Sisters of the Visitation face challenges to draw more into the community

Shortly before Mass, the sisters begin the official prayer of the church “Liturgy of the Hours” where they sit in ornately carved wooden choir stalls dating back 600 years and chant the Psalms.

The shrinking number of nuns here recently brought the monastery to a crossroads.

The monastery moved to Snellville in 1974. The average number of nuns living there in the past was 13, but deaths reduced the number to eight in recent years.

In order for the Snellville community to remain autonomous, it had to grow.

“It’s not just about a number,” said Mother Superior Teresa Maria, a native of India. She said the real issue is whether a monastery can function as a community and remain autonomous, including vocations and fulfilling various roles required in the community.

“It was never a question of closing,” the Mother Superior said.

Credit: Miguel Martinez

Credit: Miguel Martinez

So, in January 2021, the Snellville monastery formed an affiliation with another community of nuns belonging to the same order in Mobile, Alabama. The monastery there has 22 nuns and sent one of theirs to Snellville.

“It revitalized the community,” said Mother Superior.

“We hoped that an affiliation with our community would enable them to have the means to grow in number and carry on into the future,” said Sister Rose Marie, the assistant superior in Mobile. “The sister went there to help them out temporarily and it seemed to be God’s will calling her to stay. We had enough sisters that we could spare her. It was a sacrifice because she was so dear to us.”

Challenges drawing new members

The order of the Visitation of Holy Mary traces its origins back centuries, founded in France by St. Francis de Sales, a bishop of Geneva in the 1600s and defender of the Catholic faith, and St. Jane Frances de Chantal.

Many similar religious communities are facing challenges attracting new members in the U.S. and Europe for a variety of reasons, said Katie Bugyis, an associate professor at the University of Notre Dame’s Program of Liberal Studies.

Modern women have more career options outside of religious vocations, and those who choose a life of religious service can find other ways to serve the Roman Catholic Church. Women in the church are taking on roles such as parish administrators and providing spiritual counseling and other liturgical roles.

“There’s no spiritual drain happening,” said Bugyis of women’s religious orders overall. “The real problem is attracting new members in the United States. Sisters have not despaired yet, they see signs of hope with women entering later in life and attracting new members from their missions elsewhere in the world.”

For religious orders, ages accepted are 18 to the 40s but older women can be accepted in some cases. Women might have been married or even have children, but their children should not be considered dependents so that they can devote themselves fully to their vocation. Ages in the Snellville community range from 28 to 79, and not all are yet fully professed.

In March, two novices will take their first vows here. Becoming a nun is a years-long process: It takes about nine years to move through the stages of aspirant, postulant, novice and temporarily professed before a nun takes her final vows to become fully professed.

Sister Linda, 69, came to the Sisters of the Visitation four years ago following a career in the U.S. Navy, where she served as a first-class petty officer stationed in California. Born Linda Hovorka in Detroit, Michigan, she is a mother and grandmother.

She wasn’t born Roman Catholic but converted in her teens. Even then she said she felt a “pull on my heart” that God was calling her to have a special relationship with Him.”

Over the years, Sister Linda got married and had children. She still felt that pull and continuously talked to God. She recalled praying, saying, “I can’t do what I feel what you’re calling me to do. I have family and commitments and I won’t go back on that.“ She asked God to either do something or take the desire out of her heart.

Years later, she got a divorce. With her children grown, she decided to pursue what was in her heart. “Today I’m glad I made that decision,” she said. “When it is placed in His hands, He makes it right and it is right that God be praised.”

Entering religious orders

There are over 700 religious institutes in the U.S. and there are still a significant number of men and women who are entering religious life each year, according to Sister Deborah Borneman, director of mission integration for the National Religious Vocation Conference in Chicago. She estimated half of those institutes have fewer than 100 members, which include friars, monks, nuns and priests.

“I try not to focus on the diminishment or decline but on the people who are responding to God’s call and are hopeful about its future,” she said.

Despite the pandemic, she said, 351 women and men entered 135 religious institutes in the U.S. in 2021.

The average age of Catholics entering the religious life is 29. One of the reasons for the delay is that 78% earn at least a bachelor’s degree and 11% said they delayed their entrance to formation due to educational debt.

Mother Superior Teresa Maria said lack of exposure is a big issue. Many Catholics don’t see members of various religious communities in their schools, on college campuses and at community events.

The work to attract more potential aspirants to the monastery must continue. The Mother Superior hopes to use the media to bring attention to the name of the order and the sister’s way of life. They also plan to raise awareness through parishes in the Archdiocese of Atlanta, college campuses and schools by mailing out vocational brochures and through archdiocesan vocations outreach.

The community has a Facebook page and website. There is also a directory of cloistered life where people can get information from the Institute on Religious Life.

“It is not so much up to us, as it is to God, and to the willingness of individuals to explore whether they have a call and vocation to religious life, she said. “A vocation to religious life is a gift from God. The cloister symbolizes the turning away from all that is secular, and self-centered, and godless.”

A life of religious devotion is not for everyone. As a cloistered order, the sisters at the Monastery of the Visitation of Holy Mary in Snellville spend most of their time in prayer, meditation and working around the monastery, which includes a garden, small kitchen and a sewing room. Nuns make and package communion bread for shipping and sew the habits and veils that they wear.

Meals are eaten in silence while the sisters listen or read from spiritual books or tapes to feed the body and the soul.

The nuns must have no other commitments or obligations in the outside world to pull them away from their vocation. They are allowed to call or write to their loved ones, and relatives can visit once a month — with permission of the Mother Superior. Nuns only see their families outside of the monastery if there is an illness or death.

The monastery also has a cemetery where its nuns can be buried.

“When we come here, we don’t leave,” the Mother Superior said.

Sister Patricia, 47, a former U.S. Army specialist, came to the Snellville monastery from Florida. A native of Colombia and a cradle Catholic, Sister Patricia is several years from taking her final vows.

“For a long time I had been feeling or sensing the call of the Lord,” she said. “There was a sense that the Lord wanted more from me.”

She met nuns from other active orders but didn’t feel that the “Lord had made me for those orders.” She found “Sisters of the Visitation,” as they’re commonly known, while searching the internet and decided to visit them. When she told her family about her plans, she got mixed reactions.

Her then 80-year-old grandfather was happy even though they both knew that they would not see each other much at all.

“That’s part of the sacrifice when you give yourself to the Lord,” she said. “You are detaching from the ones you love to love them in a different way.”

Credit: Miguel Martinez

Credit: Miguel Martinez

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