Vocations Awareness Week

January 12-17 is Vocations Awareness Week. Only Divine Providence could arrange the entrance of a long-time Cloister Outreach discerner into her new-found home in her native land during this week.

HM came to us just after we published our website in 2002. She was a member of the "Tiber Swim Team," I forget the precise year. She had tried her vocation in an Anglican order before she 'swam the Tiber,' and still felt she had a calling as a Catholic. My first impression was Benedictine, but she said she absolutely did not feel called to that, and was pulled to Carmel.

Footnote for another post at another time--converts are often pulled to Carmel 'right off the bat.'

She had looked at our proposed Cloisterites, and was even counted among the aspirants for a time. However, when we tried to arrange flights for her to the U.S., we both started feeling like lead balloons were around our necks. I told her that that was a sign in and of itself, and to discern further.

The spiritual state of her nation--the U.K.--had always distressed her, and she was feeling led to become a victim soul for the country, which is also known as Mary's Dowry. My Salesian training came out, and I told her not to go looking for the cross, that it would find her. Then she said that if she was going to pray for her country, she needed to be IN her country. That helped focus the discernment greatly. She was also a member of our Cloister Outreach Vocations Incubator (COVI) yahoo group, and had the prayerful support of others in her situation.

How she came upon the monastery she entered is beyond me. I know she spent a lot of time on the internet with her searching. A lot of the links we have on the Cloister Outreach website's "International Cloisters" page for the U.K. are a result of her research. (Thanks, HM)!

She told me that when she did find the website, she felt like she didn't need to search any further. She shared with us on COVI that she felt like running through the monastery when she finally arrived. I wrote back and told her I could imagine her doing that with her arms extended in front of her. She responded that that was exactly what she had wanted to do!

So, now, after years of discernment, she seems to have finally arrived where God wants her. The monastery is down to three nuns, but there has been renewed interest in their balanced way of life, so there is always hope.

http://cloisters.tripod.com/uk_osb_oulton/

Blessings,
Gemma