What are the Benedictines up to today – their sisters and nuns? Who is carrying on the spirit? Here I introduce you to one of them.
Sr. Nodelyn was my spiritual director a few years ago, and she has kept me in the loop with her community ever since. Back then, I didn’t even know she was Benedictine. I didn’t know to ask, as I was newly back to the church. So in this interview, I’m learning along with you.
Bio: “Nodelyn Abayan, a member of the Sisters of Social Service of Los Angeles, is a spiritual director and the vocation contact person for her community. Recently, she earned her doctorate in educational leadership and social justice from San Francisco State University. Her passion lies in early childhood education and supporting families. She is an adjunct professor at City College of San Francisco, where she teaches in the Child and Family Studies Department.”
Here’s my interview with Sr. Nodelyn Abayan about Contemporary Benedictine Spirituality.
From our audio interview (held on-site) on December 5, 2024.
Me: I’ll give you a rough idea of what I want to ask you about: the basics of Benedictine spirituality, about St. Hildegard, and about the interesting article I read that states that Hildegard was progressive, and Teresa of Avila was conservative. I had never thought of our faith as being conservative or progressive. I never heard those political terms…
Nodelyn: Used in the religious sense.
Me: Yes. But it also said that both were reformers of the church. So if you want to talk about that, because I think there’s a divide between people. I call myself traditional, but it doesn’t mean that I identify with… Obviously, I’m considered a cat lady, so I don’t identify with trad wives.
Nodelyn: With what? With who?
Me: Trad wives.
Nodelyn: I don’t know what that…
Me: It’s a very…
Nodelyn: The 50s kind of thing? The 1950s?
Me: Yes. I say traditional, but I’m not that kind of traditional. So there are many beliefs within our Catholic faith.
Nodelyn: One thing that I want to tell you is we follow the Benedictine spirituality. We’re not as immersed as the nuns. The Sisters of Social Service follow the spirituality of the Benedictine spirituality. That’s one thing that you have to be clear about.
Me: But you’re not Benedictine?
Nodelyn: We are Benedictine, but we follow the spirituality. But if you say, are you a Benedictine nun? No, I’m not a Benedictine nun. I’m a Sister of Social Service who follows the spirituality of St. Benedict, Benedictine spirituality. When you interview somebody, say, oh, she’s a Benedictine nun. That’s different from us. The nuns, some of them, they tend to follow the rules strictly. If they have to wake up, because there’s about eight times they have to pray.
Me: Is that the rule? The Rule of St. Benedict.
Nodelyn: That’s part of the rule. Which, for us, we don’t. We pray, but we don’t follow it as strictly. That’s why I say we follow the spirituality of it. We know the importance and significance of prayer in our lives, but we don’t wake up at 6 o’clock in the morning or 3 o’clock in the morning, and all of us pray together. I believe in the past they did that, but we kind of modified it. It depends on our ministry, whatever is the call of the ministry. So it would be interesting for you, to find a real Benedictine nun. Because we follow the contemporary Benedictine spirituality.
Me: Yes.
Nodelyn: The basics of Benedictine spirituality is always seeing the positive or the good in everything. That God is present in everything. And in the good, there’s always the beauty. There’s a big emphasis, like Hildegard is very, very big on beauty.
Me: Yes, and joy.
Nodelyn: And joy. And so that’s part, as Benedictine, as sisters who follow the Benedictine spirituality, we’re very big on beauty and a positive outlook on life. That there is always a reason and God is always present. We try to experience God in every single thing we do and make it palpable in our lives.
And we know the importance of prayer. We do the Liturgy of the Hours, which the nuns also do. We follow the breviary of the church so we pray.
At least for me personally, and I know in my community as well, we’re big on the role of silence in our lives, which is very Benedictine. Because it is in silence. It’s a silence prayer. I know there are different levels of prayer, but personally that’s where I find I can attune to God’s presence more, in silence. Because silence is the language of God.
Me: Do you have a certain type of prayer? For instance, Teresa of Avila did mental prayer.
Nodelyn: For me it’s following my breath, or sometimes I use the mantra, Maranatha, Come Lord Jesus. Sister Celeste, she also does her own quiet prayer. Sometimes we meet there (pointing to another room), but it’s not intentional. It’s our personal prayer in silence.
