The Middle Ages of Sister Mary Baruch (Sister Mary Baruch, O.P. Book 2)

by Jacob Restrick

  Sr. Mary Angela was a novice in her first year. She darted over to me from her prie-dieu. “Are you all right, Sr. Mary Baruch?” She spoke louder than our usual chapel whisper. I must’ve been curled up and nearly falling off my seat, when I hollered and jumped. The crash seemed so real!

  “I’m fine, dear, thank you. Blessed be God. I must’ve dozed off a little and was having a strange dream. I’m sorry if I disturbed you.”

  “You didn’t disturb me.” Her whisper was a little softer. “I was kind of dozing off myself, a little, and you hollered, and…”

  “Would you pick up my rosary for me, Sister, it’s here on the floor.” Sr. Angela was a lovely young girl, but like so many of the aspirants and young girls coming to see our life, she loved to talk a lot.

  “Were you having a nightmare?” Sr. Mary Angela of the Inquisition had no qualms about carrying on a conversation in the chapel after Great Silence, something we would never have done when I was a novice nearly forty years ago. Nor would we ever ask an older Sister anything personal. We probably wouldn’t be having the night guard either. “Were you having a nightmare?” she repeated a little louder presuming my hearing was going.

  “No, Sister,” in my best low-keyed whisper, “I was dreaming about a night different from all other nights, when I was a child.”

  Having retrieved my brown wooden rosary, and sitting next to me like we were outside on the swing, she whispered: “Was it your senior prom?” And she giggled. She’s asking me about my senior prom? Oy.

  “No, it was not my senior prom. Goodness. Sister, I don’t even remember my senior prom.” I knew she was just being nice. The young Sisters like to tease us older Sisters, again, in a way we would never have done when we were young Sisters. I could never imagine saying such a thing to SCAR – Sister Catherine Agnes Russell. She was my postulant directress who taught us all about the enclosure, being on time, doing what we were supposed to be doing, when we were supposed to do it, and most of all keeping silence. She was quick to correct and very rarely, if ever, smiled. Sr. Anna Maria and I called her SCAR, because one always felt wounded after Sr. Catherine Agnes taught obedience and humility.

  I knew Sr. Mary Angela was just teasing me, and I could have played along, but we were in the chapel after all, and it was getting late. “I’m off to our cell, Sister, now you pray for me, okay, that I won’t have any more scary dreams; I wouldn’t want to wake up the whole dormitory.”

  Sr. Mary Angela thought that was hysterical and laughed out loud till she saw the shock on my face, and she became very repentant right there in front of our “week-day Jesus,” as Sr. Gertrude would refer to the monstrance, more than the Lord. I smiled back to reassure her I was not upset. “Pray for my old bones,” I said, making my way out from behind the forms in front of our seats. I was still thinking about the night different from all others. I really did drop the Seder plate. To think the memory of that still comes up in my subconscious…

  Walking down the cloister alone at night brings back many memories and a comfortable spirit of peace and contentment. The Great Silence settles over the house like a London fog. I was just twenty-five years old when I entered, and I have grown old here; or maybe I should say, I’m on my way to growing old. There are still Sisters much older than I; they still live the life as best they can. We haven’t had as many entering the last ten years, but we have some wonderful young Sisters too, coming to our way of life from the crazy world they have grown up in. They probably don’t realize it, but it’s all the work of grace.

  Outside in the garth – our monastic garden surrounded on four sides by the silence of the cloisters – there’s a light in front of the life-size stone crucifix which stands in the middle. It’s a beautiful sight to gaze on, especially in the winter and on very dark evenings when the moon is waning or the sky is filled with clouds. It’s stark. It says all that one can possibly say about our life because it’s in union with Him and Him crucified. I know that can sound very pious at times, but His night, the night before He died, was a night different from all other nights. I guess the Scripture scholars debate whether it was a Seder the Lord ate with his twelve apostles in that upper room, or just a kind of festive meal. But I believe it was indeed a Seder. Even Mark’s gospel has two disciples ask Jesus where they should go to prepare to eat the Passover with the Lord. There is a set “order” (Seder) to the accounts from the washing of the disciples’ feet (in John’s Gospel only) to the Kiddush (blessing) over the cups of wine, and breaking of the bread without chametz, unleavened bread. It was the Feast of Unleavened Bread.

