Joyfully Professing First Vows

We rose early on that first day of 1960. Compline had ended our retreat the night before. Afterward, we’d returned to the novitiate for our final night of sleep there. While dressing that Friday morning, my thoughts skittered from my first days as a postulant to the battle I’d fought during retreat to the wonderment of where I’d be sent that weekend to begin teaching. 

           From the frosted second-story dorm window, I looked at the outlying stars that wintry morning. Who inhabited those far-flung galaxies? Did they know that here on Earth eighteen novices were dressing for a day of celebration? Did the music of the spheres reach them as it did me? For indeed, I felt the lilt of song within. Everything—anything—seemed possible. All the world seemed poised to welcome my vows. Joy coursed my veins. Gratitude thrummed my heart.

          Teeth chattering from chill and excitement, we silently left the novitiate and walked across the driveway to the monastery side door, ready to embrace our new life as scholastics. Later that morning, we huddled together in the foyer of the college chapel, awaiting our vow ceremony. Was there doubt about what we were each doing? There must have been. This was a professed commitment.

          But that doubt became as nothing amidst the great joy that found us smiling at one another. Beaming. Unable to keep from grinning. I looked out the small window facing the lawn. Sunlight jeweled the snow. Dark pine branches sagged from its weight. A few dark-eyed juncos fluttered about beneath those trees, fluffing their wings against the cold and imprinting spidery tracks on the snow’s crest.

            Suddenly, glorious music filled the chapel. The eighteen of us processed down the center aisle. On each side stood parents, relatives, and friends who’d gathered to celebrate with us. An unbounded smile stretched my heart. I’d made my decision. I’d chosen this life. Now, before Mom and Dad and all the nuns of the monastery, I’d profess, for three years, the five Benedictine vows: poverty, chastity, obedience, conversion of morals, and stability. I was ready. Eager in fact. I wanted to relinquish doubt and move ahead with my life.

            The ceremony began. Large pots of welcoming poinsettias graced the high altar. Golden yellow beeswax tapers, flames flickering, stood tall in gleaming candlesticks. The bishop wore the ornate vestments of a great feast. We prayed. Sang. Knelt. A surging tide of anticipation flowed toward us from those sitting in the pews. They’d come from many states to what was for me that day the center of the Universe.

            Now came the climax of the ceremony. The bishop blessed our new habits and veils. A professed nun deftly removed the white ones that proclaimed us novices and then reverently covered our heads with the black veil of a scholastic. We gathered before the bishop and lifted our palms high as we joyously professed our first vows.

The black veil indicates I have taken first vows and am a scholastic.

            The ceremony ended. The pipe organ sounded its clarion message: “Te Deum Laudamus!”—“Thee, O God, we praise.” That praise arched above all those gathered there that day. My heart lifted up. I came new into the world.  
            When the rite ended, the eighteen of us turned and processed out into the foyer. It was there our parents greeted us. My mom and dad hugged me close. I knew they remained as unsure of my decision as I’d been. But I knew also that they’d always said to me, “Dolores, you can do anything you set your mind to.” During the remainder of the afternoon, we ate together, then visited in the college lounge.

Dad and Mom and I enjoy one another's presence on first-vow day.

            That evening, after our families had departed, we eighteen new scholastics prayed Compline with the rest of the community. Afterward, we climbed the stairs to the fourth floor of the monastery and entered a new dorm. It was, I may say, a beginning within an ending.

            That night, lying in bed, I murmured to myself the words of Gerard Manley Hopkins, one of my favorite poets. His “Pied Beauty” perfectly described what the day had been for me.

Glory be to God for dappled things—

            For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;

                        For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;

Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;

            Landscape plotted and pierced—fold, fallow, and plough;

                        And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;

            Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)

                        With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;

He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:

                                                             Praise him.

I slide into sleep with words of praise on my lips. Alleluia. Amen.

PS: This posting concludes the stories about my life in the novitiate. I’m going to turn now to stories about my growing-up years and my life with cats. In a few weeks, I hope to return to the convent postings and take up life in a Catholic grade school in Omaha, Nebraska.

“Pied Beauty” from Gerard Manley Hopkins, published by Penguin Books in 1956.

Snow photo by Evgeni Dinev at http://www.freedigitalphotos.net