Every morning when I wake up, that’s the first thing I do. I meet God in silence. That’s one thing as Benedictines, we really, really take silence seriously. In our prayer, during the day, and for me, I’ve been practicing at least to have two days of silence, or one day of silence a month. Because that’s when I grow roots. It’s like when I go deeper. Because the world is offering us so many narrow things, just a lot of false, false, false things. The truth is when, in silence, I encounter truth. It is in silence in front of God, that this is who I am. I mean, not physically, but this is who I am. Accept me for who I am. And that’s when I feel God’s presence the most in silence.
Silence, beauty, joy, and the role of hospitality, those are very Benedictine. If you study the Benedictines, the Rule of Saint Benedict, it started in Norcia, Italy.
Me: Do you do your chores, or daily duties during your day of silence?
Nodelyn: At the beginning of the month, or even a day before, I already have scheduled a protected day. It’s a protected day for my silence. When I do my silence, I need to get out of the house, to be out of my routine. Sometimes I go spend overnight in a retreat center. Or I go and spend a whole day by the ocean, but I bring my lunch. I can hear a different sound, and I can listen to God more, if I’m not in my usual…It helps, at least for me, if I’m in a different location. I don’t normally do the normal things when it’s my day of silence.
Me: It’s kind of like fasting.
Nodelyn: Fasting from the usual, if you want to look at it that way, from your usual work. It’s like a Sabbath. But I find it so nourishing to my soul. And it’s not just my own thing, but I feel like it’s also that God wants to have that time with me. It’s an invitation from the Holy Spirit, to say, “Hey, let’s go and have a picnic together.” And I take it seriously.
Me: Do you read there?
Nodelyn: Sometimes I read, but sometimes there are months that I just don’t do anything. I just walk and listen to the waves. Last month or two months ago, I went to the Berkeley Marina, by the water there. So beautiful! And I just listened to the waves, and I had my food. But I do write, though. Because I have to write down whatever is going on. Or sometimes I listen to God and what God is telling me.
Me: Journal?
Nodelyn: Yeah. I do journaling. And this I just started recently, about six months ago.
Because when I was studying to become a sister, once a month, on weekends, we’d have to have silence. After I finished my doctorate, I had so much noise in my head with all of that. And I feel like God is calling me now to be quiet again. And so when I graduated I went back to the silence again. Or having silence as part of my month. I try to do it daily, too. I have 20 minutes of silence in the morning.
Julian will come to me. Either I sit on my cushion or sit on a chair and Julian will be on my lap. And I don’t do anything. I listen to my breath because I know my breath is God’s breath. And that was given to us in the Genesis story (Genesis 2:7). It’s the same breath that every time you breathe, you’re breathing God. And it’s your life. God has given us the life.
And another thing about Benedictines is hospitality. These are the words of Saint Benedict, that you treat each stranger, or your visitor, or your guest as if they are Christ. That’s why we’re big on hospitality.
You have experienced that when you come here for our dinners and celebrations.
Me: Yes.
Nodelyn: Hospitality is when you welcome. You’re really welcoming Christ through the people, or through strangers. And my community specifically, and it’s very Benedictine also, is the family-oriented-ness. We care for our families and our sisters, my community, is my family. But my blood family is very much connected to the community, which is part of the hospitality because they welcome my family.
Me: Do you have local family?
Nodelyn: My blood family? No, they’re all in the Philippines. But it’s not like other communities, where you forget about your family once you become a nun. Not for us. We value that family spirit. That’s how we connect with each other. Maybe it’s Benedictine because it’s part of the hospitality. You welcome those people the sister loves.
Me: It’s not a monastic life, then?
Nodelyn: It’s not like a monastic life where you’re going to cut yourself off from your biological family. There’s an element of monasticism in our lives; silence is very monastic. Finding beauty and joy, it’s very monastic. But you can also take that in your own everyday life if you want. It doesn’t have to be in a convent.
Another thing is our liturgical spirit, that we follow the calendar. You can see our chapel is decorated in Advent. That’s very Benedictine. We follow the church calendar in our prayer. You can see how we preserve the beauty even in our house. And even the way we speak. We value beauty just because our work is so hard.
Sister Frederica Horvath, she is the foundress of the Sisters of Social Service in Los Angeles. There’s one also who founded in Buffalo. She said it’s really important that we keep up our houses. If you visit different houses of the Sisters of Social Service, they’re well-maintained and beautiful. Because as social workers, she said, we work so hard and we encounter so much ugliness in life. Our community house is our sanctuary. It’s our refuge. We have that sense of beauty in order for us to be nourished once again. And so that we can go back to our ministry.