  I was passing the door to our infirmary where the elderly and infirmed Sisters live, and sometimes a young Sister if she is recovering from the flu or an operation. It is one of my favorite places in the whole monastery because of the Sisters who are there, and I still go there often just to be with them and help out however I can. Someday, I know, I’ll be a permanent resident, and we can all talk about our senior proms, if any of us remembers them.

  But I don’t live in the the infirmary…yet, although I’m showing signs of getting ready. Picking up dropped rosaries and tying my shoes are not the easiest things for me to do any more. The rosary is dropped because of arthritis in my left hand, but I try to offer it up. The shoes are hard to tie because, well, I’m just a bit plump.

  Sister Anna Maria used to tease me and laugh at my trying to tie my shoes from a seated position. I am on the verge of asking for soft comfortable loafers, but I really like the black gym shoes we’re allowed to wear now. No longer black lace-up oxfords with thick heels; now we wear Nike and New Balance! Vatican II footwear for nuns. I’m also grateful we don’t have to wear stockings anymore; good ole white socks are much more comfortable. Such a blessing, the renewal!

  We have a rocker in the cloister walk outside the doorway leading to the infirmary. It’s not as nice as Squeak – my own antique rocker that I had rescued from the curb on Amsterdam Ave and 75th Street about forty-five years ago! I dragged it home, cleaned it up, stained it with a nice maple brown varnish, and sat in it to read. It squeaked. But I came to know the Lord in that squeaky rocker. I was doing Lectio Divina and didn’t even know it. I’d read my New Testament each night, and close it and think about it, and I began to talk to Jesus about what I was reading, and what He was saying to me in those books.

  When I left West 79th Street and my family’s home, I took Squeak with me to the East Side. Greta Phillips shared her apartment with me during that crucial time in my life. We went to Mass together every morning, and both worked at the New York Public Library. She had entered the Church a week before me; we met in our Instructions Class at St. Vincent Ferrer Church on East 65th and Lexington. She was a retired missionary; she and her Lutheran husband, Pastor Paul, served for many years in Mozambique. She was a wonderful roommate and dear friend although she was almost thirty years older than I. My sister Ruthie said she looked like Grace Kelly. Dear Greta…

  When I left for the monastery, I left Squeak with her. And after nearly twenty-five years, when Greta died, she left me Squeak. I offered her (Squeak) to the infirmary, but Mother Agnes Mary said I should keep her in our cell till I went to the infirmary myself.

  The rocker outside the infirmary door is a more modern distant cousin of Squeak. It doesn’t make a sound when someone is rocking back and forth. It has thick corduroy covered pillows for the seat and back, and wider arms than Squeak. It’s comfortable for tired old bones, so I indulged myself and had a seat which had a beautiful side view of the stone crucifix in the garth. It was a kind of memory rocker. . .it lent itself to taking a sentimental journey, as the song says.

  Christmas Eve 1999 was a night unlike any other. For one, it was the first time we had midnight Mass at 8:00 o’clock. It got changed, maybe because two older sisters complained in the kind way older nuns have learned to do. It goes back to Mother John Dominic’s days when we would only have a couple cookies and Christmas egg nog after Mass and then hurry off to bed. Mother Joh
n Dominic taught us that joy is a great ingredient in Dominican life, often expressed in, what we call, a Gaudeamus, (Latin for “we rejoice”) which is a community “party” after a big liturgical celebration. So if we had Mass earlier, the elderly Sisters argued, we could have more time for our Gaudeamus. (I am among the “elderly” Sisters!)

  With the end of 1999, not only would a new century begin but a new millennium. The year 2000 would be a big one for us as Mother’s second term would be coming to an end, and we would be electing a new prioress. Besides that, a lot of things happened or changed in 2000.

  For one thing, we never used to get personal gifts at Christmas. For years, on Christmas morning, everyone would find an orange, bright as California sunshine, at her place in the refectory, along with her Advent mail. Later in the day, a candy cane, and maybe a lovely holy card of the Holy Family. Thirty years later, now we get gifts from the Prioress and her council like Santa and his elves.

