How can I find a religious order that will accept me?

[Rita1]

I will be 49 this coming August, I have an annulment pending, and I have an 11-year-old son that I don’t see for reasons I am unable to explain on a public forum. I have been raised, baptized, and confirmed in the Catholic faith. I have been lost for a long time and have come back just over two years now. I have committed myself completely to our Lord and have fallen in love and want to consecrate my life to him. I have given a 30-year confession, I have a spiritual director, very involved with my church, I’m an EMHC to the homebound, I coordinate our EMHCs, I make up monthly reports to go over with my parish priest the health and any corporal works of mercy needed by the homebound, and I am a sacristan.

I have discussed this feeling in my soul about this calling with my spiritual director and he has guided me to the best of his ability but as you probably well know, a parish priest is quite busy expecially when there is only one priest doing all the work. He really doesn’t have experience guiding a woman into a religious order. I am looking for a traditional order that serves priests in any way needed to make what they do and their lives easier and that dress traditionally in a habit and veil. I am having a hard time finding an order that will accept me because of my age or is even willing to talk to me once they find out about my son.

PLEASE!!! There has got to be an order that understands some circumstances and is willing to work with me. PLEASE HELP ME! This is something I CAN NOT walk away from!

 

[Michelle_Arnold]

There are several issues you have mentioned that I would be surprised if your spiritual director has not commented upon and tried to help you understand why you’ve been receiving the responses you have from religious orders you’ve contacted:

• You are almost 50 years old. With very few exceptions, religious orders generally are not able to accept members who will be elderly by the time they are fully professed members of the community. If the community is active, elderly members may not be able to do the work of the community. And the community likely already has many elderly members who need the financial resources of the community to deal with the needs particular to the elderly (e.g., health insurance, medical assistance, etc.)
• You have a minor son. Whether or not you are able to see him right now is irrelevant. If his custody arrangements must change anytime between now and when he reaches his majority, you would have to leave the community to care for him. And, depending on the resources available to him at the time of his high-school graduation, you may need to assist him in some way with college and establishing himself as an independent adult.
• Most importantly, **you have not yet been granted an annulment **and therefore are not free to consider entering religious life. Until you receive an annulment, any religious community must consider you a married woman who is not free to become a consecrated religious.

I do not say this to discourage you from continuing to serve the Lord and your parish in the laudable way that you have been doing. I am only saying that you cannot become a nun at this time and you might not be able to do so in the future because of your individual circumstances. (These could change, of course, and if it’s the Lord’s will that you become a nun, he’ll open doors for you.) What you could consider at this time is the possibility of joining a third order. Third orders allow laypeople living in the world to be attached to a particular religious order while continuing to live in the world and fulfill their responsibilities as laypeople. There are a number of third orders available; I recommend calling your diocese and asking which ones have active groups in your diocese.