In a secular culture, where the realities of suffering and death are seen as evils to be avoided at all costs, the Church’s invitation to "celebrate” the sober mysteries of Holy Week is somewhat baffling. Even more so is the concept of taking up one’s cross and dying to self.

Through the years, I have confronted the curiosity of junior high students who incredulously ask: "You mean the Sisters don’t go to malls or movies? You don’t order out for pizza? And you’re still happy?"

I answer them with an enthusiastic “Yes!” For very few people understand the mystery that draws us to Jesus Christ, our source of delight. Indeed it is ”the truth of God Who is love” that ignites us with a supernatural joy. 

Lent and Easter celebrations in the convent throw into sharp relief the difference between suffering and joy as viewed by the Church and by the rest of the world. In the liturgies and traditions of the Dominican Sisters of Saint Cecilia Convent in Nashville, the suffering of the passion and the joy of the Resurrection become incarnate in the person of Christ each year in the liturgy. 

Lent, Holy Week, and Easter are opportunities for the Sisters to join with the universal Church in preparing for Christ’s coming. These ancient liturgical traditions witness to eternal truths in a tangible way. 

In the Saint Cecilia Convent tradition, Lent is not just observed but lived in practices both personal and community-wide. 

The document Essential Elements notes that religious consecration “cannot be a reflection of (Christ’s) consecration if its expression in life does not hold a certain element of self-denial.” In Vita Consecrata, the Holy Father explains that the path to holiness on which we are expected to travel involves “the acceptance of spiritual combat.”

Lent is our return to “basic training” for the purpose of spiritual conditioning and continued growth. 

A Call to Penance

The Lenten schedule itself is a daily reminder of the call to penance. Beginning on Ash Wednesday, the Sisters rise ten minutes earlier every morning (4:50 a.m.) to recite the seven Penitential Psalms before the daily meditation and morning Liturgy of the Hours. As an echo of Lent’s simple austerity, the Psalms are spoken rather than chanted. 

During these six weeks, the Sisters cover the white of their habits with black mantles for the Divine Office, a visual reminder of the somber reality of the mystery we are called to live. 

Every Friday evening of Lent, after the evening meal, the entire community assembles for the Stations of the Cross. Weary from the week in the classroom, the Sisters kneel and stand and kneel again, accompanying the Savior on his Via Dolorosa. The physical effort echoes the greater interior effort to strive for holiness, to practice extra penance. 

Our chaplain recently noted that the Sisters’ interior penances appear to bear fruit in a perceptible patience and affability in the community. Extra pains are taken to make community life harmonious. While we are serious about our spiritual life, the joy we find in our common bond is no less exuberant. The focus on “the truth and God who is love” supplies the grace we need to be of one heart and mind.

Holy Thursday’s liturgy shares in the universal Church’s focus on the Eucharist. Prayers are offered for priests. After the evening Mass of the Lord’s Supper has been shared with devotion, our Eucharistic Lord is reserved in a tabernacle on a side altar for adoration until midnight. 

In their quiet private adorations, the Sisters travel to the Garden of Gethsemane with the Savior and seek to comfort Him in His greatest suffering, in reparation for the world’s indifference to the great sacrifice made for our salvation. While the Sisters adore their Spouse, the high altar is stripped and the main tabernacle door is left ajar.

On Friday afternoon, left without the sacramental presence, the sanctuary is barren.

“The emptiness is tangible,” observes one Sister of the convent chapel during the solemn ambiance of the Triduum. “You can’t help but feel His absence.”

The austerity of Good Friday strips away all normal appeals to the senses. No bells ring that day or on Holy Saturday; instead novices fill the hallways and corridors with the sound of wooden clappers to call the Sisters to prayers.

On Good Friday, the organ stands silent; even the voices lose their music as the Divine Office is recited rather than chanted. A monastic fast is observed. There is no reading at meals. A solemn silence descends on the convent from noon until three in the afternoon.

Then, in the Church’s celebration of the Lord’s Passion, the Sisters assemble in a chapel stark and empty of its altar linens and candles, without even holy water in the fonts. The passion according to Saint John is read, and the most ancient petitions in Catholic tradition are chanted together. 

Consecrated persons discover that the more they stand at the foot of the cross of Christ, the more immediately and profoundly they experience the truth of God who is love.

-Pope John Paul II, On Consecrated Life

Genuflecting Three Times

Removing their shoes as a sign of humility, the Sisters process down the center aisle, genuflecting three times to commemorate the three falls of Jesus. At the foot of the altar, they kiss the feet of the image of the crucified Jesus.

After the ceremony, the house is hushed as if with exhaustion and sorrow. Like the faithful women dispersing when all is over on Golgotha, some Sisters linger, others leave the chapel.

The next day, Holy Saturday, sisters make preparations for Easter in a spirit of quiet restfulness.

The most solemn of all liturgies begins at nightfall when the Paschal candle is lit from the Easter fire and a hundred Sisters in black mantles process with lighted tapers down the main hall into the darkened chapel. The priest intones the Exultet, and the seven Old Testament readings recount God’s faithful plan of redemption. More candles are lit until the candelabra on the altar is ablaze with light.

Then, as the first words of the Gloria are sung, the Sisters, with a single motion, unfasten and take off their mantles. The chapel is filled with the white of the Dominican habit.

Bells peal, and trumpets take up the melody sung by the choir. The Easter Gospel is read. Holy water is blessed and sprinkled liberally, while the choir recalls Ezekiel’s vision: “I saw water flowing from the right side of the temple.”

The Sisters renew the baptismal vows made complete by their religious vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience. It is liturgy at its most exalted. Receiving the Lord with joy from his altar of sacrifice, all the Religious of our 140-year history join with the Communion of Saints in praise of God.

Indeed, it is a praise that continues to increase in volume. This year, eleven new Sisters added their voices to the choir. This, their first Easter in the convent, will be a most memorable one since the gift they are offering is still so new.

For the postulants, the celebration of the Easter liturgy is a dynamic expression of forty days of momentum. This Easter Mass is extended and lived in the community life they will experience in the days to come. The Octave of Easter, with its continued alleluias, reflects the capacity we have as children of God to experience both sacrifice and celebration. 

Each year, the Sisters welcome this opportunity to live the mystery. While the externals remain constant, the power of God’s transforming grace is at work, ever new with each contact. There is an awareness that Good Friday must be lived if Easter is to be celebrated. 

Joyful Austerity

How is it that this religious practice---what Pope John Paul II calls a “joyful, well-balanced austerity”---fosters and deepens what the Sisters have vowed?

The “free choice of the cross” is what the world finds so hard to understand, because it is the mysterious gate opening onto the very source of our joy. It stands ultimately as the greatest proof of love (Evangelica Testificatio 29).

As teachers, we are committed to the New Evangelization and to the call we have received to bring this message to a world in desperate need of conversion. The key is our understanding that the message and the Messenger are one and the same.

Love is the reason for our being and the motive force in our lives. Our Holy Father expresses it most accurately in Vita Consecrata:

The consecrated life reflects the splendor of this love because, by its fidelity to the mystery of the cross, it confesses that it believes and lives by the love of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. In this way it helps the Church to remain aware that the cross is the superabundance of God’s love poured upon the world, and that it is the great sign of Christ’s saving presence, especially in the midst of difficulties and trials.

* Reprinted and updated from the Catholic Twin Circle, March 1997