  The Christmas of 2001, we got new sheets for our beds—colored ones with prints and form fitting, which made us feel so modern it came up in Chapter whether we should keep them. The argument against them was that they were too worldly, too distracting, too pretty, too expensive, and too unbefitting to a nun practicing austerity.

  The “sed contra” cleared it up by calling on the transcendental of beauty in which we lie down and sleep comes at once. This time it was the younger Sisters who won the argument. We kept the sheets and were so used to them by Ash Wednesday that it gave some of us something to give up for Lent. They were kept in the common linen closet, so again each one was free to choose what sheets she wanted. At the beginning the colored sheets were a novelty, but the plain white seemed to be most used. I used to try to take the purple and pale violet sheets during Advent and Lent. Being “liturgical” erased the guilt of being “worldly.”

  In 2002, after our eight o’clock-midnight Mass and Gaudeamus, we went to our cells and found small poinsettias at each door. These were truly lovely and brought a little Christmas into each of our cells.

  Rocking in my time-machine-rocker, I thought about how things had certainly changed in the last forty years, since I knelt at the enclosure door and it opened to welcome me inside. I still remembered it like it was yesterday. The community was all standing there in their black cappas, holding lighted candles. They were all smiling, even “one tough old bird,” an expression I learned from the tough old bird herself; SCAR once called herself that when we were chatting about the old days!

  At one Chapter, when we were discussing changes in light of the renewal of Vatican II, it came up to do away with this little welcoming ritual and just introduce the new postulant in the De Profundis line before meals. But it didn’t pass; we’ve kept the custom, and even added chanting another psalm along with Psalm 122, the pilgrim psalm which welcomed the newcomer: “and now our feet are standing within your gates, O Jerusalem.” Little does the newcomer know how much chametz will be burned up, or burned out of her in the year ahead. Spiritual leaven puffs us up with pride, like we’re on steroids.

  My entrance way back in 1970 was not dramatic except to me – and I’m sure to Papa who was there to “give me away” because he thought of himself as the father of the bride.

  Much more dramatic was Sr. Mary Mannes, ten years later, who was just plain Charlotte when she entered. She was kneeling at the enclosure door as prescribed, on her knees, smoking a cigarette (not prescribed). I even knew which brand: it was an Old Gold spin filter, which my sister Sally smoked.

  When the enclosure door opened, Charlotte ceremoniously stood and squished out the half smoked tote in a cut-glass ashtray which she ceremoniously handed to Sr. Paula, our extern Sister standing beside her, her mouth agape with disbelief. The prize, however, went to Mother Agnes Mary, who had a lovely smile as she watched this little farewell to cigarettes ritual. Charlotte stood up, and Mother took her by her now empty hand, and said: “let our prayer rise before You, O Lord, like incense in your sight.”

  Charlotte never had another cigarette (that I know of) and became a model novice and an excellent cook. When she received the habit, she received the name of Mannes, St. Dominic’s blood brother who entered the Order. I guess Old Gold spin filters were ole Charlotte’s chametz…burned up and lying in an ashtray.

  When I was librarian, Sr. Mary Mannes checked out a book of the writings of Edith Stein. She didn’t know much about her but was curious about her being Jewish and dying in Auschwitz. I told her she would find her early life interesting. She used to smoke Gauloises, those strong (awful) smelling French cigarettes, when she drank wine and beer in the local pubs and argued over philosophy. Sr. Mannes smiled and said: “I never knew anything about philosophy.”

  Christmas Eve 2005 was different from all other nights as my gift after our midnight Mass at 8:00 o’clock was two new cushions for Squeak. They were called Evening Champagne with the Blues because they were a light beige corduroy with dispersed powder blue stripes throughout. Squeak never had it so good!

  We aren’t keen on decorating our cells; we are not a college sorority house. Simple and plain is the preferred décor, but a hint of beauty was allowed, like our colored sheets and maybe a plant. Over the years we acquired blonde wooden blinds on the windows which muted the color in the room at various hours of the day. Squeak was really a prayer-chair and could be turned to the corner where I had hung an icon of Our Lady of Perpetual Help, and to the left of that Ruthie’s comedy and tragedy theater masks. I inherited them from Ruthie after she died. Well, I didn’t really inherit them as much as I took them. Mama insisted, and I didn’t want to spoil the mood of reconciliation between my mother and me which Ruthie’s death brought about. Mother Agnes Mary thought it was quite extraordinary but since our cells are very private, she said I could keep them. They are older than Squeak actually. When we were kids Ruthie and I shared a bedroom. We were great fans of the theater and the movies, and we had gotten the theater masks, comedy and tragedy, as a joint Chanukahh gift. Ruthie pursued a life in the theater.

