This is an article I wrote shortly after my reception of the habit on September 8, 2013

A New Novice’s Reflections

So many graces received- or so many to come because of the experiences I have had during my year in the postulancy.  The day before my reception of our holy habit, I was making frosting for Our Lady’s birthday cake.  To make it light and fluffy as a cloud, each ingredient must be incorporated into a gradually transforming concoction.  The consequences of my efforts?  Not so great, resulting in a humbled rebeginning.  Sr. Mary Francis explained the science of it all.  Leave it to an experienced professed.  My second trial brought on a time of insightful reflection- God has His ways of speaking to us!  (There was much time using the beaters- I think one transformation took 15 minutes!) 

                Sr. Mary Emmanuel would mention during the last remaining months of my postulancy that she had noticed changes in me that I may not be realizing.  It was a good motivator, being blind to my own progress.  Like those egg whites that refused to foam at first, changes can be so gradual that we don’t always see them.  It doesn’t happen overnight. 

So I’m guiding the beaters and seeing a slight change of thickness.  The vibrations from the machine were going up my arm.  I switched hands.  We examine our conscience a lot in living out this lifelong road to holiness.  As one on retreat, I had asked pardon of all the sisters for all my failings.  This having to start over would be a fault for next week, but it has helped me to realize something.  As I am a novice now, I am called to renew my commitment.  I am getting a fresh start, since last year.  I had learned and supplied the “ingredient” customs and spirituality of our monastic life.  Now I can know them and begin to express myself as a “wanna be/gonna-be.”  It seems like something you would come with as a visiting retreater or even as a postulant.   But, no matter how much you desire the life, you don’t understand the practical reality of living within the enclosure.  It takes humility to prune and reshape our ideals and dreams of the religious life.  As of right now, I find my behavior towards some things to be quite different from how I would react “out in the world.”  I’m still learning, and as St. Francis de Sales says, every day is a new beginning.

                Two days following my reception, we were in the midst of festivities for our Mother’s feast day.  The novitiate put on a fifteen minute play that I had originally written as a narrative.  This time of reflecting and resoluting has covered a wide spectrum, more than I would realize.  The play covered my intimidated experience as a retreatant, and then a postulant, figuring out how to appropriately break open a hardboiled egg in the refectory.  (I can do it now, by the way). 

                God has been there for me as the central focus of my life, whether I could grasp, sense, and interpret, or if I could not do any of these.  Sometimes it takes time.  And just like the icing for the cake, God provided us with the ingredients and the love to respond.  God be Praised!  Always!