The beautiful window below is featured prominently in St. Edward Catholic Church in North Augusta, South Carolina. The nuns depicted worked as nuns should, with humility, with compassion, with an unfailing love for Tradition and the Mass. Theresa Benedicta was slain by the Nazis in the notorious Auschwitz death camp, a martyr for her faith. Therese of Lisieux lived a life of most extreme holiness, giving her entirety to her God and her Church before dying at a very young age. Theresa of Avila, like Therese of Lisieux, was named a Doctor of the Church for her writings exposing the suffering of the soul when deprived of Our Lord. And, being welcomed with sublime humility into the ranks of heaven, is Mother Theresa, not officially a saint, but on the cusp of such status. Her life was given wholly and without reserve to the poor, in whom we should all see the face and being of Christ. I certainly hope that, within the next several years, she may earn the artist’s premature “St.” title. Something tells me that we won’t have long to wait.

These women lived lives of service, of humble service. They did not insert themselves into the Liturgy, nor did they chase people away from their respective communities. No, on the contrary, they reached out to people in order that they may bring others to fuller realization of the mysteries of the Faith. They did not support schism or dissent. They did not abandon communities to progressivism. They loved the Church, and showed their love with a genuine appreciation for the laws, the precepts, the Tradition of the same Holy Mother Church. Why do the religious of the Diocese of Rochester, almost without exception, take the exact opposite path to God? (If, indeed, it ends up leading there.) Our nuns knuckle under to diocesan pressures, closing schools and subverting Orthodoxy under the guise of inclusivity. What happened to obedience, dear sisters? Did you forget that when you take your vows, you are bound to Christ? If you show contempt for His Church, you show contempt for Him. Remember this before you close the doors of your schools, before you mount the pulpit to preach error, before you don your alb and enter the church in procession, before you instruct our youth in the ways of loose morals. There are those nuns, however, who pevail in this diocese. There are a handful who wear the habit, who teach the children the Truth. Let us honor them by our dedication and love for the Church, a love and dedication which we can only pray will infect their ranks with contagious piety.

Tags: Orthodoxy at Work, Vocations

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