Me: It reminds me that I read a little bit about St. Benedict introducing spas and healing baths. So is there anything that you practice that is like self-care? Based on what he..
Nodelyn: Self-care? He was a sensible monk. He was very big on balance. Like the balance of work and prayer. The balance of also pleasure and leisure. Leisure and work. You don’t just work and work. Benedict understood how important it is to be human. To be fully human, you have to take care of your body, yourself.
Me: In recent years a mainstream term has been Work Life Balance. They got it from him it seems.
Nodelyn: And Hildegard is very big on that too.
Hildegard, she was progressive during her time. Because of the words that she used, she had had visions, and the role of women during that time. That’s why we consider her as progressive during that time. She was a doctor. She had so many gifts and talents. And she was a musician. She composed songs.
Me: Cosmology.
Nodelyn: Also, she was big on cosmology. She used herbs and put medicines together, and loving your body.
Me: Because Hildegard’s monastery was also the local clinic. They served the women and men. That’s self-care too; they kept the community healthy.
Nodelyn: I balance work, and also my prayer and also my wellbeing. I’m a walker. I walk more than 10,000 a day in nature. And I also dance Zumba. As a sister we study that this body is a gift from God to you. This material body is what you use to carry on the work of God. If you’re not taking care of it and you’re abusing it, you’re disregarding the gift. And then you’re not able to do the work that God wants you to do. If I take care of my body, I feel more joyful. Because I have more energy because I eat well, I sleep well, and I dance. But if you abuse your body, it’s hard to be joyful.
Me: Because it’s all connected. Our body is connected to our brain. And if we don’t feel good, then we’re not going to have joy. We’re going to be depressed. And then we can’t help people.
Nodelyn: And we can’t help people. Although some people who have experienced depression, understand, right? I’ve been there. But of course, you’re able to help more if you have a joyful spirit.
Me: If you have blockages of pain in your body, then not everything is circulating. That’s kind of Eastern medicine, where they have the chi. But, we have that too. It’s just different, we don’t follow the Eastern…
Nodelyn: No, you can get some beauty from the Eastern, you can use it on your own, but we don’t follow it. If you’re going to have an equivalent of the chi, which is in the Eastern tradition, it’s the energy. And in our Catholic tradition, it is the Holy Spirit. It’s the energy of God. And so you don’t want to block the Holy Spirit.
Me: Yes.
Nodelyn: And that’s why our community, the Sisters of Social Service has a dedication. We dedicate ourselves to the Holy Spirit. We have a devotion to the Holy Spirit. For one thing, you cannot contain the Holy Spirit. It’s very fluid. And it’s because the kind of work that we do, we are out there. And you cannot contain us. You cannot contain the energy and the joy of God.
Me: Is it graces also? That the graces you have when you’re helping, people around you get some of your graces. Or not yours, but they get graces?
Nodelyn: Each one of us has grace. But once you meet with someone, it kind of rekindles. You unleash it. By the virtue of creation, the spark of the divine is in each one of us. And now the work of the people who dedicate themselves to God fully is to help people rediscover it. It’s in you. It’s not like I give it to you because you have nothing. No, that’s not true.
God has a spark of divine in each one of us. And the task of the people who follow God, disciples of Christ, is to help people rediscover that in themselves. Or empower them. And discover it. Rekindle it. It’s in you. You just have to open up a little bit. And discovering what are the things that block it in order for the Holy Spirit to be alive again in your life. It’s always there. Sometimes it’s dormant. Now our task is to figure out in life, what is it that keeps it, dormant or not unleashing it, what is in me?
Me: And you teach. So how does your teaching affect when you teach kids? Because you deal with babies too, right?
Nodelyn: Oh, I deal mainly with the parents, but they bring their babies. And so how does that affect them?
Me: Yes.
Nodelyn: Well, it’s up to them to discover it, but I just know that when they leave my place, there’s always joy in their faces, their sense of happiness and satisfaction. It’s not my doing. I believe it’s the work of the Holy Spirit. For one thing, I value each person who comes into my classroom or into my space, that they are created in the image and likeness of whoever they are. Whatever faith, because I don’t work in a parish setting or a church setting. I work with the greater church, these are all people of God, regardless of their religion, and God loves all of them.
