At the Benedictine Spirituality Workshop and Retreat prior to my final profession, Sister Meg Funk from Our Lady of Grace Monastery in Beech Grove, Indiana, described Benedictine life as having two aspects: above the river and below the river. This image has stayed with me over the years. Above the river we go to prayers and meals, share in community work and conversation, greet guests and participate in leisure activities. Under the river is where the soul work happens as we seek God in all things.

Under the river, praying the Psalms has offered an image of God who wants both mercy and justice, a God beyond dualism who includes all things. Under the river, living in community challenges my ego set in its ways and calls for humility. Under the river, hospitality necessitates looking at the parts of myself that I reject and my unexamined assumptions that judge others. Sometimes I resist the flow of the river and am tumbled around to smooth my edges. Sometimes I go with the flow and enjoy the ride with others. Sometimes I call out for a hand to buoy me up. Sometimes I offer a hand reaching out to another.

When I made my first profession 25 years ago, I couldn’t have known how the river of life at Holy Wisdom Monastery would flow and form me. These days, as I look back, I am grateful for all it has brought and pray that I may continue to be faithful to the journey to which God has called me into the future.

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On July 15, 2018, we celebrated the first profession of Denise West as a sister at Holy Wisdom Monastery during the Eucharist on Sunday morning. Denise has been with us about three years, and this is the next step in making a commitment to community life with the sisters at Holy Wisdom.

Benedictines are good at ceremony; we call it liturgy or ritual. In the profession ritual, Denise stood before the worshiping community and read her promises aloud to us as every Benedictine before her has done. It was a powerful moment when the whole assembly responded to Denise’s singing of the Suscipe from Psalm 119: “Sustain me, O God, as you have promised that I may live. Disappoint me not in my hope.” We are one body, relying on God’s Spirit to sustain us. This ritual action holds us sisters publicly accountable for what we say we intend to do with our lives which is to seek God with our sisters.

Later in the liturgy as we prayed the Eucharistic prayer together, the Sunday assembly community stood to profess who God is for us and who we are before God. We prayed: “Help us to recognize the reality of Christ present among us. Grant us the courage and the power to be your justice and your peace in our world. Give us open hearts and minds to welcome all who are outcast, especially the immigrant and the refugee. Teach us to live gently and gratefully upon this planet…” Our attention in the liturgy becomes our intention in life.

Benedict built small rituals into the day that help us stay focused on our intention to seek God. When we enter the oratory where we pray, we bow as an acknowledgment that the holy is present. Benedict writes that the one who greets guests at the door is to call out: “Your blessing please,” acknowledging that the Holy One is present in each person. We don’t use those exact words today, but our attention to greeting guests with respect and kindness expresses our intention to acknowledge the blessing that they bring. At the recent memorial service for Roger Hauck, a former board member, Sister Joanne Kollasch noted the way Roger had blessed the community with his knowledge, humility and enthusiasm. A retreatant said it this way: we are changed/blessed by the people who find us.

In another small ritual, Benedict asks that those beginning their kitchen service for the week say three times: “Oh God, come to our assistance.” And the community responds: “Oh God, make haste to help us.” These are the same words that the community says at the beginning of the Liturgy of the Hours. At the monastery, the prayer leader for the day at the Liturgy of the Hours also leads the meal prayer. This practice ties the common meal and our communal prayer together and reminds us that we depend upon the grace of God in all aspects of our life.

What rituals do you take part in and how do they express your intention?

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The question never fails to pulls me up short, hesitating. In the uncomfortable silence that ensues, I wrestle internally to come up with an accurate response. My first profession was over 9 months ago, so the answer is technically yes. But the truth is more complex. The question touches an emerging part of my identity that is still feeling its way into the world. I struggle to introduce myself as “Sister Rosy” without pinching myself in disbelief. Whose life is this?  What’s in a name?

The Sisters of Holy Wisdom Monstery after Rosy’s first profession. L-R, Sisters Joanne Kollasch, Rosy Kandathil, Mary David Walgenbach and Lynne Smith

First profession marks an important transition from the period of novitiate to the committed life of a sister.  There is a formal ceremony before friends and family, promises are exchanged before a community and there’s a public declaration in the act.  But it is also an in-between. Although I am not yet fully professed, I am seriously committed for a period of years to live the Benedictine promises of obedience, stability and conversion to the monastic way of life in this monastery.

First profession is a landmark moment, but it isn’t the destination. If everything is working right, discernment continues alongside the community as I daily grow into my identity as a sister, integrating the monastery’s vision, values and gifts, its network of relationships, traditions and stories into my own. Formation and incorporation of a new member into an established community is a slow, deliberate process that takes time.

I have heard friends talk about the vaguely surreal moment after their marriage ceremony when they are first referred to as Mr. and Mrs. So-and-So, or after the birth of a child when they hear themselves called mother or father. Initially, being called a spouse or parent provokes a jolt of emotions: shock, delight, amazement, fear, anxiety. That tiny shift in moniker communicates a seismic shift in identity, responsibilities and relationship.

Sister Rosy continues to take her turn working in the monastery garden

Yet, on the inside, there’s still a nagging recognition that it’s just the same-old-me in here.  How to reconcile the discomfiting contrast? Often, it is our communities that make the adjustment first, reflecting back the reality of what’s changed and helping us daily live into a new, expanded identity.

When someone calls me Sister Rosy it reminds me that I have made a formal commitment: to live in sibling relationship with all persons, true to the Gospel calling of Jesus Christ who has made us one family, all children of God (John 1:12). There is a leap of joy inside, a spontaneous response to hearing myself referred to as one’s sister, and simultaneously, a soberness too.  Living in sibling relationship with the world is a declaration of profound solidarity, and sacrifice. I am not always up to the challenge. Most days, I would rather just be called Rosy—there is less to live up to there, less to disappoint.

I still remember talking with a good friend who had attended my first profession ceremony. Talking afterwards, she suddenly said with vehemence: “I’ll never call you sister. It’s too formal. You’ll always be Rosy to me.” As much as I could understand her resistance to a title that she associated with her years in parochial school, it made me sad to hear it. It will take time for both of us to adjust. As much as I wanted her to know that I will always be her Rosy, I am also living into and discerning an identity. I need all the support I can get.

I don’t doubt that it’ll take time to become comfortable introducing myself as Sister Rosy. I anticipate feeling that twinge of disbelief for a while. But with the help of others and the years of formation ahead with my community, I’m hopeful that—like parents and spouses all over the world—I’ll eventually be able to become what I say I am.

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Read other blog posts from Sister Rosy in her series, Letters home.

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