As we celebrate the Solemnity of the Epiphany, I thought I would take this opportunity to write a wee summary of my vocation discernment journey, over the last two years.
I want to show how the Holy Spirit guided me through the powerfull, Primary intercession of Our Lady and the intercession Communion of Saints.
I have met many people in person and on-line, who are also discerning God's Will for their lives and vocations, which I have found very exciting. Here's how the Holy Spirit has led me.
The Communion of Saints
The first thing you realise, very quickly, is that with God there are no accidents. So, one of the first pieces of advice I would give anyone discerning God's Will for them, would be to take a closer look at your own personal 'Communion of Saints'.
It's impossible to overstate how important the Graces are, that we receive during our own Baptism. And as I have found, it's also really important to study the Saint of your own Baptism day. I was Baptised on 6th October, so for me that's St Bruno.
The second thing I learnt was that when you are reading up about a certain Saint, God isn't calling you to be an exact carbon copy of your Baptism day Saint but the Holy Spirit will bring your attention to certain aspects of that Saints life, that God uses as 'sign posts', to show you what His Will is for your vocation and life.
How does the Holy Spirit 'bring your attention' to something? Well for me, I feel this great inner 'Epiphany' movement inside my heart and soul. Nothing crazy, or dramatic, just a very peacefull, quietly confident 'ah-ha' moment.
With St Bruno, I felt the Holy Spirit give me prompt when I read about his almost allergic reaction to the duplicity of a consecrated religious who was, as the modern vernacular would put it, a bit 'out of order'. St Bruno stood up and spoke out very openly and publicly about this individual, who in revenge, turned around and knocked down St Bruno's house. From this I was able to get a sense of real peace and purpose that it had been God's Will for me to raise safeguarding concerns, about the monastic order I'd spent time because God in His great Love was using this for a great purpose. This was truly a great comfort.
The next aspect of St Bruno's life I felt the Holy Spirit bring my attention to was what St Bruno did next. God used St Bruno to found a completely new interpretation of the contemplative vocation.
Before St Bruno there were Hermits living separate solitary vocations and there were monastery enclosed orders of monks and nuns. The Holy Spirit, working through St Bruno, brought to the Catholic Church a completely new interpretation of the Catholic Benedictine contemplative vocation - the Carthusian Order
The Carthusians lived a Solitary contemplative life, which at the same time had opportunities for community based prayer and recreation and most radically, whom also did not live entirely within a traditional monastic enclosure - going out, once a week, for a long walk together in the beauty of the surrounding nature.
I wonder if many people in the Catholic Church, at that time, were a bit scandalised by St Bruno's new Carthusian contemplative vocation format, which seemed to combine elements of several different established vocations?
I found all this a great comfort too because, after I left the enclosed silent monastery, where I was a Novice, God seemed to bring straight into a completely new expression of this contemplative life - it all just seemed to land straight on my lap.
This new expression involved many aspects of traditional Benedictine monastic spirituality - but living entirely in the world, yet not entirely of the world. A vocation cantered on Christ through St Benedict's 'Ora et Labora': On-line Eucharistic Adoration, monastic Divine Office before The Blessed Sacrament on-line, daily Mass, First Fri/Sat Tabernacle night vigils and daily Rosary, Divine Mercy and other prayers, especially Our Lady of Muswell's Perpetual Novena.
Also, quite naturally God guided me to the communal prayer of daily Mass in a parish. God even guided me to other souls living similar vocations, on line or in daily life, Catholic and Christian, with whom I have formed an unofficial 'spiritual cluny's ' with and one, who lives close to me, I meet up with sometimes on/around Solemnities.
My vocation is not totally silent, although I do have periods of silence. I have not naturally limited myself to one hour on-line and feel I can find and be inspired by God everywhere, although obviously you do have to be quick on the computer mouse if something on-line turns out to be not quite right. I've found it really informs my prayer life and helps me grow in understanding on human nature and all its brilliance and all its wee foibles.
St Elizabeth of the Trinity has also proved to be a very significant member of my personal Communion of Saints.
St Elizabeth was my Novice reading book, when I was in the monastery. After I left I joined a local parish that by God's Providence had an actual Relic of St Elizabeth of The Trinity. If you stop for a minute and think about the random chance probability of that, it's astounding. God really does nothing by accident.