I value each one of them who come, and I build relationship with them, a positive relationship. And if they need help in terms of parenting or anything about child development, then I’m always willing to offer my advice or my knowledge and my experiences.
I don’t want to dismiss your question (I asked off audio) about how people need to be accepting of who you are, but I kind of answered it already. You don’t have a hold of what’s in the mind of people. And I think one thing that I feel, at least for me, is I’m very much secure that who I am in front of God, and so then I’m not as much affected by what people think. They will say whatever they want to say.
Me: For me, it’s different. You have an EDD. You have Sister Celeste and your community. You have people that vouch for you, that you’re very credible, you’re very legitimate, you’re titled. But somebody like me, who people can question, see?
Nodelyn: They still question me, Christine. Those titles, I think you’re looking at it differently. I still get questioned. No, don’t even put me up there. I have to tell you the truth, those titles are all just illusions, and the securities are illusions. I think what you’re saying is that I have the security, but I don’t. The way we live as sisters, do you think the church is accepting of whatever we say? We have experienced that too. It’s a community. But the thing is, it’s nothing like, me better than you. It’s just that sense that what I’m doing is I feel God wants me to do, and I have that faith and I have that trust. And you hold on to that faith and you hold on to that trust. And the trust that God loves me no matter what. And that’s what I’m holding onto. Titles, nothing, securities are less.
Me: Hildegard was accepted by politicians and the Pope and everybody, do you think sisters and nuns are different?
Nodelyn: In some ways.
Me: Do you think sisters or nuns are listened to, are valued enough in the church?
Nodelyn: It depends on the context. But I don’t know if you heard a lot about the Synodality that’s happening in the church lately. The last result of that, it seems the nuns and the sisters are not being heard as much as we want to. But my feeling with that is that it’s probably not the time yet. It might come. But we have struggled a lot as women in the church for the longest time.
Me: I think parishioners too. Women parishioners too.
Nodelyn: Yes.
Nuns are considered lay people. We’re not considered ordained. The priests are considered ordained. We’re considered among the lay because we’re not ordained. We’re not men.
Me: Am I lay?
Nodelyn: You’re lay.
Me: You’re considered a lay person? But you have a vocation, a religious vocation.
Nodelyn: We have a religious vocation, yes.
Me: I don’t, right? I don’t.
Nodelyn: Yes, but if you’re going to be technical about the terms in the church, the nuns and sisters are considered lay people.
Me: That’s crazy! You devote your lives to the church?!
Nodelyn: Because we’re not ordained. See, they are ordained. The men, the priests are ordained ministers. Ordination is different from our profession as sisters. It’s still looked at as, it seems to me, still higher compared to our profession, which I think in the eyes of God is the same.
And then there are some lay people who secretly have given their lives to God, and that’s between that person and God, not that it has to be, ordained or a religious sister.
Me: They have a private monastic life.
Nodelyn: And at the end of the day, it really is, between you and God. But it’s also, no matter what you want to do, God’s life, God’s love will never change. God will continuously love you. God loves. There’s this poem that I read yesterday morning. It’s just so beautiful. Because if God doesn’t love, then he won’t be God anymore. It’s just God’s nature. It’s God’s nature. God loves. God is love. So if God doesn’t love, who is God? I don’t know. It’s my belief.
Me: And I believe it too. I like the good news. That’s the good news.
Nodelyn: That’s the good news.
Me: And that’s why I don’t believe we should be miserable.
Nodelyn: That’s the Benedictine spirituality of joy and beauty. I think we are created to enjoy the life that’s given to us, but each person has different ways of concept, of enjoyment, because you can be joyful even if you don’t really have anything.
Me: There are a lot of people, poor and they’re very happy. In the Philippines (and those in the U.S.), they’re very joyful people, right? They’re always happy. And they don’t have to be high-powered executives. They’re just people working, hard-working people, and they’re very happy, right?
Nodelyn: But a lot of Filipinos have deep faith too.
Me: They’re Catholic.
Nodelyn: Yeah. That deep faith. And that we’re very gracious people. We know that everything that God has given to us are graces and we want to share it. And that when you share, you feel more joyful.
Me: It comes with God. Right? It comes with Him.
Sr. Nodelyn is also a writer and her latest article can be found here.
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