“I am a Married Woman”

How many times I would walk back to my place in choir after failing miserably as the Sister who intones the hymns at the Divine Office, my face blushing with humiliation. Ah, but at those very moments, I would whisper to Jesus, "I unite myself to You." This continual uniting with Jesus greatly strengthened my sense of brideship. At other times, in the midst of a suffering, I would say to myself, "I am a married woman," meaning that I am not alone: I have my God and my Spouse, Jesus, to lean on. At still other times, whether suffering or not, I would look at my wedding ring. My Mother Abbess had confided that she does this as a way to remain lovingly united to her Spouse, and that inspired me to do the same. 

Being espoused to Jesus as a Poor Clare nun has held immeasurable graces for me. But some of those graces have come in the form of suffering. When these moments or days of suffering have come, I have always tried to unite myself with my Bridegroom whose sufferings ran the gamut of being contradicted, humiliated, rejected, of being not believed, to the excruciating sufferings of the Cross. I have found that there really is no suffering that I have had to bear that Jesus, my Spouse, hasn't suffered first.