When I studied this Saint as a Novice the central thing that jumped out was this quote of hers in the above picture. So, finding myself in a parish with an actual Relic of her gave me real confidence that it was God's Will for me to be a contemplative in the world and not within a monastery enclosure.
The next great Saints in my personal Communion were St Benedict and St Gregory the Great. I had a copy of this wee book in the monastery and after I left I read it daily.
Every time I opened the book, it fell naturally to Chapter 16, where St Benedict advises someone who has entered into religious life not to become a consecrated religious, as a form of spiritual protection and helped deliver him from whatever spiritual warfare he'd been suffering with prior to that, or would experience in the future.
This was the first very clear sign that it was not God's Will for me to become a consecrated religious Solitary.
That's when I really started to have confidence and feel a real sense of peace that it was God's Will for me to be a Lay vocation.
That's when I made my private dedication vows of Chastity, Poverty, Stability and Obedience to the Holy Father, which are recognised in Canon Law.
I was so confident in this prompt from the Holy Spirit that I included this information in in my safeguarding emails and documents, back in 2021. God is awesome!
So if I can accept God's prompts that I'm the person from Chapter 16, whom God warns against taking formal consecrated religious vows as a form of protection... then what 'possession' was I suffering from, like the man from Chapter 16 to begin with?
When I thought about it, one of my biggest 'treasures' was my career and the life I was able to live from the good salary it gave me. Had this become a false God to me? Is that why God invited me to give it up and focus my life entirely on Him?
So then, the next question for me, in my discernment journey, was to ask God, why on earth He sent me to that particular monastic congregation, if it was not His Will for me to follow the vocation of an enclosed consecrated religious?
The answer to that came from the next Saint in my personal Communion - St Maurus. St Maurus of The Immaculate Heart was my Novice name.
One of the most well known aspects of St Maurus was that under obedience to St Benedict, he saved another monk, his younger brother St Placid from drowning. The moral of the incident was that it was not St Maurice own power that saved St Placid, it was infact God's power working through St Benedict, using the physical body of St Maurus that saved St Placid from drowning.
Now it all made sense to me. We know from the Bible that God's power is perfected in weakness and that He always chooses the least worthy to work through, least a man should boast / think he's the one that did the miracle, (2 Corinthians 12:9).
It's then that I realised how much God loves this particular monastic congregation and wants to heal it and help it.
Now God has shown me how He used my wee hands to bring forward a great number of other women, who had also left the same monastic congregation and together we all submitted our spiritual abuse testimonies to the Diocese / Independent Safeguarding teams. I have never spoken to the majority of ex-Nuns involved, we were all in at different ranks and decades and yet all our spiritual abuse testimonies were consistent and all linked to one particular Nun.
The sheer volume of these spiritual abuse testimonies made it impossible for the Catholic Church to ignore the problem and now this monastic congregation is signed up to the Church's safeguarding policy for the first time in it's history, with on-going Church support to stop it, metaphorically, from drowning again, like St Placid.
This also tied in, for me, when I looked again at my Confirmation Saint, St Felicity. She was just a working class girl who became one of the Church's most well known early Roman Christian martyrs.
After sacrificing her own opportunity to become a Mother, and arranging for her new born child to be adopted, St Felicity was sentenced to be mauled to death, in the public arena, by wild, female Heifers. Then she had her throat slit by a Roman soldier.
Why? Well God's ways are not our ways. In the blood of the martyrs lay the seeds of conversion. The history of the Catholic Church shows that the most sucessfull way to bring about conversions and salvations of souls in through martyrdoms.
Yikes!
What's the upside?
Well, just eternal life in Heaven. Jesus tells us in the Beatitudes that the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to those who in this life were persecuted for their Faith, for standing up for the Truth of Jesus Christ. This earthly life is a blink, Heaven is for eternity - sounds like a good deal to me! God is Genius.
So, by this point in my discernment journey, I was really starting to feel confident, that through my personal Communion of Saints, God was showing me what His Will had been and was for me, in terms of the future of my vocation - but I wanted to be sure...
The absolute best way to 'test the Spirits', as it were and double check that any vocation guidance you feel you are getting from God is infact genuine, is to go straight to The Blessed Virgin Mary.
So that's what my discernment focused on next.
First I went back to spend time thinking about what happened to me in 2017, at Pope Francis's Anniversary Mass, Fatima, Portugal, for the Canonisation of two child Seers, from Our Lady of Fatima apparitions in 1917; Jacinta and Francisco.
