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I spent a night and a day 'being a nun' at the Monastery of the Visitation in Sussex for a feature for The Times. The spiritual discipine I was, and still am, working on was obedience. One of the first things the Mother Superior, Sister Jane Margaret, reminded me of was that 'obedience' derives from the Latin word obedire, meaning 'to listen'.

Some of the nuns have been married and have children outside, like the founder, St Jane Frances de Chantal, who died in 1641 and who took a vow of chastity after her husband, a wealthy Burgundian Baron, died in a hunting accident when she was just 28, leaving her with four children. Soon after that tragedy she encountered St Francis de Sales in a vision and later heard him preach. His Introduction to the Devout Life is still a religious best seller, 400 years after it was published. He is also the patron saint of journalists. He ecame her spiritual director and co-founded the order with her.  Cardinal Newman's motto, Cor ad Cor Loquitur, came from his writings. That is also the motto for the Pope's visit this autumn .

The nuns came to England at the start of the 19th century after the nuns in Rouen were expelled to Portugal in the French Revolution. Lady Stourton, the widow of Charles, 14th Lord Stourton who headed one of the country's best-known old Catholic families and is ancestor to the BBC journalist Ed Stourton, was among those who helped them come to England.  

It was quite funny when I arrived in the evening before compline and was greeted by Sister Jane Margaret who knew my age, my son and husband's name, and the resident genealogist even knew my family tree. "We Googled you," she giggled. Within minutes of my arrival, the webmaster, Sister Mary de Sales, had blogged me, complete with a picture she took when I nodded off during the social and knitting hour in the drawing room. For dinner I was given Spanish omelette, possibly the most heavenly omelette ever made on earth, with home-grown succulent cherry tomatoes. I complimented the cooking nun. "It's Delia's" she laughed. The next day, taking meals as a community, we listened to prayers and a tape of Julian of Norwich: "Through longing for God we are made worthy."

The "Great Silence" descended at 9pm that night but no-one told the birds who continued to sing away in the glorious gardens, the scent of sweet peas drifting into my 'cell' in the eaves. From my window I could see the ruins of the ancient chapel in grounds. Stoups of holy water were beside the doors into every room. My bedtime reading, left there by the nuns, was Elizabeth Stopp's biography of Madame de Chantal, whose mother was descended from the family of St Bernard de Clairvaux. Aged five, she told a Huguenot nobleman visiting her father's home: "Sir, you have got to believe that Jesus Christ is in the blessed sacrament because he himself said so. If you do not believe it you are calling him a liar." He offered her a dish of sugared almonds. She threw them on the fire and said: "This is what happens to people who do not believe what our Lord says."

Although a Protestant I dreamed, not of flames, but of flowers and butterflies


Click on either of the pictures above to see the full set of photographs from my stay at the monastery.

Read the Cardinal and the Nun news story in The Times.


Read Ruth Gledhill's feature on being "A Nun for a Day".


Read Ruth Gledhill's blog at The Times, Articles of Faith, with Peter Biddlecombe's paper describing the correspondence between Sister Dominica and Cardinal John Henry Newman.



August 4, 2010

'Nothing is so strong as gentleness, nothing so gentle as real strength.'
St Francis de Sales