Hand to the Plow

Faith is needed, not only when first embracing the vocation, but throughout life, especially when one is faced by special challenges such as loneliness or distress, or illness or death in the family.  The religious sister must remain unmoved in faith, trusting that her Spouse will provide all for her loved ones, and that it is not his will that she be part of their daily life or that she return to the natural human ties of her family.  One cannot live in the spirit of faith without the practice of custody of the heart and of asceticism, since our fallen human nature always pulls us downwards towards the natural.

In order to sustain the separation which helps the religious to live more fully on the supernatural level, she chooses to bind her wayward will and heart to certain regulations, as set forth by her particular institute.  Typically, these regulations include some determinations of how often, and in what way, the religious will have contact with her family and friends outside the convent.  The regulations of an institute of contemplative life will differ from those of an institute of apostolic life, as their separation from the world is more absolute.  The regulations also vary from institute to institute, of course, but it almost always includes some determinations about when a sister may visit family, and how often she may be in contact with them, be it by letter or by telephone or by some other means.

Modern Means of Communication
Until recent decades, the regulations regarding contact with family and friends were relatively simple to arrange.  There were certain days allowed for visits home or for family and friends to visit.  There was a rule about when one could receive or make a telephone call and about how often one could send a letter.  But then there appeared the new forms of communication, including cellular telephones, Skype, e-mail, and social networking websites.  In what follows, I will focus especially on two forms of modern communication: the cellular telephone and e-mail.  The modern means of communication can be used for noble ends, but they also present a number of challenges and dangers even to good human living, and, a forteriori, to the consecrated religious sister.

I would like to mention briefly the use of social communication websites, such as Facebook, and the use of the internet, in general.  Many good books and articles have already been written about the dangers of Facebook, not for consecrated religious specifically, but in general, and so I only mention here that Facebook, and other social networking services, pose distinct challenges. 35

The internet is a useful tool for doing research, and also for finding information, or reading or viewing the news.  Even informational websites, such as those which provide the news, often include links to other articles and web pages.  On websites containing the news, links to other articles often appear as soon as one has selected a given article to read or video to view.  Although some articles contain important news, there seem to be many articles which are rather frivolous or are mere gossip.  The appearing of new articles and new options happens often on the internet, so that one finds oneself going from one article or video to the next one.  Those who create the websites know man’s tendency to idle curiosity, and play into this tendency.  It is so easy, too, to lose one’s focus while using the internet.  One can begin by looking up one thing, one sees a link to something else, follows it, and then on easily loses focus and often the sense of time.  The use of internet is a challenge: strong discipline and the practice of the virtues, especially the virtues of fortitude and of prudence, are needed to use it in a way that it remains a good and does not become a danger to the consecrated religious life.  One of the challenges of the new means of communication is that the discipline required of sisters must be a self-discipline, because many of the modern means of communication are not mediated by superiors, but are accessed from a computer.  It is ever more important, then, that religious sisters be formed in the practice of all the virtues which are needed to support the total gift of self to the Divine Spouse.

The needs of the apostolic religious often practically force her to carry a cellular telephone.  Having a private telephone number can be a temptation for both the religious and her family and friends.  No one, after all, need know if she is making or receiving private telephone calls.  Unlike land-lines, where often the superior mediates telephone calls, one can call the religious sister directly on her cell phone.  Instead of calling, one could even just send a text message.  One typically carries the cell phone on one’s person all the time, also in the enclosure, at prayer, during common exercises.  How easily, then, the regular convent life can be interrupted and enclosure violated by telephone calls of whatever kind.  As Sister Marysia Weber, R.S.M., mentioned in the program, “The New Media and Religious Life: How an Awareness of the Benefits and Risks of Electronic Media Assists and Hinders the Consecrated Religious in Communicating the Love of Jesus Christ,” Skype makes possible “virtual” visits with family and friends.

Just as with the cell phone, most religious with an apostolic work are required to use e-mail.  In a certain respect, e-mail is much like writing a letter.  In effect, one writes a letter and, instead bringing it to the mailbox, one presses a button and it is sent.  The letter then arrives within minutes.  The difference between regular letters and e-mail lies precisely in the speed.  With regular mail, one must wait: wait for the letter to arrive and then await a response.  With regular mail, at its quickest, one would have to wait a day for arrival and a day for the response.  Text messages are similar to e-mail with respect to speed, but have the added feature of being necessarily brief, leading users to resort often to abbreviations and to omitting the usual formalities used in letter writing.

