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Paula Sheil
Note: Credit must be given to The Record for the following article.
The Record Sunday, February 22, 2004 E1
Section: Today
Holding the moment
By Paula Sheil
Record Staff Writer
In December 1999, The Record profiled the Sisters of the Cross in Modesto . In January, reporter Paula Sheil spent a weekend retreat at the cloistered convent. This is her personal account.
Retreat. I think of falling back to save myself, to get out of the line of fire. I think of withdrawing to reorder my position. I think refuge and solitude.
The place to which I flee promises care and shelter, so I retreat, but 35 miles south to Modesto, to the convent of the Sisters of the Cross of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Here, for a brief weekend, I ponder turning 50.
A retreat falls somewhere between a day of recollection and a pilgrimage. All are time-honored traditions in the pursuit of spiritual discovery and affirmation. I need rest, at least, and this is why, I explain to my friends, a married woman with a Protestant background and more doubt than faith is drawn to a community of celibate women for a weekend of prayer and contemplation.
During the Middle Ages, pilgrims on the road to Lourdes or Jerusalem carried holy or classic texts. I bring Hélène Cixous’ "First Days of the Year" to reread. I open the Bible on the desk in my room auspiciously to the Book of Esther to read of gathering armies and a great war, the flood of God from a spring that assures triumph. I open, with the same divining trepidation, "The Selected Poems of Anne Sexton," a gift for Sister Regina Alonzo, my spiritual guide and host, and read where Snow White defeats the wicked Queen and inherits the mirror.
Sister Regina manifests the Lord in every moment. I seek him in desperate hours. She is married to her acceptance. I accept God on my terms.
Reflection
Signs of transformation abound. A cold, blue day bursts forth from the fog. Vaporous clouds ride high in the sky. Leaves, bagged and gone or blown away, give back the wind its transparency.
West of Highway 99 on Maze Boulevard , the convent of the Sisters of the Cross is situated on the grounds of Modesto ’s Central Catholic High School . During the week, students trickle through the wrought iron gate and cross the spare courtyard to the convent chapel. On the weekends, the flow is steadier -- couples, women with children. Everyone comes and goes in respectful silence.
The Sisters of the Cross are a cloistered order of contemplative nuns, brought to the Diocese of Stockton by Bishop Donald W. Montrose in 1988. The 12 women do not teach or minister to the sick. They have minimal contact with the world. A few instruct the laity in their spirituality. Sister Regina maintains a bulletin board with newspaper clippings to keep the others informed of the world’s troubles and its needs.
They pray. Night and day they divide the hours. They abide in a small chapel adjoining their residence and offer the suffering of the world up to God.
I worked for Catholic Charities when Montrose first proposed to bring the nuns here. I recall the controversy. People asked: Why the expense of an order that doesn’t do anything when there’s so much work to be done?
Even I, who raised money for counseling, refugee and elderly programs, was skeptical. But I found a useful analogy to help me understand the validity of their particular calling. If humans build huge transmitters to beam radio waves into the heavens in search of "intelligence," how is that different from using brain waves to speak directly to God?
For two decades, the power of prayer has been studied extensively. The November issue of Newsweek proclaims a connection between God and health in a report on why science is starting to believe that religion is good medicine. At the very least, unburdening my heart reduces stress and allows room for growth.
Contemplation
I was raised Baptist and switched to Unitarian Universalism as a teen. My second sister is Mormon, my brother and my father "born-again" Christians. Other siblings profess nondenominational Protestantism.
I married a Roman Catholic, but I do not know the drill. I do not genuflect or cross myself when I enter the pew. I know I am a foreigner in this space, a visitor in this ritual place. But I have been led to this moment, by grace or fate, if not faith.
This is a community founded by a mother, so I am comforted.
Conception Cabrera de Armida was born in 1862 in San Luis Potosi , Mexico . Though a wife and mother of nine children, in her soul she suffered with Christ and was inspired to write 50 volumes of discourse with God. Armida understood Christ as a priest and a victim. She saw his sacrifice to the world as the means to understand true love.
In 1897 in Mexico City , the Sisters of the Cross took up their calling to remain in the continual presence of Christ through prayer so that the world could reap this love.
When Armida died in 1937 at age 75, several religious and lay groups were formed for men and women who were inspired by her teachings. The Sisters of the Cross of the Sacred Heart of Jesus number only 410 around the world. The Mother House is in Mexico City , and most of the 23 houses are found in Mexico and Central America . There is one in Spain , one in Rome and only this one in the United States .
Light plays through my window, interrupted by the singing branches of a great larch. Grape vines in the adjacent field hold each other by a thousand dormant limbs. No blooms brighten the gardens. Winter finally has hardened the landscape. The grass is emerald, cut flat in its rectangular bed.
Adoration
I read and write until it is time to share Sister Regina’s hour of adoration at midnight. Steps from my room, I listen to the quiet. In the windless night, the trees relax and draw their inky marks across a blacker but luminous sky. A few stars compete with street lamps in the distance; a plane departs.
Inside, golden warmth floods the sanctuary. Sister Regina kneels at the pew in front to the right. I sit on her left and focus on the ticking clock.
Twelve strokes signal the end of one day, and silence begets the next.
Tick, tock. Tick, tock. Tick, tock.
The clock ceaselessly marks the seconds, all 86,400 in a day. I do the math and realize I have lived 1.5 billion seconds in half a century. Each splashes over rocks and settles in the pools of every day’s tumults and respites. Miraculous is our measurement; unfortunate, our ignorance of abundance. So little time, so many lament, and yet time pours forth.
Easily do my thoughts run true. Faces present and past parade through my prayers. One at a time, I give each consideration. My heart swells. I feel myself fuller and lighter at the same time.
Time ticks on. So quickly does the journey unfold; the distance is recognized from the next peak. Gratitude carries me forward, for this life and the many deaths that have already shown me the way. How blessed that my own father gave me his death after love cleared away the sorrows of our days.
In a moment, one more tick of the clock. The hour ends. But the following sister does not appear. Sister Regina rises to look for her.
"I will stay," I say.
"Please." And she disappears.
For these brief minutes, I am allowed to hold the space, to remain with the Lord, to be his silent witness, simply because I am here and willing.
To reach reporter Paula Sheil, phone (209) 546-8257 or e-mail psheil@recordnet.com*
*
New contact info is: psheil@deltacollege.edu
PHOTOS (sorry not available): ROSARY: Sister Regina Alonzo of the Sisters of the Cross of the Sacred Heart of Jesus prays in the chapel in Modesto . She is one of 12 contemplative nuns who live at the convent, established in the Diocese of Stockton by former Bishop Donald W. Montrose in 1988. ONE-ON-ONE TIME: During her hour of adoration in the chapel at the cloistered convent in Modesto , a Sister of the Cross offers prayers to relieve the suffering of the world. (Record photo by DOUGLAS RIDER)
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