 Mariola L?pez Villanueva rscj “Why can’t you go out at night, or have a partner?” Our neighbourhood has lots of teen-agers and young people, and some are beginning to hang around our house. They come with a certain curiosity; they have no idea of community or religious life, and their image of “nuns” doesn’t square with the way we look or the lifestyle they can see.
Yaiza is 16, and looks older; she started smoking when she was hardly more than a child, and her nonconformist attitude hides deep family trauma. “Can’t you nuns go out at night?” she asks me. As we’re a young community and she sees us together, she asked me the other day: “Are you lesbians?” I laughed and said no. “Then why don’t you have partners?” I told her we live in community, we don’t marry or have children. “Why not?” she asked. I’m going to try and answer her.
There is something a bit mad about the way I got here. A girl left her village to study journalism in Madrid… Whatever happened to make her end up as a Religious of the Sacred Heart? Who can explain it to me? I can see many faces of people involved, a tremendous Love, a history of reconciliation with my own life, trust, the desire to pass on my undying zest for life…..
What makes life worth living The fact that I’m a religious is a problem for my mother. “Who put that mad idea into your head?” she asked. When I mention that in summer I’m off to a retreat with young people, she asks if I was going to do to them what had been done to me. I smiled, and thought to myself, “If only those young people could feel what God is like, the God who is always part of their lives - how he longs to hug them and take them in his arms, the dream he has for them, how tenderly he loves them, how he needs them…”
I can’t get over the listlessness and depression of young people; they can find no reason for living, nor anything that really gives them life. When I discovered Jesus, whatever had given me a thrill before was nothing in comparison with the horizon that opened out in front of me, or the light and zest that came into my life.
Being a religious means being bound [the root meaning of the word] to the Lord and to people, doubly united. I’m in the process of learning what that means, and of being healed. I’ve been invited to embrace a cause to live for, the Reign of Jesus: every aspect of looking after those whose life is most under threat; and I’m given some companions for the journey. But how can I put all this into words that Yaiza, and other young people like her, can understand?
Perhaps that was why Jesus said, “Come and see”, because he too found it hard to put into words all that he had brought with him from his Father. And when the rich young man went away sorrowful because he didn’t dare to let go of his riches to make room for greater riches: to share, to watch over the weak, to love everything and everyone… Jesus let him go, reluctantly and sorrowfully, but he let him go, because all one can do is show the way and hope the other will follow it.
A Handful of Dreams for the Road I remember that when I was 20 a friend told me she was going to be a nun, and I thought she was going to bury herself. “You’re so intelligent, so pretty,” I thought, “so how can you do such a thing?” I thought that entering religious life was like closing a person’s horizon, submitting to certain norms and ways of living, not being able to live one’s own life, nor to decide on one’s own future. Now I can say that I was wrong, because not only has there been no closing of my horizon, but on the contrary, it has opened wider than I could have imagined. Everywhere new stories are bring woven into mine, and my heart is being expanded more and more.
I never imagined that I was going to have such freedom to exercise my right to dream, to reinvent our life, to search with others. I can even do so with the young people who go out at night, who play around with sex, drugs and alcohol; without naming or knowing it, they are hungry for a greater Love. I’m not sure, Yaiza, how I can really explain the way I live, but if you let me, I’ll tell you the dreams this life gives me; I’m already beginning to see them come true just a little.
*I’m dreaming of a more human, intense religious life that will be humble (I can hear you asking me what that means, well, it’s something like being rooted in the earth, peaceful, healing, and bound - another word you wouldn’t understand… Forgive me. You know I sometimes need you to explain your language, what with reggae and your craze for piercings)… As I was saying, it’s a life bound to situations of suffering, of want, to the most wounded realities of our world. We feel that this is our place, and that as needs change, we’ll move on.
* A religious life in which we help each other to experience the Absoluteness of God in life, to enter into silence, seeing deep into faces and events; where we go out to visit others, and let ourselves be visited, greeting others as God first greeted us. Without him we are lost and would have nothing to contribute. (Something like this, Yaiza: Jesus is a strong friend, a true one. We can share everything with him, and he trusts himself to us completely, in all the circumstances of our lives. He’s a friend who teaches us to take a different view of our own life and other people’s.
Woven into a single Tapestry * A religious life in which we learn to be sisters to each other, and that means working harder at our own story, knowing my human tapestry and being able to be reconciled with it, so as to love other people’s too. We must be readier to show our vulnerability and let ourselves be accompanied on that basis. We have to knit bonds of affection, feel that we support and sustain each other… take the risk of sharing and expressing feelings; then, since our tasks vary, in community we need to strengthen the things that unite us, give us life, and help us to channel our emotions. What has filled my heart with more gratitude, and has made me more of a sister to others, has been the experience of feeling myself forgiven. (Sorry for all this boring stuff, Yaiza, but we’re so inclined to be selfish, I feel that a lot is at stake in this business of community living, and I don’t want to fall short, not even in my dreams…)
Another thing you’re wondering, I know, is what we do about money and things like that. We put all our wages in common. We take what we need to live on, and what’s left over is for sharing, giving help where needed, as other sisters are already doing. Everything belongs to everyone, what we have and what we are, or at least we want it to be that way.
What can I tell you about our lifestyle? We want our home to be simple and accessible to people; we want you to feel welcome. We want to be careful not to fall into the traps of consumerism and superficiality. Sharing and living simply; knowing how to take pleasure in little things.
Learning, always learning * A life in which we keep on searching, and exchange more with each other, with other congregations, and with the people around us. (That includes you and your friends, Yaiza.) In which we are attentive to formation and take an interest in what goes on in the world. Learning, always learning.
* A life that is less secure, but more trusting. More yeast than bread already baked. A life that keeps teaching us to be women who are present to each person, to their fears and the love growing within them. A joyful life because walking with the Lord, and seeing how he communicates with little ones, brings contentment to the heart.
* A life in which we feel forgiven and loved. We have done nothing to earn such an adventure; we have been called precisely in our frailty because we have received the gift of living from a love that comes flooding over us. I remember a Chilean Sister telling me: “The Lord keeps me happy and the world keeps me sad.” Please God that is what people will notice in us.
Living and Helping Others to Live You can see I have no partner, but I feel that in these last years I have been growing in intimacy and affection. I love a little better, in the midst of my poverty; I’m being gifted with inward space to welcome others; my heart is being set free to love more, to let myself be loved more.
And now it’s up to you, Yaiza; you certainly won’t understand very well what I’ve been telling you, and I confess that I don’t understand it either, but I’ve been doing it for some years now, and it makes me happy. Living in and for Jesus keeps me alive. I dream that reconciliation and justice are possible, and, as I read in a competition for young people, “I can’t change the whole world, but I can make one person change their whole world.”
Kid, living and helping others to live, that’s what turns me on. Do you want to get on board? You think I’m mad, don’t you? You’re still too young, but please God in the next few years, as you grow up, you’ll discover people and moments that make you wonder: Who am I? Who are my brothers and sisters? Why am I here?
Whatever your situation, however you are feeling, may you listen to a friendly voice whispering to you: “Courage, get up, Someone who loves you to pieces is asking for you.” (Cf Mk 10:49)
Mariola L?pez Villanueva rscj
Province of Southern Spain
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