COME FOLLOW JESUS!

Inside the Provincial House for the Sisters of the Resurrection sits a small chapel. The room fills with light from the surrounding stained glass windows and the altar circles across the soft purple carpeting. Sister Angela Marie Leo looks at peace walking around the chapel. A fitting sentiment given this is her new home.

The Sisters of the Resurrection in Castleton-on-Hudson celebrated the investiture of their new novice, Sister Angela Marie, 26, on Aug. 14, on the vigil of the Feast of the Assumption of Mary.

Before her ceremony Sister Angela Marie was a postulant, someone who has already taken the first step of entering into religious life. Now, as a novice, Sister Angela Marie solidified her promise to study her order’s history, scripture and prayer. It was a day of celebration, filled with songs, prayers and fabulous food.

“I was trying not to cry,” said Sister Angela Marie with a smile.

More than a new novice to her order, Sister Angela Marie represents a new wave in the timeline for religious communities across the country. In the 1950-60s, the U.S. saw staggering growth in religious life among women, and in 1965, reached peak growth at 179,954 women, which outnumbered men in religious life 4 to 1.

Ever since, the secular world — and even lay Catholics — have been waiting for what is to come of religious orders as the numbers have dwindled every decade since then. In 2014, a study by the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA) put the number of sisters at 49,883 and priests at 12,010. This doesn’t mean a future for women in religious life doesn’t exist. The support for religious life is still strong yet the misconceptions about religious communities remain, as does a lack of understanding for how young men and women — yes, even in 2020 — still pine for a vocation in religious life.

Sister Deborah (Debbie) Marie Borneman, SSCM, director of Mission Integration for the National Religious Vocation Conference (NRVC), has studied the path of vocations for men and women across the U.S. The NRVC serves to help women and men discern a religious vocation and assist candidates interested in religious life.

“Jesus invited his followers with three words: Come follow me,” Sister Debbie said. “That message has never changed and women and men still are being called to him over 2,000 years later.”

These were the exact words that drew Sister Angela Marie to her vocation. At a “Come and See Weekend” with the Sisters of the Resurrection, Sister Angela Marie kept seeing the words “Follow me.”

“I think that was the call I received from God to become a Sister of the Resurrection,” she said, “and I did experience a lot of peace with that and so I just kept coming."

Sister Angela Marie was raised Catholic but never had much exposure to sisters growing up. Even still, the thought of becoming a nun was always in the back of her mind. It wasn’t until years later while teaching faith formation at her parish, St. Paul the Apostle in Schenectady, that she dove deeper into her faith.

Sister Angela Marie kept coming back to visit the sisters during Holy Hours and then tried the weekend retreat. By the end of it, she became a postulant.

“There’s a part of their charism statement that says to work for the moral and religious rebirth of society,” Sister Angela Marie said. “After I had my reversion to the faith, I just had this zeal for the salvation of souls … and to see the way that this world is today, I hope that I can give hope to people and joy so that hopefully we can all make it to heaven.”

This year, the NRVC released the 2020 Study on Recent Vocations to Religious Life. The study surveyed over 500 religious institutions with men and women who had entered their community within the last 15 years, and set out to identify what attracted candidates to their vocation and what about the discernment process has changed.

“The average age someone considers religious life today is 19 years of age,” Sister Debbie said. “To put that into context, today’s entrants were born in 2001.”

Similar to Sister Angela Marie, entrants today said they were drawn to religious life for its focus on prayer, spirituality, charism, community life and mission, according to the NRVC study. Sister Debbie added that community life is a strong standing pillar for the vocation. “Religious (lay) people can do what we do, but what makes it better and what stands the test of time is the vow of community life,” she said.

“Community is great,” said Sister Bea Tiboldi, OP, vocations outreach minister. “You have a hard day of ministry and over dinner you’re able to share.”
Sister Bea and fellow Dominican Sisters of Peace held a virtual discernment retreat on Sept. 11-13. Sister Sue Zemgulis, OP, administrator for the Dominican Retreat and Conference Center in Niskayuna, also attended. 

Eleven women from across the country came to the retreat, all mostly in their 20s and 30s, and a few still in college. The weekend served as a way to answer questions women had about the vocation, regardless of if they are considering the sisterhood or not. Sister Bea said the women really “took the experience to heart.”

“They asked great questions, like what happens when praying gets hard, and what happens with friendships and family after professing vows,” she said.

These retreats also serve as a way for vocation directors to see who is interested in pursuing this vocation. According to NRVC, 71 percent of new entrants obtain at least a bachelor’s degree before entering religious life, and 33 percent have a parent born outside the U.S.

The average age of an entering candidate today is 28, also around the average age for marriage in the U.S. Sister Debbie was surprised to find that 93 percent of the study’s respondents preferred to live intergenerationally in their community, 16 percent said the ages of the members of their order influenced their choice and 11 percent said the size of the order didn’t matter.

Sister Angela Marie wasn’t influenced by those factors either, saying, “When it came to me feeling that God was calling me here it wasn’t a determining factor of how old the sisters were or how large (the order) was.”

“My concern is that North America tends to count and measure our success in numbers,” said Sister Debbie. Rather than fixate on their size, she hopes people will look at the quality work of the order.

“People always ask, ‘Where have the sisters gone?’ They’re in food pantries, they’re in detention centers, they’re with trafficking victims and grappling with generational poverty … It’s a larger picture than our numbers.”