In our spiritual life, very few things are instant; it is rather an organic growth, which takes time.  The religious sister, and every Christian, must learn to wait, to wait on the Lord.  Every religious sister must be a contemplative.  The practically instant communication of e-mail does not assist the religious to attain or maintain a contemplative spirit.  The speed of the communication lures us into writing quickly, with abbreviations, and to writing without first thinking.  We do not stop to collect our thoughts, to consider whether it is good or necessary to write, but we jot down our thoughts and, “click,” we send it off, awaiting a response.  E-mail can be quite harmful, therefore, to the contemplative life, to say nothing of the damage it does to the intellectual life in general, in tempting us to write before we think, and of writing using poor grammar and excessively informal language, as has become common especially in text messages.

Given the speed with which e-mails are sent and received, there is a strong lure to write often, much more often than one would write a letter.  In a letter, one usually writes a longer message to the recipient, for otherwise it would not be worth the trouble of preparing and sending the letter and paying for the postage.  With e-mail, however, one can easily send just a line or two, knowing that one can write more at a later time.  In that way, e-mail communication can become almost like a conversation, with one line or so being exchanged between persons.  How easy it is, with e-mail or text messages, to become, once more, part of the everyday life of our family and friends!  Since e-mails can arrive at any time, there is a strong temptation to want to go to the computer frequently in order to see whether any e-mails have arrived.  In the end, it is very easy to spend much more time on personal correspondence than one used to spend when writing regular letters.  The pertinent question then becomes which time is being used for this correspondence: work time, prayer time, spiritual reading time?

According to long-standing custom, many religious refrained from reading and sending mail, and also from visits with family and friends, during the penitential seasons of Advent and Lent.  The practice is most helpful, and it would be a great loss if it were to fall into neglect under the pressure of modern communication technology.  The emphasis on separation from family and friends during these penitential seasons, expressed by renunciation of all but spiritual contact with them, helps the religious to focus more exclusively on the mystery of the liturgical season.  The practice provides, moreover, a most natural occasion for the religious sister to return to her first love, to renew her appreciation of the detachment from family and friends which belongs intimately to her vocation, and also to convert, once more, should she have begun to re-attach herself to her family.  The sacrifice of renouncing contact with family and friends has the added advantage of being a penance which poses no danger to one’s physical health, and to allow one to exercise the virtues of patience and of fortitude.  Although the monastic custom can be retained even with the use of modern means of communication, the modern means make it much more difficult to keep the custom.  If a religious has one e-mail account for both apostolic and personal use, as is often the case, then it requires much self-discipline to refrain from reading and responding to personal e-mails during the penitential seasons.

Using e-mail communication, one can escape the here-and-now, which is precisely where the Christian, and a forteriori the religious, is called to live, is called to find Christ.  Usually, an individual religious will find herself in a local community of sisters whom she did not select.  It can happen that, on the natural level, sisters in a local community do not have a natural affinity for one another, and do not understand one another well.  That reality belongs to religious life and it can be an aid to draw us closer to our Divine Spouse.  Occasions of a lack of understanding or compassion can be the source of important graces which permit us to draw near to our Lord, to suffer and to become thus more like unto him.  But e-mail or a cell phones offer another possibility.  The sister can be in contact with her family, or with her religious sisters who are her friends, to whom she feels close.  In fact, she could be in contact with them on a daily basis, and, in that way, almost form a “virtual community.”  She can use e-mail to “speak” with those sisters who are of similar mind.  Doing so, the “virtual community” can become quite real and important.  It is our natural inclination to turn to another human person when we are in sorrow or in joy, when we wish to complain or when we are hurt.  When our co-sisters are not “kindred spirits,” we can learn to go first to our Lord.  But when e-mail or a telephone is readily available, will we still go to our Lord?  Will we instead send an email or text message?

Conclusion
The above considerations about the essential separation from the world of consecrated religious, on the one hand, and the pull exerted by the world through modern means of communication, on the other hand, brought to my mind the image of St. Clare clinging to the altar when her family tried to remove her by “physical force, crafty counsels and flattering promises” 36 from the convent.  On Palm Sunday of 1212, St. Clare abandoned her family home in order to consecrate herself to Christ, following St. Francis.  Her family, upon discovering what she had done, set out to “rescue” her forcibly from the convent.  When they attempted to do so, she “laid hold of the altar-cloths and bared her tonsured head, declaring that under no circumstances would she be separated from the service of Christ.” 37