During this Mass a pearl white Rosary, bought from the Miraculous Medal Chapel, Paris, turned grey. As soon as I saw it, I felt God give me the word 'Poverty' and a call to offer up the last two things I had to give, my autonomy and freedom of movement.
Back in 2017, I contacted that monastic congregation, as soon as I was back in the UK and within a year had left career, property, pension, possessions, life of travel/culture etc, to enter that particular monastery, first as an Aspirant, Postulant and then Novice.
So, thanks to all the fruits of my post-monastery discernment, I was confident that it was not God's Will for me to remain in that monastic congregation, but I still wanted to try and find out if it was still God Will for me to surrender 'Freedom of Movement' and 'Autonomy' - albeit in a different vocation - as a Lay Benedictine Solitary. But how would this look like in practice?
Well, the answer to that was Yes, God was still asking me to surrender these things and the proof of that was the Grace God gave me to keep on praying St Benedict's monastic Divine Office Schema - even after I starting working a 10 hour shift job, in a local Care Home.
And even now, two years later, despite leaving the monastic enclosure, by God's Grace, I am still following St Benedict's monastic Divine Office Schema, structuring my day around these 7 prayer times and using on-line Eucharistic Adoration.
This is how God Wills for me to surrender my daily autonomy and freedom of movement. How wonderfull.
On the days when I was work my 10 hours shifts at a local Care Home, with a few adjustments to the traditional Horarium, I start my morning 30 online Adoration and Divine Offices: Nocturns, Lauds, Prime, Terce, Sext, None, before Blessed Sacrament on-line, an hour earlier than non work days, between 4 / 4.30am - 6am, with the Angleus prayer at 6am.
On work days too, I finish at 6pm and so pray my Vespers and Compline together back at home. My Compline on work and non work days are prayed much later than the standard 7.30pm, but it's still every night before bedtime.
On my non work days I start my 1 hour Adoration and Nocturn Divine Office at 5/5.30am - 7am, then Lauds straight after at 7am or later at 7.30am, Prime & Terce at 8.50am, and try to leave for Mass at 9.20am, as we have the Rosary now at 9.40am before 10am Mass. On Saturdays Mass is 6pm so I pray my morning Prime and Terce at 9am. Then I pray my Sext Divine Office at 12pm after the Angelus prayer, I pray the Divine Mercy at 3pm, with None Divine Office and Litany of Humility. At 4pm I pray Vespers. I now pray my third Angelus at 6pm, on both work and non work days. Finally before I go to bed I pray my second Rosary, several perpetual Novena's to Our Lady and Compline. I am considering praying my Rosary and Novena's after Vespers this year, to see how that works.
During my work days my boss very kindly gave me permission to use an alarm clock in my pocket to remind me when its time to say my little marker prayers, when I can't stop to pray the full Terce, Sext, None or Vespers Divine Officers at the traditional times, and that is now working really well. My Marker prayers are: Angelus at 12pm, 3pm Divine Mercy Prayer, the Glory Be at 4pm and the Angelus again at 6pm. I pray the full Terce, Sext and None Pslams and Bible readings with Nocturns and Lauds before I go to work.
On both work and non work days, after I have completed my initial online Adoration before Nocturns, I always pray the following prayers: the Perpetual Novena to Our Lady of Muswell, Pope Francis Year of St Joseph prayer, Consecration to Our Lady and a Perpetual Novena to The Sacred Heart.
On both work/non work days I always pray St Benedict's Nocturn Invitory Psalms 3 & 94 in the dark, from memory, before The Blessed Sacrament on-line, as I read somewhere that this is what the Carthusians do, and my Baptism Saint is St Bruno. I never attempted to consciously learn these Psalms by heart, I honestly just felt one day the Holy Spirit prompt me that I knew then without the book and when I tried it, it was true. there of loads of other Psalms that I pray the same everyday from my book of Psalms that this has not happened with, for some reason. I don't totally understand why God granted me this gift of Grace but I love it and am really gratefull for it as I find these Psalms really soothing and encouraging, particularly in light of my recovery from experiencing spiritual abuse, in the monastic community I was a Novice in, which I and a great number of other women, subsequently went on to raise with the Diocese and Independent Safeguarding teams - many of us who then experienced various forms of personal retribution / 'pay-back' attempts by that particular monastic congregation against us, because we spoke up.
