Women still heeding call

LEAVENWORTH, Kan. -- A happy, party noise filled Annunciation Chapel on the last day of August, a breezy day that felt more spring than end of summer.

Inside the little church next to the headquarters of the Sisters of Charity, people stood in the aisles and among the pews, talking, laughing and hugging one another. Most of the people were women, and many of those were nuns. Friends and family from Denver to Boston had come for Rejane Cytacki's special day.

Rejane, in a new dress and a smile that would stay on her face through the cookies-and-punch reception afterward, worked the crowd. The Notre Dame graduate, 35 years old, was here to take the next step toward becoming a Sister of Charity.

For this special Mass celebrating Rejane's first vows, the music and singing nearly lifted the chapel roof off.

During the opening procession, a musical ensemble -- a harpist, two pianists, a handbell choir and a nun on a marimba -- led the congregation through a contemporary hymn, "Sing a New Song." Rejane, flanked by her mother and father, walked down the aisle, and together they placed red roses at a side altar in memory of her deceased grandparents. Rejane then took her seat in the first pew with two other nuns. Her parents and her brother and his wife and baby sat behind them.

After a "Gloria" and two Scripture readings, the Rev. Bill McEvoy read the Magnificat. It was the canticle of Mary in the Gospel of Luke, a joyous prayer by the Virgin Mary, said to be the most words spoken by any woman in the Bible. Then, it became Rejane's turn to speak.

At a lectern at the front of the church, Rejane stood with Sister Sue Miller, community director, and Sister Nancy Bauman, who works with the order's fledgling nuns. Rejane professed three vows. Poverty. Chastity. Obedience.

When she finished, she stood in front of the altar with the two older nuns, and the congregation applauded.

Rejane (pronounced ray-ZHEN) is the only woman in the last four years to start down the path toward life with the Sisters of Charity, a community of 297 Catholic religious women. The community settled in Leavenworth more than 150 years ago. But on this weekend, the celebrating was just getting started.

The next day, Jennifer Gordon, a 33-year-old graduate of Duke University, would take her perpetual vows and become a sister for life.

Women still become nuns? Yes, they do.

'Off the radar'

They are prayerful, community-minded, well-educated women like Rejane, working on her second master's degree, and Jennifer, who has an MBA.

Nuns used to be a lot more visible. When they ran parish schools, Sisters of Charity lived in parish convents. But those days are gone, as are most of the convents that long ago were converted into classrooms and parish offices.

Today, Sisters of Charity live in the communities, some overseas, that they serve. In fact, only 66 of them live at the motherhouse in Leavenworth.

The majority of them live with as many as five other nuns in houses where they share household chores, such as cooking, cleaning and grocery shopping. They pray and go to church together, too.

Everything is communal, even the money. The salaries or stipends that the sisters receive from employers -- such as schools, hospitals and social agencies -- go directly into a "community fund."

Each sister gets a small amount of "spending money" for clothes and personal items and entertainment such as going to the movies.

Because their numbers are so small, nuns feel largely invisible, and some doubt that the general population gives them much of a second thought anymore.

"It's not 1960 anymore, and 50 people aren't coming at the same time," Jennifer said. "But religious life is still a viable option, and God is still calling people to this life."

Rejane, too, said that the lifestyle she and Jennifer have chosen is "off the radar" but that people her age tend to think her choice is "cool," more so than older people who might have had different experiences with nuns.

"If I'm talking to people my own age ... they don't have any baggage with it. It's unique, it's different," she said. "They're more concerned about, 'You mean you're not going to get married and have sex?' "

The process of becoming a Sister of Charity can take six to nine years. That time is called discernment, during which a woman decides whether this is something God is calling her to do for the rest of her life.

At the same time, the Sisters of Charity are discerning whether she is a good fit for them.

Does she have gifts and talents that fit their needs? Is she happy and healthy living in the community? Does she have the physical, mental and emotional health and maturity to thrive in a community? So the discerning is mutual.

"We say it is to be more certain, to live the life, absolutely experience it and see if it's a good fit," said Sister Mary Lou Mendel, who oversees nuns who take temporary vows.

