Several young women discerning religious vocations weighed in about the cultural factors that influence vocations — including their own — and the role that the Carmelite Monastery has played in their faith lives.
Theresa Bornhoft, 23, from Little Rock, is a new postulant staying at the Carmelite monastery for the next three months, exploring the vocation.
“I’ve been discerning for several years now, and this Carmel has always been on my heart as a place to come and visit,” said Bornhoft, who arrived at the monastery Sept. 1. “I’ve just been following everyone around and seeing what they do and staying with the Lord in prayer to see if I am supposed to be here for longer … I’m not sure where God is calling me, but I want to find out, and this is a wonderful community to help find out.”
Angelica Dizon, 21, is a postulant originally from North Carolina. She decided to visit the Carmelite Monastery in Little Rock during the COVID-19 pandemic for three months.
“I remember I was leaving, we were driving away, and I felt this ache in my heart,” she said. “It was weird. It was so sudden, too. I felt like God would miss me, like he just wanted me to be there with him. I wanted to respond to that I felt that ache too, like we were both aching. I was like, ‘OK, I promise I’m coming. I’ll come back.’”
Dizon left for three years, discerning her path.
“My prayer was so dry, and it was so painful. I’m supposed to be discerning, and I felt like God dropped me into the dark. … I thought maybe God doesn’t want me … so I went home and to the outside world … got a job and went to a community college and started helping out at the church.”
With a week left until her window to be an aspirant in the monastery ran out, Dizon returned to the Carmelites. She said her friends are happy that she found her calling, but that they’re not as eager to pursue a life of faith.
“I can explain it to them and everything, and a lot of my friends kind of believe in God, like the seed is there, but they don’t really want to go too deep into it,” Dizon said. “It’s more like, ‘I believe that God exists. If that’s what he wants you to do, then go do it.’”
Renee Kendall, 23, another postulant from Wichita, Kan., became Christian at 19 and began attending church with her grandmother, who is a fundamentalist Baptist.
“I started going with her and had an experience in prayer, and I was like, ‘Yes, this is it, God is real and loves me,’” Kendall said. “I had a complete turnaround, a complete conversion at 19.”
When Kendall enrolled in a Baptist Bible college, she grew deeper into the faith.
“I came home for the summer with every intention of going back,” Kendall said. “But instead, I converted to Catholicism.”
When she signed up for RCIA, she found herself drawn to St. Therese of Lisieux after reading her autobiography, “Story of a Soul.”
“I already knew I was called to religious life and that Carmel had to be in it,” Kendall said.
She said many young people fear commitment.
“Something I’ve noticed in a lot of people my age, especially women, after talking to some other young ladies who thought they had maybe be called, is that there’s a lot of fear of commitment in our generation,” she said. “We’re the ‘maybe’ generation … a lot of our generation is paralyzed. You’re just bombarded with everything; there are so many options and ways to go, so they don’t go.”
Sister Cecilia said technology and the pervasiveness of fast and convenient services have also reduced patience and have deterred young people from taking the time needed to discern a religious vocation.
“People are hungering today for something,” said Sister Lucia Ellender, OCD. “They are never going to be satisfied until they find God. … A lot of young people are going to hit rock bottom and start searching for God. … Today, it’s such a whirlwind, and people get stuck. Prayer is the answer to a person’s longing to find God.”
Sister Mercia Mary Bowie, OCD, another sister at Carmel, said pursuing a vocation is like falling in love.
“That’s the only thing that will carry you through any part of the vocation process, just falling in love and doing anything that has to be done in order to keep that love,” she said. “And that’s the only thing that’s going to keep someone persevering. But you can’t do it on your own.”
