Benedictine Spiritual Support Group ...by Sr Paz

May 1 was the last meeting of our St. Martin’s Benedictine spiritual support group before final exams and the holidays. Benedictine spiritual support group is the way the students have renamed our Bible study group. I say our group, because I mean it, I am a member of the group which every Thursday now for two years has met at the St. Martin’s University Library. We do Lectio Divina with the coming Sunday Gospel. We also learn a little about the story of women in the Bible, early Christianity or modern women.

On this last night, we met at St. Placid Priory. We watched the movie “The Sound of Music,” an old movie that still touches the heart. In the movie, Maria is a postulant at Nonnberg Abbey. This Benedictine monastery in Salzburg, Austria is where St. Placid Priory has it origins. I mean that sisters from Nonnberg Abbey founded St. Benedict's Monastery in St. Joseph, Minnesota, and that is where our founding sisters came from: to Tacoma and finally to Olympia/Lacey to establish St. Placid Priory. The finally professed sisters at St. Placid still use the same ring style and logo as the sisters from Nonnberg Abbey.

Lunch with the Sisters

We enjoyed our time praying, eating and talking before our retreat began. For two years we have been doing Scriptural Lectio Divina, but this time we did “Vita Divina.”

Mikaila with Sr. Lucy

It was a sacred time where we “read,” meditated and contemplated about God’s presence in our life, especially in the dark night of the soul times when it is difficult to see God’s presence. We learned that time and perspective allows us to see how these dark nights bring us closer to God, even when we are not able to notice that at the moment. Time and perspective allows us to see that now we are more resilient, more mature, and our understanding of God in our life has matured too, as has our faith. Now our understanding of God and our faith is an adult faith. Overcoming the dark night that is always in our past life (and for sure, our future, too)is to become closer to God.

Lingering after dinner

It is like Maria Von Trapp in the movie: she really wanted to become a nun, and suffered because she was not able to adjust to the life style of the nuns. At the beginning she thought that she needed to try harder. However, she was not listening with the ear of her heart to God’s call to become a wife and mother. Already she was in love with Captain Georg von Trapp. What she really needed was to obey her heart and become a wife and mother of ten kids, seven stepchildren and three of her own. She loved to sing and pray, that doesn’t mean she needed to be a nun. She needed to discern God’s call in her life. The movie doesn’t mention it, but after they escaped Nazi-occupied Austria, they settled in the United States. When her husband died, she became a missionary to Africa with three of her children. It is a beautiful story about discerning and listening to God in our life.

Chatting with Sr. Sharon

Our retreat made me very happy to see young women taking seriously God’s call in their life to become the beloved children God intended at the moment of their creation. They are learning to read the signs of the times and choose rightly the next steps in their life. Until next time, dear group.