With her arms mimicking the motion of an oil pump, the cheerful Mother Maria explained that the congregation’s special mission in the resource-rich state is “to pump the grace for all the archdiocese” and “to testify to the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist.”
The religious order locates its monasteries in cities in order to provide people access to the Blessed Sacrament for veneration. So, the Anchorage monastery’s chapel is open to the public every day, from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m., for Eucharistic adoration. Visitors kneel adoring Christ in the consecrated host, exposed in a large, bronze monstrance, while in another section of the chapel, the nuns take turns in adoration from behind the cloister grille.
But even while performing daily chores or praying elsewhere in the monastery the nuns strive to continually focus on the Blessed Sacrament.
“I like to always stay before the Blessed Sacrament in my mind or body,” explained Mother Maria.
That means constant communication with God every day — while she is waking at 5:15 a.m., reciting the Divine Office and rosary with the congregation, resting in her cell, and reading the pope’s statements in L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper.
Mother Maria believes those outside the monastery walls can pray in a similar way.
“Think of God and want what he wants,” she urged. “God is center” at the monastery, she added, but “we all have the same center – God.”
The activity of prayer
The constant prayer of the cloistered nuns is critical activity for the church and the world, Mother Maria said.
She noted St. Paul’s teaching that each member of the Body of Christ has a mission.
“The function of the foot cannot be the hand’s,” Mother Maria said.
While the “active,” uncloistered religious have a mission to serve God’s people, she said, the “activity” of the cloistered religious is prayer and sacrifice for the church and the world.
However, she observed, that after the Second Vatican Council, which encouraged visible engagement with the world, the cloistered Sisters of the Perpetual Adoration were criticized by some for not broadening their mission outside the monastery.
But the nuns maintained their focus, Mother Maria explained, because, as Pope Paul VI stressed, prayer and sacrifice are the power behind all good action.
The current pontiff, Pope Benedict XVI has echoed that principle in recent days.
In a Feb. 2 homily during the 14th annual Day of Consecrated Life, he said, “In reality, the closer we come to God … the more useful one is to others.”
The Pope added: “Consecrated persons experience the grace, mercy and forgiveness of God not only for themselves, but also for their brothers, being called to carry in their heart and prayer the anxieties and expectations of men, especially of those who are far from God.”
Speaking in particular of those living in cloistered communities, the Pope said they live with God, “taking on themselves the sufferings and trials of others and offering everything with joy for the salvation of the world.
“It is not that we are rejecting the world,” explained Mother Maria of the separation the monastery grille represents. “We love the world.”
In the silence behind the grille, these cloistered nuns can continue their constant prayer for unknown persons they love so well — souls who themselves are distracted and rushing to work along busy Lake Otis Parkway, just around the corner.
Printed with permission from CatholicAnchor.org.