I Felt Like a Winner: A Conversation with a Cistercian Nun
Sister Maria Veronika was born in 1973 in Brno, in what is now the Czech Republic. She found her way to God as a teenager, partly because her scout leader wanted to become a nun. Today she lives in Magdenau Abbey in the municipality of Degersheim in Switzerland, a monastery founded in 1244. I sat down with her a while back.
Marcel: My first question comes from my seven-year-old daughter. She wants to know your favorite color.
Sr. MV: Unfortunately I cannot choose just one. I love autumn colors.
Marcel: We have known each other for several years now, but I’ve always wondered: What does a nun actually do all day? Tell me about your daily routine.
Sr. MV: We get up at 5:30 in the morning, prepare breakfast, and help the older sisters get ready. At 7:00 we sing morning prayer and continue at 7:30 with the Eucharist. From 8:30 to 11:00 we work. Our tasks include household duties, gardening, and preparing the liturgy. We also handle administration, study, and maintain contact with people outside. At 11:00 we pray midday prayer and eat lunch at 11:30. From 13:30 to 17:00 we work again, and at 17:00 we sing evening prayer. At 18:00 we have supper, and at 19:30 we pray the vigil and compline. Around 21:00 the night rest begins.
Marcel: Your day seems very structured. What are the advantages and disadvantages of such a routine?
Sr. M.V: The greatest advantage is that prayer and reflection have a fixed place in our day. It is also refreshing to interrupt our work consciously again and again, which often brings new ideas. On the other hand, a strict schedule can feel constricting. Each of us needs moments of freedom and time to shape according to her own rhythm. We always look for a healthy balance, and from time to time we take free days when we are not bound to the daily order.
Marcel: Do you remember your first night in the monastery? What went through your mind?
Sr. M.V: That first night I felt like a winner who had reached her goal.
Marcel: A moving answer. What motivated you to join an order and enter monastic life?
Sr. M.V: As a teenager I had many questions, including whether God exists at all. Then I read a popular explanation of Einstein’s theory of relativity and thought: If even time and space are not absolute, can I still trust my perception? And if everything were relative, we would be completely disoriented. There must be a fixed point somewhere, a key that helps me understand the world and myself. Over time I found answers in the Christian faith and felt an inner call to give the spiritual life first place. This process took about four years.
Marcel: You are a Cistercian nun. In the tradition of the founders of Cîteaux, you lead a life of prayer, reading, and work. What distinguishes your order from others? Tell me a bit about its history.
Sr. M.V: The roots of our order lie in Egypt, Palestine, and what is now Turkey, where the first monastic settlements emerged in the fourth century. These monks were social critics who left ordinary life behind, lived with incredible strictness, and sought uncompromising self-knowledge. They tried to understand their inner processes, and many became excellent guides of the human soul.
Women soon embraced this lifestyle as well. By the fifth and sixth centuries monasticism had spread into the western part of the Roman Empire and played an essential role in the Christianization of Europe. The original way of life was adapted to local social and climatic conditions and enriched with new ideas.
In the eleventh and twelfth centuries various reform movements arose, such as the Carthusians, who followed an eremitical ideal. The founders of our Cistercian Order saw manual labor as a way to learn self-discipline, and they sought in the monastery not only inner balance but also mystical experience, especially divine love.
There are a few things that set us apart from other orders, but more important are the similarities that connect all monastic traditions, even beyond Christianity.
Marcel: Last autumn I visited the cathedral in Troyes with my daughter and visited the relics of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux. Can you tell us something about this famous Cistercian monk?
Sr. M.V: Bernard of Clairvaux was a charismatic figure. He maintained contacts with influential people of his time and often traveled as a mediator and preacher. He used a rich, symbolic language that captivated many people, though today it is harder to understand because he constantly referred to Scripture, which people then knew almost by heart.
He was a master of language and a man whose religious passion helped many find their way to God.
Marcel: How did you feel when you learned that Clairvaux, your mother abbey in France, had been turned into a prison where, among others, the terrorist Carlos the Chakal is held?
Sr. M.V: In 1998, when our Order celebrated its nine-hundredth anniversary, I had the chance to visit the old prison with a group of monks and nuns. It was housed in the eighteenth-century monastery buildings. The shock was enormous. A place intended as an oasis of peace had been turned into a place of deep suffering.
Standing there, feeling the heavy atmosphere, triggered a silent protest within me. But I understood that after the French Revolution the remote location made it convenient for the secular state. Later, my visits to Salem and Pforta comforted me. These former Cistercian monasteries became respected schools: Schule Schloss Salem and Landesschule Pforta.
Marcel: “Nothing should be preferred to prayer,” writes Saint Benedict. Yet visitors are often surprised when they come to Magdenau because you sing your prayers. Why is that?
Sr. M.V: Very simple. Our prayers consist largely of psalms. Psalms were originally songs. And songs are meant to be sung.
Marcel: Many people who read this will say they have prayed to God but never heard anything back.
Sr. M.V: It is indeed very difficult with God, because he speaks, but usually in a completely different way than we expect. Our expectations are the wall between him and us. If we worship our expectations, we end up worshipping ourselves. It takes courage to let God truly be God, and patience to dismantle the wall between him and us.
Marcel: My last newspaper article was about nihilism, especially Nietzsche’s claim that God is dead. How do you feel when you leave the monastery for errands and ride through the “consumer world” on the bus?
Sr. M.V: Instead of thinking about “the world out there,” I prefer to notice the concrete people sitting with me on the bus or the train. I am aware that I am also part of this consumer world. Even as nuns we cannot completely step out of it, and we admit honestly that we make compromises.
Marcel: In our last conversation after the service you said you want not only to understand God in his being, but also “God in his time.” What do you mean by that?
Sr. M.V: From a biblical point of view, God writes a love story with humanity and with each individual person. That is also how I view my own life. I believe I am being guided, and that everything I experience carries a deep meaning that I often only understand in hindsight.
Marcel: What are you reading at the moment?
Sr. M.V: Michel Simonet: A Rose and a Broom. The French original is: Une rose et un balai. A wonderful little book written by a street sweeper from Fribourg. Very poetic and humble, and precisely for that reason incredibly enriching.
Marcel: Do you have personal role models?
Sr. M.V: I admire the French theologian Henri de Lubac. As a soldier in the First World War he suffered a head wound, and despite the pain that accompanied him for decades, he wrote groundbreaking works. He was a great scholar of medieval theology, a sharp thinker, and at the same time an exceedingly kind man who saw the weaknesses of the Church and loved it nonetheless.
I also admire the writer Ida Friederike Görres for the same qualities: her critical thinking and her love for the Church, which do not contradict each other but complement each other beautifully.