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September 27, 2018
Tom Burke
Christian Cahill is a candidate with the Sisters of the Holy Names, a period of formation where she lives with sisters, and meets regularly with her candidate director discussing areas including prayer and the community’s history. Her next step will be the two-year novitiate then first vows.
Christian’s vocation grew from a question from a priest at a church where she had been an altar server in high school. “He asked me if I had ever considered becoming a nun because he saw characteristics in me that would fit well. I of course immediately replied with a ‘No!’” Christian told me via email. The priest’s observations stayed with her she said: “As any millennial would do, I turned to online research and the more that I found, the more open to the possibility I became. By the time that I got to college, I knew that I wanted to keep exploring that possibility, so I got a spiritual director.”
Christian then began a process of meeting sisters from different communities seeking a congregation where she felt “comfortable being myself and where I felt at home with the other sisters and with the spirituality, mission and charism of the community. Each Holy Names Sister that I met was unique and full of energy and passionate about one aspect or another of education or social justice.”
The sisters’ way of prayer and other practices matched well with Christian’s methods. “I always left feeling nourished, joyous and welcomed by the community,” she said. “Over time as I formed deeper relationships with specific sisters, I started spending a lot of my free time visiting the sisters.” She then started her first step in formation as a pre-candidate where she “spent time getting to know the community and a variety of sisters within the community better in a more intentional way.” Christian also visited older sisters in the retirement and care centers and sisters in other states.
Christian holds a graduate degree from the Jesuit School of Theology in Berkeley and has done parish work in liturgy and youth ministry for the last four years. “Now I am doing campus ministry in a Catholic high school and loving it,” she said.
“In this day and age, ministry is an option outside of religious life, as is participating in prayer groups and retreats,” Christian said. “There are a lot of resources available for lay people, which is awesome. So for me, religious life is unique in that it is lived in community. I have already experienced a little bit of this and I am looking forward to continuing to have a supportive group of women that understand ministry with its joys and its challenges who can be there for each other through it all and hold each other in prayer.”