The women who shared their lives with the Lord lived together, worked together, ate together, and prayed together, yet they never touched and never spoke. The only exceptions permitted were when they heard mass or when the Reverend.
Mother Prioress Betina addressed them in the privacy of her office. Even then, an ancient sign language was used as much as possible.
The Reverend Mother was a religeuse in her seventies, a bright-faced robin of a woman, cheerful and energetic, who gloried in the peace and joy of convent life, and of a life devoted to God. Fiercely protective of her nuns, she felt more pain when it was necessary to enforce discipline than did the one being punished.
The nuns walked through the cloisters and corridors with downcast eyes, hands folded in their sleeves at breast level, passing and repassing their sisters without a word or sign of recognition. The only voice of the convent was its bells—the bells that Victor Hugo called "the opera of the steeples."
The sisters came from disparate backgrounds and from many different countries. Their families were aristocrats, farmers, soldiers… They had come to the convent as rich and poor, educated and ignorant, miserable and exalted, but now they were one in the eyes of God, united in their desire for eternal marriage to Jesus.
The living conditions in the convent were Spartan. In winter the cold was knifing, and a chill, pale light altered in through leaded windows. The nuns slept fully dressed on pallets of straw, covered with rough woolen sheets. Each had her own tiny cell, furnished only with the pallet and a straight-backed wooden chair. There was no wash-stand. A. small earthen jug and basin stood in a corner on the floor.
No nun was ever permitted to enter the cell of another, except for the Reverend Mother Betina. There was no recreation of any kind, only work and prayers. There were work areas for knitting, book binding, weaving, and making bread. There were eight hours of prayer each day: Matins.
Lauds, Prime, Terce, Sext, None, Vespers, and Compline.
Besides these there were other devotions: benedictions, hymns, and litanies.
Matins were said when half the world was asleep and the other half was absorbed in sin.
Lauds, the office of daybreak, followed Matins, and the rising sun was hailed as the figure of Christ triumphant and glorified.
Prime was the church's morning prayer, asking for the blessings on the work of the day.
Terce was at nine o'clock in the morning, consecrated by.
St. Augustine to the Holy Spirit.
Sext was at eleven-thirty A.M., evoked to quench the heat of human passions.
None was silently recited at three o'clock in the afternoon, the hour of Christ's death.
Vespers was the evening service of the church, as Lauds was her daybreak prayer.
Compline was the completion of the Little Hours of the day. A form of night prayers, a preparation for death as well as sleep, ending the day on a note of loving submission:
Manus tuas, domine, commendo spiritum meum. Redemisti nos, domine, deus, veritatis.
In some of the other orders, flagellation had been stopped, but in the cloistered Cistercian convents and monasteries it survived. At least once a week, and sometimes every day, the nuns punished their bodies with the.
Discipline, a twelve-inch-long whip of thin waxed cord with six knotted tails that brought agonizing pain; it was used to lash the back, legs, and buttocks. Bernard of Clairvaux, the ascetic abbot of the Cistercians, had admonished: "The body of Christ is crushed… our bodies must be conformed to the likeness of our Lord's wounded body."
It was a life more austere than in any prison, yet the inmates lived in an ecstasy such as they had never known in the outside world. They had renounced physical love, possessions, and freedom of choice, but in giving up those things they had also renounced greed and competition, hatred and envy, and all the pressures and temptations that lie outside world imposed. Inside the convent reigned an ill pervading peace and the ineffable sense of joy at being one with God. There was an indescribable serenity within the walls of the convent and in the hearts of those who lived there. If the convent was a prison, it was a prison a God's.
Eden, with the knowledge of a happy eternity for those who had freely chosen to be there and to remain here.
Sister Lucia was awakened by the tolling of the convent bell. She opened her eyes, startled and disoriented for an instant. The little cell she slept in was dismally black. The sound of the bell told her that it was three A.M., when the office of vigils began, while the world outside was still in darkness.
Shit! This routine is going to kill me, Sister Lucia thought.
She lay back on her tiny, uncomfortable cot, desperate for a cigarette. Reluctantly, she dragged herself out of bed. The heavy habit she wore and slept in rubbed against her sensitive skin like sandpaper. She thought of all the beautiful designer gowns hanging in her apartment in Rome and at her chalet in Gstaad.
From outside her cell Sister Lucia could hear the soft, swishing movement of the nuns as they gathered in the hallway. Carelessly, she made up her bed and stepped out into the long hall, where the nuns were lining up, eyes downcast.
Slowly, they all began to move toward the chapel.
They look like a bunch of silly penguins, Sister Lucia thought. It was beyond her comprehension why these women had deliberately thrown away their lives, giving up sex, pretty clothes, and gourmet food. Without those things, what reason is there to go on living? And the goddamned rules!
When Sister Lucia had first entered the convent, the.
Reverend Mother had said to her, "You must walk with your head bowed. Keep your hands folded under your habit. Take short steps. Walk slowly. You must never make eye contact with any of the other sisters, or even glance at them. You may not speak. Your ears are to hear only God's words."
"Yes, Reverend Mother."
For the next month Lucia took instruction.
"Those who come here come not to join others, but to dwell alone with God. Solitude of spirit is essential to a union with God. It is safeguarded by the rules of silence."
"Yes, Reverend Mother."
"You must always obey the silence of the eyes. Looking into the eyes of others would distract you with useless images."
"Yes, Reverend Mother."
"The first lesson you will learn here will be to rectify the past, to purge out old habits and worldly inclinations, to blot out every image of the past. You will do purifying penance and mortification to strip yourself of self-will and self-love. It is not enough for us to be sorry for our past offenses. Once we discover the infinite beauty and holiness of God, we want to make up not only for our own sins, but for every sin that has ever been committed."
"Yes, Holy Mother."
"You must struggle with sensuality, what John of the Cross called 'the night of the senses.'» "Yes, Holy Mother."
"Each nun lives in silence and in solitude, as though she were already in heaven. In this pure, precious silence for which she hungers, she is able to listen to the infinite silence and possess God."
At the end of the first month, Lucia took her initial vows. On the day of the ceremony she had her hair shorn. It was a traumatic experience. The Reverend Mother Prioress performed the act herself. She summoned Lucia into her office and motioned for her to sit down. She then stepped behind her, and before Lucia knew what was happening, she heard the snip of scissors and felt something tugging at her hair. She started to protest, but she suddenly realized that what was happening could only improve her disguise. I can always let it grow back later, Lucia thought. Meanwhile, I'm going to look like a plucked chicken.