Deciding to Enter Religious Life
by Sister Sharlet Ann Wagner, CSC
 And
I, Im glad I didnt know the way it all would end, the way it all would
go. Our lives are better left to chance. I could have missed the pain, but
Id have had to miss the dance.
from The Dance by Garth
Brooks
I once recorded these words from a popular country and western song
by Garth Brooks in my journal. Its a song about love, in which the singer
looks back on his life. He wonders whether he would have chosen the same
path had he been able to look into the future and see the outcome. He
decides he would not want to have chosen a different path to avoid the
pains he experienced, because that would have meant missing the joy as
well. Im sure Garth Brooks wasnt thinking about a bunch of nuns when he
wrote that song, but when I first heard it, it spoke strongly to me of
religious life, and my life in Holy Cross. While I wouldnt agree with the
singer that our lives are the product of chance, I resonate with the
sentiment of The Dance.
 The song
expresses the movements in a love relationship, the difficulties and the dance. I have experienced that love relationship during my 10
years in Holy Cross. Ive known difficult times and Ive enjoyed some
beautiful and joyous dances. And if I had the chance to go
back and do it over again, I would come to the same conclusion that Garth
Books did in his song. I would not trade the dance that
religious life is for me in order to avoid the difficulties. However, when
I first began considering religious life as a junior at the University of
Texas, I certainly wasnt thinking about dances, pain or how I would
eventually feel the life choices I would make. My questions centered more
around, What will my family and friends think? Have I
gone crazy? What would my life be like as a nun? And,
the big one for me, How do I know that religious life is right for
me? One of the high school students I was teaching asked me once,
So, Sis, why did you become a sister? No matter how many times Im asked that question, and in how many different ways,
Im never quite
prepared for it. I think thats because the answer has to come from the
heart, not the head, and so it isnt easily put into words. When I began
considering religious life, I didnt know exactly why I wanted to become a
sister. I only knew that there was an attraction, a pulling inside of me
that I could only vaguely express. Perhaps the reason can be found in
The Dance. Its a song about making a choice to love, despite
the inevitable pain that accompanies such a choice. Becoming a sister was,
for me, a choice for love.
 Ive heard
many sisters say they knew in grade school that they wanted to be a nun.
That wasnt true for me. The idea didnt even enter my mind until my
junior year in college. Ive heard sisters talk about nuns whom they
admired and who influenced their own life choice. Again, that wasnt true
for me.
I didnt know any women religious when I first began to consider religious
life. I cant say what put the idea of becoming a sister into my head, but
suddenly, during my junior year in college, it was there, and no matter
how hard I tried to push it out again, it wouldnt go. Perhaps it was
because that was a time when I was thinking about my life and my future.
I
had it all figured out. I was majoring in journalism and receiving praise
for my work as a reporter on the university newspaper. I intended to
graduate from the University of Texas and earn a job on a major Texas
daily. Following a successful 10-year career in journalism, I would marry,
settle down and raise a family.
Then this strange attraction toward religious life appeared and grew
and threw all of my neat plans into confusion. I want through my junior
and senior years in college trying to make sense of this strange new idea.
I had heard about having a call to religious life, and I
reflected that call was a very good word for it. It was a
gentle but very persistent call that seemed to come from deep within me.
When I went to the University of Texas Catholic Center for Mass, I
would try to surreptitiously read the vocation posters without actually
looking like I was interested, just in case anybody was watching. I would
pick up literature from religious communities when I was sure nobody was
looking and devour it when I returned to my dorm room. I was hungry to
learn more. Finally, toward the end of my senior year, I worked up the
courage to talk with the Holy Cross sister who worked at the Newman
Center. I wanted her to answer one question for me. How do I know
that God is calling me to religious life. If only I knew I could act
upon that knowledge. I expected her to give me a list of criteria against
which I could measure myself. Her answer surprised me. She talked and
listened, and I kept repeating my one, all-important question. But
how do I know? Finally she said, Sometimes you can't know
something is right for you until youve tried it. You just have to go
ahead and do it. She compared it to walking around a swimming pool.