As I begin my third year of discernment to the Lay Benedictine Solitary vocation, as a wee seed for the Holy Spirit to bring back the Benedictine Nuns to the fully restored Our Lady of Muswell Holy Well and Pilgrim shrine - I have experienced such a lot spiritual warfare / attacks against my vocation and personal character recently, that for protection, I now consecrate myself to Our Lady anew every morning and pray the Angelus 3 times a day: 6am, 12pm and 6pm, so as to keep myself safely under The Mantle of The Immaculate Heart, and this has been a great comfort to me.
I've read up a bit about how new monastic orders are founded and there are huge amounts of spiritual warfare trials that go hand in hand with it. So even for me, just as a wee precursor, a Lay Benedictine Solitary, who will probably be long gone to heaven by the time all this is fulfilled, the ol' boy will try and do anything and use anyone, consecrated or lay, in order to stop me praying St Benedict's daily monastic Divine Office.
We know from the Bible that Our Lady's heal crushes the head of the serpent. You can not defeat satan or withstand any spiritual warfare against your own vocation, without Our Lady's protection.
I know the Mother General of the monastic order I left, also left the congregation for 5 years before returning. I'm not sure if it was God's Will for her to keep up her full daily Divine Office and Adoration during those five years, or support herself financially and be able to live independently from her family but so far, two years in, it seems to be God's Will for me.
From conversations with other Catholic Religious and some of the ex-Nuns from the monastic congregation I left, it turns out that this was a bit unusual, and yet it is as natural as breathing to me. You could even say it is breathing to me - like oxygen. Well, that's what the Divine Office and Eucharistic Adoration Grace is, after all, oxygen for the soul and for the whole Church. The metaphorical 'fuel' in the Lay Solitary vocation 'stoke-hold' engine room.
The next question I had for Our Lady was: why did God put a statue and a copy of the Novena of Our Lady of Muswell, in the Novice classroom of the monastic congregation I was in? Especially, as this was the London parish I belonged to, when my Rosary turned grey at Pope Francis Mass in Portugal, 2017.
In response, Our Lady put I little thought into my head and I decided to see if there were any books that had been written about Our Lady of Muswell's ancient Marian Shrine and Holy Well.
I saw an advert for the Centre of Catholic Studies at Durham University, on Facebook, so I emailed them. To my surprise and joy they did have one wee book.
This book on Our Lady of Muswell came from the central London Catholic Library, which had been closed due to a damp problem and moved with the rest of the collection to the Bill Bryson library, up at Durham university. Only 5% of these books were available to the public and this single, wee book on Our Lady of Muswell was one of them. Think about the odds of that! That's how God gets your attention.
Durham University kindly gave me permission, during my retreat week last year, to have a pass to their library to come and study this book for myself.
I had never been to Durham before but I soon realised that the entire town is built and centred on and around a huge central, elevated, beautifull Cathedral, under which is the tomb of a very famous Catholic Saint - St Cuthbert.
St Cuthbert spent time in a Benedictine monastery but then followed a vocation call to become a Benedictine Solitary who lived on an Island called Lindisfarne.
And guess what the name of the wee little book, about Our Lady of Muswell ancient Holy Well and Shrine was called? ... "An Island of Clerkenwell" ... Bingo.
Not only that, in the book, it describes how the last Prioress of the Muswell Benedictines Motherhouse, in Clerkenwell, central London, tried to save the outer London Holy Well and shrine of Our Lady of Muswell, from being destroyed in the Reformation, by signing it over to a Lay man, John Avery, one of Henry VIII's housekeeping staff!
The whole experience was just an enormous comfort and encouragement. So, it really did seem that it was God's Will for my vocation to be a Lay Benedictine Solitary back in Muswell Hill - an area once known as the Island of Clerkenwell. My wee island, my Lindisfarne.
Jesus is so romantic!
Now, the last question I took to Our Lady for confirmation on, was about the novena to Our Lady of Muswell, which I found in the Novice classroom of the monastic order I was a Novice with.
When I read that Novena there is a line which references to the Benedictine Nuns of Our Lady of Muswell's ancient Shrine and Holy Well and that once more Our Lady would be honoured again under this ancient title. When I read that, it was like reading a private letter that you Father had written to someone else, saying that He wanted the Benedictines to return to the modern London parish shrine, of Our Lady of Muswell.
