By DEXTER DUGGAN
Aspiring nuns may not go through quite as drastic a change in life as did the religious superior and novice mistress of a new priory project in eastern Ohio, but they still step into an entirely different world as they seek to draw closer to God.
“I’ve always been in my heart and my mind that I wanted to live for God,” said Mother Benedykta during a March 18 telephone interview from the Woodsfield, Ohio, priory for the Discalced Paulicrucian Nuns of the Primitive Observance, located in the Diocese of Steubenville.
She spoke with The Wanderer as part of her recruitment efforts to reach young women to consider a vocation with her community (www.opcrucis.org).
Raised in a Jewish family, Mother Benedykta recalled setting out the wine for the Passover meal, with a cup reserved at the end of the table for the coming of the Messiah.
She looks back on her early religious education as leading to the Catholic faith. “What we (Catholics) call the chalice is the Cup of Elijah,” the prophet who is to announce the messianic redemption.
“To me, it was just normal to be Jewish, then you become Catholic,” she said.
The new Ohio priory offers a life that is cloistered, monastic, and contemplative with the charism of St. Paul of the Cross.
The website says: “We follow the unique charism of St. Paul of the Cross, an Italian 18th-century mystic who, through his devotion to Our Sorrowful Mother of Grace, preached the grateful memory of the salvific Cross and Passion of Our Crucified Lord of Merciful Compassion.
“Through a tested faith and drawn by the Holy Spirit, we answer the call to strive towards the heights of union with God from the hidden life of the cloister. Our charism of silence, solitude, penance, and poverty is lived in Paulicrucian accompanied solitude,” the website says.
Asked by The Wanderer if she thought this sort of life would be unappealing to 21st-century American women, Mother Benedykta replied that she “absolutely” thinks the priory will receive a positive response, adding that she has friends at two U.S. Carmelite monasteries that have no problem attracting nuns, despite their rule of life.
The “Vocation” page of the website says: “A cloistered vocation draws women from many backgrounds and from all parts of the world. They are women who aspire to a hidden life of prayer and work, women whose sense of humor is as contagious as is their sense of duty for the salvation of souls.”
The cloister means a renunciation of worldly possessions and ambitions, and contemplation of the redemptive suffering of Christ on the cross.
“We don’t own anything, you only own enough land to build the monastery,” Mother Benedykta said. “…We do artwork and printing for our income.”
A cloistered life doesn’t mean a lack of intellectual accomplishment. Mother Benedykta told The Wanderer that she speaks about 12 languages, including Polish, Czech, Spanish, French, and Italian, after years of religious life in Europe. She is a master wood carver and artist, she said.
Upon arriving at the cloister, the new resident leaves everything behind, not even bringing in a wristwatch or notebook, she said.
New clothing awaits, prearranged to the correct size, and a bell ringer notes the time for activities during the passing of the day, she said, explaining that, as an exception, the bell ringer is allowed to have a pocket watch, to keep the day chiming on time.
The website says: “We sing the Divine Office seven times a day in English and Latin using Gregorian chant, observe silence and a separation from the world and its distractions.”
Mother Benedykta said she pursued her vocation by entering the order’s parent monastery in Madrid, Spain, and has served for 32 years. She said she was looking for a strict community. However, “They weren’t strict in America at all.”
A native of Bloomington, Ind., Mother Benedykta said her father was a research scientist at Indiana University with the U.S. Geological Survey, and her mother was an artist.
Recalling her Jewish youth, she said she attended Hebrew school after her day of regular school, and told her rabbi that she wanted to take the Nazarite vow — which appears in the Old Testament as a renunciation of aspects of life like consuming meat and alcohol.
Such self-denial is “very much a preview to poverty, chastity, and obedience” in Catholic religious life, she told The Wanderer.
At age 14, she said, “I got rid of the box springs and slept on the mattress on the floor.”
Seeking greater closeness to God, she said she told her rabbi she wanted to live in the synagogue, but he said that wouldn’t be possible: “You want to be a nun? We don’t have Jewish nuns. That’s Catholic.”
Mother Benedykta said she became a Catholic in her 20s and “my parents disowned me right away. . . . I knew there was going to be fire and brimstone,” but as the years passed, “my Dad . . . has been a lot more friendly.” Her mother died of cancer when her daughter was becoming a religious novice, she said.
Both father and daughter are faithful to their religions, Mother Benedykta indicated, saying that if she wants to speak to her father on the phone on Friday, she has to call earlier in the day, before he begins to observe the Sabbath day of rest. “He tells me, ‘I can’t stop Shabbos to talk to you’.”
Not Much Was Safe
Back in the 20th century, different priests contacted her religious house in Madrid to request that someone be sent to set up a new community in Eastern Europe, so she arrived in Latvia in the early 1990s, amid the instability and dangers of newly won independence from Soviet rule.
“Not too much was safe in Latvia,” she said, with poisonous water, unsafe food, and machine-gun fire. Her first postulant was beaten so badly that she couldn’t continue her vocation, while both a seminarian and a seminary typist were killed, she said.
“We had death threats, they broke some of the windows” in the little monastery building, Mother Benedykta said.
She moved on to Poland and worked on the Episcopal Commission for Dialogue with Jews there, she said, before returning later to the U.S., in 1999, where she obtained two master’s degrees.
About four to five years ago, she said, the decision was made to start a U.S. foundation, a goal that was aided with “a huge donation about two years ago” that financed the purchase of furniture.
Today, “There’re no bombs going off. . . . It’s just a nice, quiet location in the Rust Belt,” with Steubenville an hour’s drive away, she said.
In any age, Heaven is accessible from anywhere on Earth, and it’s not even an hour’s drive away. It’s just a matter of having the faith to find the doorway, whether in Spain, Latvia, or Ohio.
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