Prayer is powerful, but it's harder to picture: the struggle to fundraise for contemplative sisters

Sisters Maria Cristiana and Maria de la Ascension shuffle though large, laminated photos—pictures of nuns holding children, playing volleyball, eating pizza, singing and worshipping.

They’ve come to Chicago to ask for donations for their missionary work in the Ukraine and Argentina as members of the Institute Servants of the Lord and the Virgin of Matará, a religious order with about 700 women serving in 30 countries worldwide.  Despite the recent decline in enrollment into Catholic vocations, their sisterhood has enjoyed significant growth in its 20-year history, and now finds itself needing more space to house and educate the young women joining the order.

In Chicago, the two—Sister Cristiana dressed in a black habit, customary in Eastern Europe where she serves, and Sister Ascension dressed the order’s religious habit, grey and blue to symbolize Christ’s earthly and divine nature—are visiting local parishes, including St. Stanislaus Kostka and St. Fracis of Assisi, for support. 

It’s not easy, though.  Not only does the down economy make parishioner purse-strings tight, but for some Catholics living in today’s contemporary world, it’s difficult to relate to the kinds of work the nuns do.

Many can see the value in Catholic mission work and charity, but that’s just one part of it.  The Institute also includes “contemplative sisters,” who live in cloisters and dedicate their lives to prayer.  Sister Cristiana, who’s starting a monastery for these sisters in the Ukraine, said this is a harder project for them to fund.  A picture of a group of children or an event can show off missionary work, but the role of contemplative sisters is less visual, less colorful and more spiritual.

“Not everybody understands the power of prayer,” she said. "Everybody understands helping the poor, the orphans, the disabled."

Sister Cristiana is not alone; contemplative orders in today’s world often struggle to justify their significance as the spiritual side of a sisterhood or brotherhood.

“For Catholics to support it, it seems like ‘oh such a waste,’ so it’s a challenge,” said Michael Wick, the executive director of the Institute on Religious Life in Libertyville. “The present generation appreciates doing rather than being, and in cloistered life, they appreciate just being of the Lord and the institution of prayer.”

In a world of to-do lists, busy schedules and achievement-based measures of success, it’s hard to see a silent, away-from-everything lifestyle as worthwhile.  But these nuns come to know and love God deeply, and they pray for the benefit of the rest of the world.

“They are basically the professional pray-ers of the Church,” Wick said.

For Servants of the Lord and the Virgin of Matará, the work of contemplative sisters is a necessary complement to their apostolic mission.

"By their prayers, works of penance, and sufferings, contemplative communities have a very great importance in the conversion of souls," according to a compilation from the order's constitution, on its Web site.  "The nuns bear in their hearts the sufferings and anxieties of all those who seek their help."

While missionary sisters draw people to the Church with their programming in the community, like mercy houses for orphans, young mothers and the disabled, “contemplative sisters are to pray for the people there,” Sister Cristiana said.

As more young people join religious orders like Sister Cristiana—she, now 32, and Sister Ascension, now 21, joined as teens—the Institute for Religious Life anticipates a rebound for the Catholic Church, after years of decline.

People in the most recent generation have not been exposed to Church vocations and have grown more curious, Wick said.  After noticing the popularity “cloistered life” section of his organization’s Web site, they launched a separate site just on contemplative living three years ago, cloisteredlife.com.

Kate Shellnutt
I’m a freelance religion reporter and blogger for the Little Things. I majored in religion and journalism as an undergrad, and I'm now completing my master's in journalism at Medill. More