed so they can bear fruit later in life. Perhaps we need to encounter the world in all its beauty, confusion, possibility and disappointment before we can understand what, or rather, Who, our hearts have been seeking.

Sometimes the road into a monastery passes through places we would never associate with a monastery.

Maybe it needs to.

A woman doesn’t leave her gifts at the enclosure door. She carries them inside, where they can be refined, transformed and offered back to the One who gave them to her.

Nothing is wasted in the hands of God.

And perhaps that’s why a Solemn Profession matters even to those of us who will never make one.

Because we’re all called.

Not all to religious life.

Not all to marriage.

Not all to the priesthood.

But every one of us is called to holiness. Every one of us is invited to prayerfully discern the particular way in which our life is meant to become a gift.

We spend so much of our lives asking, “What will fulfill me?”

Vocation asks a more dangerous question:

“To whom am I called to give myself?”

The strange and beautiful truth is that fulfillment is found within the answer.

As St. Augustine wrote, “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.”

And so we pray.

We breathe the air of the Sacraments.

We listen.

And we walk one uncertain, Grace-filled step at a time, toward the place where our restless hearts may finally come to rest.

Six years after Sister Maria Rose “encouraged” me to launch a drone above the monastery, I stood inside those walls and witnessed what a prayerfully discerned life looks like.

Not a straight line.

Certainly not an obvious one.

But a life gathered into a single, irrevocable “yes.”

When Sister Maria Rose rose from the floor, she wasn’t a woman whose former life had been erased.

She was the same woman, but gathered.

South Africa.

Australia.

The law.

Acting.

Every gift, every mile and every unexpected turn had been carried to that altar and placed before God.

And now she belonged to Him forever.

It showed.

Radiant.

Joyful.

Emotional.

The unmistakable expression of a woman who had crossed a threshold of grace.

There were newer faces inside the monastery that morning, too, women taking their first steps in learning and discerning life within the cloister.

Who knows where their own roads have taken them?

Maybe one day I’ll return to witness another of them place her life before God.

But first, I’ll need to speak with her.

Learn her story.

And, of course, determine what her nickname ought to be.

Because Drone Nun is already taken.

And now—solemnly, joyfully, forever—so is she.

Learn more about the Dominican Nuns of Summit by visiting their Website!

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You have my heartfelt thanks for your generosity and support, and please keep me in your prayers, and know of mine for each of you. God Bless, Jeff