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A Dominican nun in prayer at Corpus Christi Monastery in Menlo Park. (Photo courtesy of Corpus Christi Monastery, Menlo Park)
March 27, 2020
Christina GrayWhile religious sisters were on the front lines attending to the sick during the flu epidemic of 1918, women religious in the Archdiocese of San Francisco are responding prayerfully and practically to the current global pandemic that has not yet reached its peak.
In a video posted March 25 to the Dominicans of San Rafael Facebook page, prioress general Sister Carla Kovak spoke to sisters about the “interplay of light and dark in the story of healing” on the Feast of the Assumption of Mary.
“The mystery of this now moment in dealing with coronavirus calls us to recognize that light even in nature includes the interplay with darkness,” Sister Kovak said in a clip shot outdoors where clouds moved through a blue sky behind her.
She said it was important “to notice the light of Christ shining in and among us” in the human stories of courage and kindness around us.
Sister Kovak encouraged Dominican sisters to “be a light in the darkness” of the pandemic by responding with the love and obedience of Mary in learning from the archangel Gabriel that she would give birth to the Son of God.
“Let us repeat her words, ‘let it be done to me according to God,’” Sister Kovak said.
Sisters at the San Rafael convent are sheltering in place by watching TV Mass together, with empty chairs between for necessary social separation. They are also working in the community garden and praying for those with the virus and their caregivers.
They have also posted “Be Not Afraid” signs around their suburban property as encouragement to friends and neighbors, some of whom fetch groceries for the mostly over-60 sisters.
“Our ‘yes’ at this time is to be present to one another and to allow others to be present to us,” Sister Kovak said.
A few miles up the road in Terra Linda in northern San Rafael, Mother Anna Marie Vanni, prioress of the Mother of God Carmelite Monastery, said in a phone call that the cloistered nuns there have become “real hermits” praying for intentions of local Catholics that are coming in by phone and email.
The phone has been a lifeline, she said, both for the sisters and for their supporters, many of whom attended daily Mass at the monastery chapel before all public Masses ceased in the archdiocese.
“We all seem to need it right now,” she said. “There is something about a human voice.”
Another contemplative order, the Dominican Nuns of Corpus Christi Monastery in Menlo Park, said in a March 16 Facebook post that “it is at times like this that a cloistered nun is impelled to more closely unite herself to her divine spouse” in prayer.
“Our contemplative life is wholly apostolic in that we implore God’s grace on behalf of all people,” the message reads in part. “For when the hands and feet of Christ -- that is, his priests, apostolic religious and laity -- are shackled from service, cloistered communities, as the heart of Christ, burn more ardently with His love.”
Missionaries of Charity Sister Mary Maximilliana answered the phone at the community’s Pacifica convent March 27 and told the paper the shelter-in-place order had suspended the order’s daily meal ministry to the homeless in San Francisco but not its ministry to the terminally ill.
“Thanks be to God we’ve been able to keep open our hospice,” she said of the nearby Gift of Love home for the terminally ill.
The sisters continue nursing residents, none of whom have tested positive for the coronavirus.
Sister Maximilliana said the sisters also spend an extra hour each day in adoration before the Blessed Sacrament for protection for God’s people against the coronavirus.
The Sisters of Mercy closed Mercy Center in Burlingame to all public events and in their confinement are sending handwritten notes of encouragement to patients in a Tenderloin neighborhood recovery program, Mercy Sister Joan Marie O’Donnell said.
“We are also calling on legislators for the release of particularly vulnerable immigrants who are in various detention centers in California,” she said.
Mercy sisters are also urging county legislators to place a moratorium on rental evictions.
The sisters also join a daily virtual prayer group with Mercy High School in Burlingame and participate in conference calls with local interfaith groups to discuss collective responses to the ongoing needs created by the pandemic.
Sister Rosina Sister Rosina Conrotto, archdiocesan director of consecrated life, affirmed the role of religious in a March 24 letter to women religious in the archdiocese.
“Let us continue to pray for one another that we may be spared the virus, that we many deepen our awareness of God’s love and presence in our lives, and that we may remember that we are in solidarity with all those in the world who are suffering from fear, anxiety, impatience and from the disease itself,” she said.