So convinced of this, was I, that I went straight to the Mother General of that monastic order to tell her. She told me that she would need 20 new vocations/Perpetual Professions before she could consider setting up a new Foundation in Muswell Hill.
So, at the time I figured my role in this would be to pray for it as an Enclosed Nun and if this was not my vocation, maybe God wanted me to be involved in this in another way? I transferred to a second monastery, in the same congregation, as a Novice and was stunned to find out that the Chaplain had been a Deacon in Our Lady of Muswell's London parish. I just felt like God was continually re-orientating me towards Our Lady of Muswell.
When it came towards the final stages of my Novitiate, I started to really pray for guidance because by this point I had experienced and witnessed so many things which I knew were not The Rule of Benedict and seemed to be safeguarding concerns. In both of the communities I lived in the vocation of the Solitary had come to mind but I only knew about the Hermit vocation and also wasn't sure if I was feeling that way in response to my bad experience.
I left the monastic congregation in December 2020 and through that same Chaplain, who by that point had also left, I made contact with 3 other ex-Nuns of the same monastic congregation. They were such a comfort to me because it confirmed all my suspicions that what I had experienced and witnessed was not infact normal monastic formation but infact spiritual abuse.
I was shocked to hear about the substantial number of other women, who had also left the same monastic congregation, over decades. Some had kept their vocations by going oversea's, joining other congregations but many of them had been sort of 'trashed' in Church circles, after they left and their vocations not supported nor their spiritual abuse testimonies believe or effectively acted on.
My heart absolutely broke for them. Many still seemed really traumatised by their spiritual abuse experience, which in some cases had had a really negative impact on their physical health. None of this seemed right at all, especially as the Nun who all the abuse could be traced back to was still in a position of power in the same monastic congregation.
At the time I wondered if it was God's will for some of these spiritual abuse survivors to come together and re-discover their monastic vocations and be a new congregation of Benedictine Nuns back in Muswell Hill. There were so many ex-Prioresses and Mother Mistresses in the ex-Nun's group! But you could see that these women's spiritual abuse experience had left a permanent trauma mark - many of them couldn't even try praying the Psalms because they started to have nightmares about their past abuse experiences in the monastery again. The whole thing was so shocking and so wrong.
Well, it turns out that there was a connection between all these ex-Nuns and Our Lady of Muswell after all, but not in the way I first thought.
A great number of these ex-Nuns, women who I don't know, or have ever spoken to, heard about what I had experienced, through their networks and came forward in great numbers to give their spiritual abuse testimonies too - some for the very first time, after suffering in silence and isolation for years.
This in itself proved to be such a healing experience for them, many were able to get some 'closure' on the emotional trauma they had experienced. Then, when they found out that this monastic congregation had for the first time in its history, had to come 'in-line', in to obedience with the Magisterium and sign up to the Church's safeguarding policy, that also proved to be very healing, a great comfort and a tangible taste of Justice.
Our Lady of Muswell's ancient Shrine was first and foremost a healing water Holy Well and although the Holy Waters are still inaccessible to the public their Graces seemed to flow out across the vast sea of all these ex-Nun spiritual abuse survivors, of this particular monastic congregation and so, also, in this way Our Lady has once more been honoured under her ancient title.. That was the connection to the other ex-Nuns!
As for me, my connection to God's plan for the Benedictines to return to Our Lady of Muswell parish/shrine, custodians once more of the restored ancient Holy Well, is just to be a wee Benedictine monastic seed for the Holy Spirit. I read up on the different ways in which God brings about new religious orders and this way is quite common.
Jesus is so poetic and romantic!
As wonderfull and exciting as the last two years of discernment have been, they have not been without their fair share of trials and testings.
This photo shows a wee postcard I had with me in my Novice Cell, in the monastery. It's the Holy Face of Jesus, taken from the Turin Shroud, which I now keep on my home alter Bible.
On the back of this card is a single Bible line quote from Isaiah 54:10:
" Though the mountains be shaken
and the hills be removed,
yet my unfailing love for you will not be shaken
nor my covenant of peace be removed,”
says the Lord, who has compassion on you."
Now, oddly, over the last 3 ish years in the monastic congregation and the last 2 years since I left, it never once crossed my mind to look up the rest of this Bible passage, to get the context.
But then something wonderfull happened...