You can look at the water, test it with your foot, stick your hand in, but
you eventually have to jump in and swim around a little or walk away.
I decided that evening that I wanted to go ahead and jump in. I chose
to dance. That choice has opened me to a variety of
experiences I hadnt even imagined 10 years ago. Holy Cross is an
international congregation, and I now proudly claim as friends and sisters
women from Uganda, Ghana, Bangladesh, Peru and Brazil. My college plans of
a successful journalism career have given way to caring for crack and AIDS
babies in inner-city Chicago, teaching high school English in Utah and
working in a rural clinic in Uganda, East Africa. I lived a relatively
sheltered life growing up, despite the amount of traveling my family did.
My ministry experiences have opened my eyes to the difficulties many
people encounter in simply trying to live from day to day. They have
taught me, among other things, the tremendous dignity all people, the
sick, the poor, the elderly, as well as the young, the wealthy, and the
well-educated, carry within themselves as children of God. Our
Congregation was founded to serve the needs of the Church at the time.
As
times and needs have changed, so have our ministries. The needs today are
tremendous, as anybody who reads a newspaper or watches the news can see.
If a woman asked me why she should consider religious life, one of my many
reasons would be, Because the Church and the world need you.
Following my return to the United States from Uganda, I began
discerning my next steps in this dance I had entered into. I
knew I would be making my final profession of vows soon, and considered
what ministry I should pursue. As I reflected on my experiences in Holy
Cross, I felt a pull toward justice issues, and a desire to address some
of the many injustices I had seen. With my Congregations blessings I
began studying law. Now, three years later, I have graduated from law
school and will soon begin a project providing legal services to
immigrants who are imprisoned by the Immigration and Naturalization
Service. As a Holy Cross sister who is also an attorney, I hope to bring a
sense of compassion, and Gods deep love to those to whom I will offer
legal services. My life has been deeply enriched by my experiences in Holy
Cross.
In formation, an approximately eight-year process which
prepares a woman for a final commitment as a religious, I came to know God
better, deepened my prayer life and my faith, and became more generous in
my giving. Formation involves several stages of different lengths, and the
woman may choose to continue or discontinue the process at any stage.
At
the end of the novitiate, three years into the process, the woman
petitions for permission to profess temporary vows in the community.
These
vows are for five years. This is a big decision, usually reached after
much thought and discussion.
I remember, toward the end of my novitiate,
weighing the pros and cons of a five-year commitment in the Congregation.
My head was once again a muddle of conflicting ideas. I wanted to know.
I
thought about the good and bad times I had had during the past three
years. I thought about the future of Holy Cross. We have few young sisters
in the United States, a source of discouragement for me, but we are also
becoming more international and I had many peers in other countries.
I
thought about my good and bad ministry experiences, and experiences of
living with the sisters. For each different aspect of religious life that
I considered, there were pros and cons, good times and bad times, and the
more I thought, the more confused and bogged down I became. I decided to
walk to clear my mind. As I walked, I remembered one of the guiding
principles of prayer and discernment that I had learned. If you want to
know if a decision was a good one, look at the fruits. Are you becoming
more, or less, loving, generous, faithful, compassionate, etc.? I applied
that principle to my time in Holy Cross and the mass of cobwebs and
confusion was suddenly swept away. I realized that since I had entered
Holy Cross three years ago, I had come to love God more deeply, know
myself better, and give more generously to others. Why wouldnt I want to
continue on that path? And I remembered my original reason for entering
the community. When one of the sisters had asked me why I wanted to become
a sister, I struggled to get in touch with my feelings, and finally said, I want to love God as much as I can, and I feel like this is the
best way for me to do that. I realized that my reason of three years
ago was still my reason. Love.
If I were speaking to a woman who was interested in religious life, and
who wanted to know what my experience of it had been, I might show her the
quote with which I began this article. It speaks of having the courage to
risk; it speaks of both the pain and dance that come with choosing to
follow your call. Religious life is an opportunity to enter into life
fully, to develop herself, to give generously to people who need what she
has to offer and to receive from them, and to give her best self to God.
For the woman whos called to this lifestyle, its a choice for love. Its
a choice to enter into the dance.
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