To become a Visitation Companion, I pledged to attend monthly spiritual formation meetings at the monastery. Together with a small group of laywomen, we read the writings of Saints Francis and Jane and, after Mass, navigated the steep steps down to the monastery’s basement for discussion with our leaders Jody and Sister Suzanne. At the end of the year, during Advent, the individuals in our small group would discern whether we should become Companions to the monastery, partnering with the sisters in their ministry.
And so, on a Wednesday morning in February, I found myself on a sagging couch sitting next to Kristin and Kathie, holding a calligraphic design of something called “The Little Virtues.” On the badly photocopied page, letters crept upward and around, amassing into a giant ball. They formed ornately written words like humility, gentleness, and patience.
Our leader Jody explained that when Francis and Jane were shaping the Visitation order, they chose these little virtues to emphasize as they decided on their rule of life and battled with the authorities to allow women to live a semicloistered life in the community (a battle they ultimately lost). After taking a sip from my paper cup of coffee, I read the list and bristled: be grateful, be cheerfully optimistic, be kind.
If anything, I thought, I need a spirituality that encourages me to be assertive, bold, and unafraid of what others think about me. I need to cultivate courage and strength and follow-through. When our spiritual formation group discussed the little virtues that morning in the monastery’s basement, I confessed my discomfort.
“I don’t want to make myself cheerfully optimistic about my marriage right now,” I said, pointing to the handout. Kristin, who sat beside me on the couch, nodded. We had all shared deeply about our personal lives already. “I get why it’s important to be kind and gentle, but what I really want is to be brave. Why isn’t that on here?”
Sister Suzanne interjected that the opportunity for big virtues—bravery, boldness, prophetic imagination—generally comes around only a handful of times in a typical person’s life. Many of us spend more time washing dishes or going to work in an office than leading revolutions or being arrested for civil disobedience. Saint Francis believed in the holiness of all people (a sort of Catholic expression of the priesthood of all believers) at a time when holiness was reserved for the most devout and ascetic practices of the professional religious: monks, nuns, and priests. Elevating the little virtues—honesty, generosity, thoughtful concern for others—meant affirming the holiness in every person, who has the opportunity to practice such virtue every day, multiple times, in multiple ways.
When I told Sister Brenda about my negative reaction to the little virtues, she surprised me by asking: “I wonder what is really behind your reaction? The practice of the little virtues is meant to shape our inner life to be more like Jesus. There is nothing wrong with cultivating true humility.”
Indeed. The little virtues did bring up a caricature of a long-suffering, meek Christian woman for me instead of shining a path to everyday holiness as they were intended. I wasn’t sure why.
Maybe it was because the virtues seemed retrograde to me, like the black-and-white photo in a book about the St. Paul Visitation Monastery I found recently, which showed a nun in a full habit instructing teenage women in Twiggy 1960s hairdos about proper table manners. The book described how the first Visitation Monastery in Minnesota was started back in the late 1800s when wealthy Catholic families bankrolled a new convent. Their patrons included railroad tycoon James J. Hill, whose mansion in St. Paul is sometimes referred to as “Minnesota’s Downton Abbey.” The Catholic elite in the new industrial city wanted a finishing school for their girls, and the Visitation Sisters had experience running such schools. The all-girls high school, which offered both boarding and nonboarding options, was to impart academic rigor as well as virtue in the lives of these wealthy young women. Notably, Mollie McQuillan Fitzgerald, the mother of F. Scott Fitzgerald, was among its graduates.
All this history reeks of classism and patriarchy. Even the orders of nuns themselves had distinctions between the sisters—some spent their time doing menial chores (cleaning, cooking, running errands, etc.) while others held higher rank. The 1600s European feudal system of patron and servant had certainly left its fingerprints all over the Visitation history. Reading about the little virtues left me wondering if this kind of theology was more about upholding hierarchical systems than acting like Jesus.
Sister Brenda reminded me of one of Saint Francis’s maxims: “there is nothing so strong as gentleness, nothing so gentle as true strength.” Though counterintuitive, my experience with the Visitation Sisters so far confirmed this. The sisters founded their monastery in North Minneapolis thirty years ago to “take Visitation to the poor.” Sister Karen told me she was inspired by changes in the Catholic Church during the 1970s and ʼ80s, when liberation theologians declared that God has a “preferential option” for those in poverty. This emphasis seemed to directly contradict the mission of the Visitation convents running schools that taught mostly upper-class girls. After years of prayer, the sisters forged a new path by establishing a monastic community that better embodied Francis and Jane’s original vision: that the sisters be semicloistered and go out to serve their neighbor.
Yes, the sisters practiced the little virtues. They radiated with warmth and hospitality; they modeled active listening and gentleness. But there was also a steely strength underneath those softer virtues, a formidable resolve and healthy boundaries. These are women who don’t wear makeup, who wear sensible shoes, and who open their shared housing to people experiencing homelessness. Many have lived their entire adult lives in a community of other women, never relying solely on men to move their furniture or fix the jiggly door handle. They are organized and persistent, having endured decades of common life in community pre- and post-Vatican II. They are neither passive nor timid, remaining faithful to their vows. They are the hearty ones who have stayed in the church amid decline, who have seen their traditions devalued and mocked, who devote their lives to singing the Psalms and embracing vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience.
We all need spiritual women to live big virtues by standing in solidarity with the vulnerable and change systems that harm people. (Sister Mary Margaret does this at the Visitation Monastery by hosting a twelve-step program for reckoning with white privilege.) And we all need spiritual women who are kind, patient, and steadfast in the day-to-day small tasks that need to get done. My friend Christiana likes to remind me that when Jesus said to love your neighbor, that includes your family.
Gentleness. Patience. Kindness. Putting others before myself. Showing appreciation for Josh, who has always affirmed my commitment to take our kids to church, even though it’s hard for him. How much easier it is for me to daydream about great deeds, to downgrade my ordinary life by comparing it to Dorothy Day and Mother Teresa, or to the women saints I read about each day. To imagine the ways we could be serving our neighbors if only Josh and I had stayed at Jubilee Partners, if we were both still Christians.
If Francis de Sales is right, then I am just as holy living in a mixed-faith marriage than in one where both spouses believe in God. I am holy in my everyday life as I practice virtues of patience with my children, kindness to my husband, and even gentleness with myself when I fail. When I look to my mystical sisters, I hope I can emulate their big virtues when opportunity arises: to speak out again racism in the systems I benefit from and in my own heart, to support activists on the frontlines with my money and my prayers, to be brave in living out my faith even while Josh sits on the sidelines. These ordinary saints are washing the dishes and leading the revolution, and I belong in their communion.
Long after we wrapped up our February gathering of Visitation Companions, I arrived at an answer to Sister Brenda’s question. The real reason that the little virtues bothered me was because they poked at my illusions of boldly “doing great things for God.” Instead, the little virtues told me to move along the laundry, to pause and delight at my son’s nonsensical joke, to stay at the table and have hard conversations with Josh even when I’d rather bolt. They asked me to pay attention and be present to my actual life.