Rejane has four or five more years to go before she makes final vows. These first vows, which she'll have to renew in August, are something akin to an engagement -- much easier to break than having to "divorce," or leave the order after final vows. But Rejane already knows this is exactly what she wants to do.

She decided to become a nun to serve others. But she also wants a lifestyle that will let her focus wholeheartedly on being prayerful, something she found difficult with all the distractions of being a lay person.

"I just think, especially as United States citizens, we are so focused on the individual and that's the end all and be all," Rejane said. "To me, that's not a healthy model."

Mystery

Rejane grew up Catholic in Prairie Village and graduated from Notre Dame with a degree in anthropology.

At Notre Dame, "I was exposed to a lot of religious men and women, where I didn't have that experience growing up," she said. "But even at Notre Dame, I wasn't consciously considering religious life."

After graduation, she joined the 10 percent of her class "that does a whole year of service," she said. "I ended up doing a whole year of service in New York, doing retreat work for high school students with the Passionist priests.

"At the end of my year, the Passionist nuns invited me to come and spend time with them. And I think it was at that point that I did give more than a passing thought to being a religious woman.

"However, it was a monastic community, and I just knew that wasn't my style."

Back home in Kansas City, she lived in two Catholic lay ministry communities, including Shalom House, a shelter for homeless men, and was inspired by their communal focus on prayer.

"The real draw was priority on your prayer life," she said. "There is something about living in community and focusing on prayer together."

After she joined the Sisters of Charity in 2005, Rejane went back to school like Jennifer, getting her teaching degree at St. Mary, the Catholic school sponsored by the Sisters of Charity that shares grounds with the motherhouse, and her master's from the University of Kansas.

She teaches at Xavier Elementary School in Leavenworth and is working on an Earth literacy degree.

Ready

A "cradle Catholic" from Alexandria, Va., Jennifer didn't consider a religious life until college, though others in her family had chosen that path.

When Jennifer went to Duke, where she earned a bachelor's in public policy studies, "I got involved pretty quickly in the Catholic student center there," she said. "It was a way to meet people and make friends. ... It was the first time that it occurred to me that faith really could be more than a Sunday thing."

A nun she met in her sophomore year was the first to say, "Have you ever thought about this? You'd really be good."

She joined the Sisters of Charity in August 2001 and in the eight years since has packed her resume full of professional and ministry work. She also earned an MBA at the University of St. Mary.

It took eight years for Jennifer to feel ready to profess one part of her vows, "henceforth all my life." "Am I ready because it's time, or is it time because I'm ready?" she said.

Jennifer and Rejane had lunch before Rejane's ceremony in the nursing facility that cares for 38 nuns. They walked through the dining room chatting with their older counterparts, some of whom wore the veils that identified Sisters of Charity in the day when many ran Catholic schools and hospitals.

From her wheelchair, Sister Jo Anne Sistrunk snapped pictures. When she made her final vows in 1976, four other women took them with her.

"I'm just so grateful that women are still saying, 'Hey, I'm choosing to be part of this, and I want to carry on.' "

Considerations

Sister Sharon Smith, the order's vocation director, was 22 when she became a nun in 1975. But women entering today are older than that, like Rejane and Jennifer, with at least four years of college.

"I think we have the challenge: How are we visible in the world?" Smith said. "I think the best "advertisement" for religious life is ourselves.

"If people encounter us and we're joyful and happy and are happy with our lives, then I think that makes all the difference."

Those encounters are especially important in a day when nuns aren't as prevalent as they once were, Jennifer said. "It's about who you know and how they live their life and does that resonate with something that's already in you," she said. "Nobody's going to convince somebody to choose religious life if God hasn't planted the seed."

But there's that other "issue," the one that prompts college women to tell Smith: "If I could get married and have children, I'd be all over that."

"That was my biggest roadblock, too," admits Rejane, who was in a "pretty serious relationship" before she became a nun.

"I found that that relationship took precedence, and a lot of my other ones fell away and I wasn't as able to be as wide-reaching in all my relationships," she said. "In some ways, my friends who are single understand that. They have time for themselves in a way that if you're married and have kids you don't have.

"As a religious woman, that's a luxury for me. I use that time in prayer, and it feeds me and gives me energy, and I hope it plays out in my ministry."