For Benedictines, a ‘glorious’ Easter after COVID-19 ordeal
Easter marks the end of Lent, a season on the Christian calendar characterized by penitence, austerity and reflection. Officially, Lent began six-and-a-half weeks ago. Unofficially, many would view the entire past pandemic year as one long, somber Lent.
For the Benedictine Sisters of Pittsburgh, you might say their long Lent began even further back, when they were displaced for several months by water damage to their Richland monastery after a frozen pipe burst on a bitterly cold day in 2019.
The sisters were able to have a few months of normalcy back home before the nationwide pandemic shutdown began in March 2020, when they closed to visitors and to all but essential staff.
Despite the sisters’ strict precautions, the coronavirus found its way into the convent, infecting 25 of the 33 residents in December. Twenty-four recovered, but the virus claimed the life of one, a sister with 70 years in the order.
Amid their grief, all of those infected were quarantined in their
rooms for two weeks — a jarring experience of isolation for Benedictines, rooted in an ancient tradition of communal living and prayer — while those who tested negative brought food to their doors and took care of other tasks.
The sisters resumed limited communal gatherings earlier this year. Throughout Lent, the sisters — many of them retired educators, some still working in social services and other areas — tapped their experiences of grief and isolation as they prayed for those enduring struggles of their own in the wider world.
Easter, a day when Christians celebrate in their belief of a resurrected Jesus triumphing over death, will be especially sweet for them today.
“There’s so much to pray for in this world and everything, all the things people have been suffering,” said Sister Dolores Conley. “This Easter, I’m looking forward to it, because it will be a glorious time.”
Prioress Karen Brink agreed. “We have a new appreciation of the real suffering of the world,” she said. “I had three cousins who died of COVID.” On Easter, “we’re certainly going to be talking aboutnew life.”
The historic events of 2020 forced the postponement of plans to celebrate history — the sisters’ 150th anniversary of service in the Diocese of Pittsburgh.
The sisters trace their roots toBenedictine sisters who emigrated from Germany to teach the children of fellow immigrants. They were invited to the diocese in 1870, and over the generations they served in teaching roles at Catholic schools throughout thisand neighboring dioceses, including Greensburg, Altoona-Johnstown and Youngstown, Ohio. The centerpiece of this work was St.
Benedict Academy, a high school in Ross for girls, next to the order’s motherhouse until theschool closed in 1985.
The sisters later sold their Ross home, downsizing and moving in 2013 to a purposebuilt monastery in Richland that included a wing that meets accessibility requirements under the Americans with Disabilities Act. In their newenvironment, the women have continued to live out the ancient Rule of St. Benedict, with its prescriptions for communallife, work and prayer.
In addition to the 32 now residing there, four other sisters liveelsewhere.
Their first major interruption occurred on a single-digit winter day in 2019, when a gusher from a broken water pipe forced the sisters to evacuate. Before the day was out, the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth (formerly Vincentians) took them in at their convent inMcCandless.
“The Vincentian sisters said, ‘Of course we have room,’” recalled Sister Roberta Campbell. “They were there at the door to welcome us. There’s a bond between thetwo communities.”
The stay, originally expected to be short-term, lasted more than four months due to the extensive repairs needed.
“We doubly appreciated our home when we came back to it,” Sister Campbell recalled. “Then 2020 comes, and with the pandemic we were so so very, very cautious about people coming in.”
Somehow, perhaps through an infected worker, the virus spread through the community in December.
Sisters Campbell and Brink were among those who tested positive and were quarantined.
Sister Brink said the experience reminded her of when she first entered the order 55 years ago, when there were greater limits on visitors and social interactions. Those limits were eased after the reformist Second Vatican Council the 1960s.
During the isolation, “I have discovered, and most of the sisters would agree, that we were spending more time in prayer.” Still, it was a change from multiple daily group prayer services. “When we found out we wouldn’t be able to pray together, that to me was probably the hardest thing,” said Sister Campbell, one of the liturgists for the community and a former prioress who is in her 60th year as a Benedictine.
She had quipped to a friend earlier in the pandemic, “I wish I were a hermit. Boy, did I change my mind fast!” She did her best to keep up a daily prayer cycle in her room amid nausea, headaches and other symptoms. Still, “I was lucky,” she said. “I got a little of all the symptoms and none of them too bad.”
But the greatest grief for her and others was the illness of Sister Christine Makowski, who died in December at age of 99,after 70 years in the order.
Not being able to be by her side when she was dying “was just gut-wrenching,” said Sister Campbell. “I knew her from the time I was 14 years old. I went to St. Benedict Academy. She was one of my teachers. Through the years we stayed friends. I couldn’t go over just to be with her while she was dying; I found that very, very hard.”
Sister Conley and others who tested negative were busy taking care of the rest. Meals were cooked at another site and brought to the monastery. The healthy sisters delivered meals to the others’ doors, and they also took care of laundry and other essential services.
“It was a wonderful time for me to serve the sisters,” Sister Conley said. “It kind of pulled me out of myself. Even though it was difficult, and I can’t say I wasn’t grumbling at times, I thank God for that experience, and all the sisters were really appreciative.”
Sister Conley has been a Benedictine for 58 years and an artist who has long taught at various schools. “All of my dreams came true through my vocation,” she said.
Like much of the surrounding society, the sisters are cautiously beginning to open up to more interactions among themselves and, soon, with the wider community.
They resumed communal worship in February, and even though the sisters sat at precautionary distances, it was “like Christmas,” Sister Brink recalled. “We saw that things are going to start happening.”
The sisters won’t have the guests they typically have for Easter, but they hope to begin having guests by mid-April, by which time all of them are scheduled to be fully vaccinated.
While maintaining precautions, they anticipate the resumption of visits from relatives and friends, as well as from those seeking to participate in worship and other spiritual activities.
“We’re looking forward to opening our doors,” Sister Brink said.
Through it all, Sister Brink said she never felt completely alone. “God is in it all,” she said.
And sometime in 2021, the sisters hope to have a belated celebration of their 150th anniversary.