Cover Story
Witness from Within
A peek inside the life of a cloister
By Ali Clark and Sarah Jane von Haack, photography by Jeff Dachowski
“O beata solitudo, sola beatitudo.” The monastic prayer, “Oh blessed solitude, only beatitude,” borders the top of a plain wooden wall inside the front room of the Precious Blood Monastery in Manchester. Only one opening is noticeable, a small grate that separates the Sisters from the outside world. You are slowly admitted through three different doors, up a staircase, and past a row of grated openings leading to the cloister, towards a room at the end of the hallway. Another grate divides the private space in two. You sit filled with curiosity, and maybe just a little nervous, facing the door on the other side of the bars that separate two worlds.
Sister Christine Marie Maier, a Sister Adorer of the Precious Blood, emerges from the cloister. She appears gentle and soft-spoken, with a ready smile and a hint of mischievousness in her eye.
Sister Christine Marie says that she is from Holland Patent, New York, and is the third of six children — though she acted like the oldest. Sometimes bossy and loud, always stubborn and determined, young Christine could be counted on for fun times. She loved going to parties and she loved to dance.
As she approached adulthood, Christine had a hard time discerning her vocation. From childhood, she was interested in religious life. She recalls that in second grade her CCD teacher, Sister Cynthia, asked which girls wanted to become nuns. She found herself in a quandary: “I wanted to become a nun, but I didn’t know if God wanted me to become a nun,” she explains, “so I didn’t raise my hand.” Much to Christine’s amazement, Sister Cynthia announced that she bet all the girls who hadn’t raised their hands would become nuns.
Nonetheless, throughout high school, Christine remained unsure if religious life was for her. After graduation, she worked in a hospital where she met her boyfriend. She decided to attend Magdalen College in Warner, New Hampshire, for a year, and then get married. But the best laid plans have a way of changing. Christine eventually broke up with her boyfriend and decided to do all four years at the college. Much to her surprise, she succeeded in obtaining her degree.
After college, Christine taught at Notre Dame High School in Utica, New York, near her home. She also took on a waitressing job in the evenings. She reconciled with her boyfriend and they got engaged. Thoughts of the religious life fell by the wayside altogether. But after another break up with her fiancé, Christine decided that she needed to get away. She took a job as a nanny in West Virginia, and soon afterward returned to Magdalen College to work in the admissions office. She was trying hard to find a life for herself, but nothing was working out.
One day, not long after her return to the college, Christine met two religious brothers from West Virginia who were visiting the campus. After a few minutes in her company, one of the brothers looked at Christine and boldly said, “You’ll never be happy until you become a Sister.” Surprised and livid, she stormed back to her office, but in the deep recesses of her heart, she recognized Christ speaking to her.
Sometime later, Christine heard about the Precious Blood Monastery. She already knew that if she were ever to enter the convent, it had to be a cloistered community. “The main thing that I wanted to do in religious life,” she explains, “was chant the Divine Office.” Christine rushed to the phone and called the superior. She hastily told her that she was interested in their order and wanted to visit. The superior said there would be a retreat in a few weeks. But Christine persisted. “No, you don’t understand. I think I have a vocation.” Calmly the superior replied, “If you have a vocation now, you’ll have one after Easter.”
The day finally arrived. Christine remembers the overwhelming emotion she felt during her drive to the monastery: “On my way there, this fountain of joy was just spilling over. It was as if I was going to a rock concert that I had wanted to go to all my life. I was giggling and laughing and just so happy. Nothing could compare to it, absolutely nothing.”
But she still had her own ideas and when Christine visited the chapel during her visit she started to tell Jesus what she wanted to do with her life. The more she talked about her plans the deeper became her turmoil. Finally Christine said, “All right Jesus, I’ll do whatever you want me to do.” The turmoil left and she was “overpowered with joy and peace.”
Christine entered the cloister in 1988, but it was not immediately “happily ever after.” She was still telling Jesus what she wanted to do and she was also telling others what to do. “When I admitted it was a fault, I realized I had to stop that bad habit along with others. That was difficult. It is always hard to admit your faults and to work on eliminating them. Now I realize my faults bring me closer to Jesus because I’m always asking Him to help me overcome them. When I do overcome them I know that He is giving me the grace to become more loving and reflect His love to others.”
In early 2008, Sister Christine Marie became the Vocations Director for her community. “When girls come to visit, I tell them the religious life is a tremendous gift for everyone — for the girl entering and for the world — because of her sacrifices and her prayers. I tell them how fulfilling it is.”
Life at the Precious Blood Monastery is structured around prayer, specifically the Divine Office, the “Prayer of the Church.” Every two hours or so, the sisters join together in the chapel to pray. “We pray for everyone,” Sister Christine Marie explains, “priests and religious, members of the Church, the souls in purgatory, and for you!” When not at prayer, the sisters go about their many and varied daily duties. Some have administrative and secretarial responsibilities; others work in the kitchen, serve as sacristan in the chapel, or look after guests. The sisters oversee the distribution of altar breads to the parishes in the diocese. They also have a gift shop that offers many religious items, including prayer intention cards. For a small offering, these cards let people know that they are remembered in the prayers of the community. Sister Christine Marie explains, “We still work for our livelihood, which is no different than the world. The superior assigns each sister a job according to her talents.”
But the sisters’ lives are not all work and prayer and no fun. They have time to enjoy one another as well as their beautiful grounds, including a few gardens, and even a backyard basketball hoop. Their lives are further enriched by times of retreat, instruction, and each sister’s own personal interests.
Yet, the primary end of their lives is prayer. “The duty of contemplative orders is to pray for the Church,” Sister Christine Marie explains. “Here at the monastery, our prayer life is first, and our work is second. However, we try to do work that is conducive to prayer also. The activities we do allow us to pray while we’re doing them,” she says. “I work in the kitchen, and it is very easy for me to do my work and still pray and have Jesus and Mary on my mind. I can picture the Blessed Mother in the kitchen cutting up lettuce or Jesus washing his hands.”
To Sister Christine Marie, the cloistered life is ideal for contemplative prayer. “The reason we’re here is because we have to be set apart, from all the clutter, all the extra things. Then we can be focused on God and pray for the Church and the needs of the world.”
Sister Christine Marie speaks with awe of the special vocation she and her community enjoy. “Contemplative prayer is mysterious; it is the highest form of prayer. This type of prayer comes through God, and you can only make yourself available to it.” Though the vocation comes as a gift, she says, the person must respond in very concrete ways. “When we make our vows, we vow to really focus on our relationship with Jesus Christ. We seek to imitate Christ, to imitate the Blessed Mother. Everything we do in our life, we do with an intention that it is going to make us a better and more complete people, because Christ Himself did everything well.
“Some people,” she continues, “think we don’t do anything in here. But in a quiet, hidden way, we work for others; we pray and we sacrifice. We unite our offering with Jesus to the Eternal Father. We’re helping people to accept the gift of salvation.”
Sister Christine Marie explains that there are different types of pleasures in this world: physical, intellectual, and the highest of all: spiritual pleasure. With a smile on her face and a sparkle of clarity in her eye, she sums up what her vocation means to her. “There is nothing greater than having a relationship with Jesus Christ. Nothing.”