During a recent bit of criticms of my Lay vocation, by someone who has never actually spoken to me face to face about my discernment journey, they seemed to be implying that I was a bit of a 'fake'. That very same week this Isaiah quote came up in one of the daily Mass readings - giving me at last the full context of this wee Bible quote! I finally got it and it was sooo well timed and wonderfull!
Basically, this part of scripture is where God is telling a woman, symbolic of Israel, that her suffering is over and whatever sin's she may have committed are now forgiven, forgotten and God has taken her back as His fertile Bride of her youth!
Wow. What a boost!
In terms of discernment I felt a lovely encouraging prompt from the Holy Spirit that my wee. humble private Dedication vows, really were an accepted Spiritual Espousal to Jesus!
Instantly this brought to mind another huge figure in my personal Communion of Saints - St Catherine of Sienna.
The parish in Manchester, where I received the Catholic Sacraments of Confession, Holy Communion and Confirmation is named after her, as was my Primary School!
Apart from that, my other connection to St Catherine also made me smile. St Catherine was a Lay vocation too, who wasn't shy about writing huge volumes of letters, in order to give her 'truth to power' , in the Catholic Church of her time. Ha!
This was a really great comfort that my 'John the Baptist' multi-email approach, to raising all my safeguarding concerns about the monastic order I left, within the Catholic Church also had God's blessing and was infact His Will for me too. Phew!
The John the Baptist approach I've been taking also got another comforting boost the first time I visited St Mungo's, Passionist parish, in Glasgow.
I really felt an enormous sense of peace when I was looking up at this window, in this photo, whilst waiting to go into Confession.
The window depicts, Jesus as The Sacred Heart, flanked on either side by St Margaret Mary Alacoque and St John the Baptist.
This showed me that is was God's Will for my Lay Benedictine Solitary Charism, to focus on continued devotion to the Sacred Heart - which for me is expressed through First Friday night Tabernacle vigils. And also to be a John the Baptist wee voice crying out in the desert, about the spiritual abuse that I and many other women have experienced in that monastic order.
Wonderfully, it also turned out that the Priest over at St Mungo's, who became my post monastic confessor, was an old Passionist friend from London! What are the odds? Yup. With God there are no accidents.
Isn't God wonderfull?
And finally...
There was one last beautifull discovery in my post monastery, vocation discernment journey, that really helped me understand my personal Charism and how Jesus wishes our Sacred Espousal to be, day to day.
I am currently living in Largs, Scotland. Right after I left the monastery, I discovered that there was a connection between Largs and Our Lady of Muswell's ancient London Holy Well and Shrine.
The first person to receive a miraculous cure from Our Lady of Muswell's Holy Well was Scots King Malcolm IV. Now, it so happens that King Malcolm IV gave the lands of Largs to a gentleman in his realm, Alan of Galloway, who then passed it down to his youngest daughter. This is the woman in the photo.
She was married to John Balliol and was so deeply in love with her Spouse, that after he passed from this life, her love for him did not diminish in the slightest. In fact her her desire to still be in his presence, although he had past, drove her to have her Spouse's heart embalmed and put in an Ivory casket. During meal times this Ivory casket, containing her deceased Spouses heart, was brought out and put at the head of the dining table, whilst she ate her own meal, in its company.
In the end she herself was buried with this Ivory casket in her arms, entombed in a monastery she herself founded in Scotland - Sweetheart Abbey.
When I read this for the first time, I thought there was something really beautifull about this Love story and the Ivory casket, containing her deceased Spouses heart, seemed totally symbolic of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, encased in the white Host of The Eucharist.
This indestructible love story really resonated with me, as a Lay Benedictine Solitary, using on-line Eucharistic Adoration, in the small and cosy space of my wee Solitary, often using my laptop propped up on cushions, on my knee before me.
I really felt this was a wee affirmation from the Holy Spirit, as to how Jesus wanted our daily Sacred Espousal prayer life and personal relationship to be. With me, Jesus was asking for this level of intimacy and closeness - about a million miles away from the most austere Piety you could think of and yet, two years later, I am convinced I have the best Catholic vocation out of all!
And going back to the story of this woman, who was so in love with her Spouse - guess what her name was?
In Gaelic she was called Devorguilla.
In English it means 'True Testimony'.
There are no accidents with God.
Jesus really is so romantic.
I LOVE my Lay Benedictine Solitary vocation.
Thank you Immaculate and Sacred Hearts!
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