  Many years ago now, Ruthie offered them to Sr. Gertrude because of Sister’s great love for the theatre and Ruthie’s career in particular. Sr. Gertrude was very touched by the gesture, as was I. Ruthie had great awe and wonder at Sr. Gertrude because she had given up Broadway for a monastery in Brooklyn Heights. She gave up the lights of Broadway for the obscurity of the “Narrow-way.” Sr. Gertrude thanked Ruthie and told her that she had her own theater masks—a picture of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Mercy, joy, and suffering.

  I’m happy to have them in our austere cell with pale violet sheets. They feel at home here, and they help me remember to pray for Ruthie whose poor life was comedy and tragedy. She was starring in a musical revue at Penguin Pub in New York’s Greenwich Village, when she died of an overdose of crack cocaine. She was quite the comedian, I’m told. Comedy and tragedy. It’s also ironic how much my meditation has flowed out from those masks, as our life is certainly happy and sad; or full of joy and sorrow. Our Lady is one whose soul rejoices in God, while her Immaculate Heart was also pierced with a sword. The masks have been “converted” from the theater to the monastic life. Sr. Gertrude certainly fills that analogy out to a tee, but many of the Sisters do in their own way.

  Ruthie thought our life in the monastery was “sad.” But I’ve often thought how few are the people who really get to know and love and share life with others as intimately as we do. It can often be an intense life, especially in the early years when one is learning all about oneself, but it’s not sad. The interior world is a whole universe we’ve got to explore with its own landscape. Hills and valleys, mountains and deserts, and lots of flat plains without much of a view. It has moments of comedy and sometimes tragedy, but we “travel along, singing our song, side by side.” And we burn up our chametz in the flame of love of the Sacred Heart.

  Well, enough of this sentimental journey. I got out of the infirmary rocker and made my way around the cloister corner. Passing the refect
ory I was tempted to make a quick peanut butter sandwich, but I prayed to St. Michael the Archangel and the temptation passed. I can’t imagine why, with the world in such a precarious state. St. Michael must be on overtime and he saves me from falling into the pantry. I guess I still hang on to some old old chametz.

  Chapter Two

  Shanah Tovah“May it be a good year”

  The Lord said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt: This month shall mark for you the beginning of the months; it shall be the first of the months of the year for you. (Exodus 12:1-2)

  It was a crisp September day nearing the even crisper and more colorful month of October. We have one apple tree in the professed garden which yields a crop of crab apples. Vespers in the autumn is one of my favorite times. The days are getting shorter, and the shadows are longer in October, pulling us into November. I rarely go outdoors after Vespers, as I like to spend the forty-five minutes we have for meditation in the chapel. But one day I went out to smell the air and to sit on the wooden bench we have under the crabapple tree. I was going to meditate on St. Mark’s gospel when Jesus was hungry and went to the fig tree which didn’t have any figs, and He cursed it. I was distracted when a crabapple fell and hit me on the head. I didn’t curse, but picked myself up and went to the other bench not under the tree. But then I started thinking about apples, and why did Mark make it to be a fig tree. Fig trees were all over Israel, but this allegory (we learned it was an allegory in our class on St. Mark’s gospel) would have been even more significant if it had been an apple tree, taking us back to THE apple tree in the Garden of Eden. I like apples…a lot. Maybe that’s another reason I like this season of the year so much because we get a whole variety of apples in the refectory…Red Delicious, Macintosh, Golden Yellow, and some new ones with names I never heard. I closed my eyes and could see a whole orchard of apples. I can smell them hanging heavy on the limbs waiting to be picked. Row after row for as far as I can see, an orchard-world, and silent except for the rustle of the September wind and a distant row of bee hives swarming with hundreds of worker bees bringing honey nectar to their queen. And the words Shanah Tovah came to my mind. The Jewish new year wish.