As a 15-year-old tourist visiting Paris, Angela Russell suddenly knew life had something different in store for her from a career, marriage and children.
Angela had a calling. She became a nun.
Now known as Sister Angela Marie, her family is God and the three nuns she lives with in an Elgin convent.
Greyfriars Convent dates back to 1479 when it was built for monks from the Order of Friars Minor for charitable works in the Elgin area.
Since 2013 it has housed the Dominican Sisters of Saint Cecilia.
“We’re not technically nuns, we’re religious Sisters,” said Sister Angela Marie.
“But we’re not offended by the use of ‘nun’. I mean, if people stop us in the street and say ‘are you a nun?’, we’ll say ‘Yes, I’m a nun’.”
Dominican Sisters dedicate their lives to prayer and spreading the word of God, taking vows of poverty, chastity and obedience.
Despite some convents being enclosed, meaning Sisters separate themselves from the affairs of the external world, Greyfriars Convent is open to the public, and the Sisters are regularly seen walking the streets of Elgin town centre.
I was certainly greeted very warmly by Sisters Angela Marie and Mary Gianna when I decided to pay the convent a visit.
They gave me a tour of the beautiful 15th century building and even sang for P&J photographer Jason Hedges and I. Quite beautifully, I must add.
Why Sister Angela Marie became a nun
Originally from Pittsburgh, USA, Sister Angela Marie, 36, is one of six siblings. She visits her family across the Atlantic once a year.
“Two of my brothers are adopted,” she said. “That really formed me in my faith, watching my parents’ faith in God and openness to doing something adventurous, which took a leap of faith in their life.”
After studying theology at university, Sister Angela Marie joined the Dominican Order the day before her 21st birthday and has been at Greyfriars in Elgin since 2017.
Having had various plans for her life – including becoming a musician, dancer, coastguard and air force pilot – Sister Angela Marie’s calling came like a bolt of lightning while on holiday as a teenager.
“When I was 15 I travelled to France with my twin sister. We flew over by ourselves – we have an aunt and uncle who live over there.
“We visited a lot of places, some holy places, but also chateaus and stuff like that.
“When we were in Paris we visited this beautiful chapel, the Chapel of the Miraculous Medal on Rue du Bac.
“And there I just started crying, I was like ‘I’m going to give my life to God’.
“It came out of nowhere. It was a really powerful thing, an undeniable experience that just hit my soul very deeply.”
She added of her calling as a Sister: “It was just this inner desire.
“I was praying and asking God for direction. I realised that if I built my life by myself, I couldn’t fulfil all of my dreams.”
A life of poverty, chastity and obedience… and rising at 6am
The Dominican Sisters of Saint Cecilia were founded in 1860 in Nashville, Tennessee, which remains the site of its mother church. The Sisters in Elgin are supported by the Diocese of Aberdeen.
While many of us know about a nun’s vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, most of us have no real idea what goes on inside a convent.
“We pray together in the chapel three or four times a day,” said Sister Angela Marie.
“We rise by a rising bell at 6am – one sister will be the bell-ringer for the week. 6am isn’t too bad – in America it’s 5am!”
Besides prayer – both silent and chanted – there are the more mundane tasks, such as laundry (Sister Angela Marie is the laundress), cleaning and cooking.
Breakfast in the refectory is taken in silence, while the evening meal gives the Sisters the opportunity to chat about their day.
“We cook our own meals in the evening, nothing fancy or expensive but we’ll prepare something nice that we’ve put attention into, so not just putting fish fingers in the oven.”
Out and about in Elgin, and sleeping in cells
So what does the day involve?
“Our mission as Dominicans is very much about spreading the word of God.
“That’s the reason all of us enter the order, there’s a real fire to let others know about the love of God.
“That comes out in many different ways. In America, we teach in schools. Here we do a lot with the parish, teaching and preparing the children to receive the sacraments. We do a lot of retreat work, so at the weekends we’ll go off to run adult retreats or youth retreats.
“But day-to-day, there’s a lot of prep work – working at the computer, sending out communications, writing talks or planning fun games for the youth group to do.
“We’ll have lunch together, in the kitchen usually, just chatting, and after lunch we often do a lot of walking, just out and about in Elgin.
“Our real work time begins when the kids get out of school. We have a lot of after-school clubs, a lot of different groups will come to the convent in the afternoon but also in the evening.
“At 11pm, after the night prayer, we retire to our cells, where we are until 6am – it’s known as Profound Silence.
“‘Cell’ actually means ‘little piece of heaven’ – prison cells took their name from monastic cells.
“We can stay up and read in our cells, but yes, it’s more peaceful than family life!”
‘People think: ‘There’s something about you that I want but I don’t know what it is’’
I asked Sister Angela Marie whether she felt she’d missed out on anything, having had to give up much of what many would consider ‘normal’ life.
“It’s definitely a lifestyle of sacrifice,” she said.
“We sacrifice our own will, in a way.
“I mean, we still have our will, which is very strong, and important, but we’re always saying ‘I want what God wants’.
“There’s a lot of asking permission in our lives, from our superiors, from God.
“So we wouldn’t just decide ‘oh, I feel like going to Spain for a week, let’s look at cheap flights’, or something like that, so that’s certainly a sacrifice, for sure.
“But it’s amazing to see that when we entrust our lives to God, He gives us so much more. Not ‘I give up a trip to Spain and He gives me two trips to Spain’, but it’s more interior.
“We give up choosing spontaneous things for ourselves, and yet because of that, God gives us such freedom of heart. And such a deep sense of purpose.
“I feel like we can have a confidence and a peace that other people can look at and think: ‘There’s something about you that I want but I don’t know what it is.’
“You get such a sense of peace and purpose and fulfilment that is impossible to achieve on our own.”
Sister Angela Marie on not having her own family
Perhaps the most obvious sacrifice in joining the Sisterhood is not having your own family.
Sister Angela Marie admits this is something that she struggled with at one time.
“I’d have been about 19 or 20 at the time. I was at home helping my family out, folding up my brother’s baby clothes and putting them up in the attic – he was only two at the time – and I had a really profound moment when I just started crying, thinking, ‘I will never have a baby, this is so hard God, why would You ask this of me?’
“And so I went out and prayed about it, and what I heard God saying was, ‘Can you bear spiritual life, can you give life of grace in souls?’ And I was like, ‘Yes, I want to do that.’
“It just really taught me that God had put that desire for motherhood in my heart, but if I clung to that and built my life around that, I would miss so many other aspects of my heart.
“I surrendered that desire to God, and He allowed me to nurture the spiritual life of hundreds of people. If I didn’t realise that, I wouldn’t have the joy of touching so many people in my life.
“And in some ways, they’d lack what God wanted me to give them through my life.
“Giving up our own family is a huge sacrifice, and yet that’s what gives us the freedom to be able to touch so many lives.”
‘There’s family on so many different levels’
It occurred to me that, although Sister Angela Marie talked about “giving up” a family, joining the Sisterhood has perhaps given her another family.
“Our local community is very much a family,” she said. “That’s really important.
“But also here in the convent, the way we help each other out, do our duties to the best of our abilities, whether it be the laundry and getting everyone’s laundry returned, or preparing a nice evening meal – those family dimensions are an important way of showing love and charity to each other. And that in turn gives us the strength to keep working for God.
“There’s family on so many different levels.
“There’s the supernatural family, for example. I feel so much a part of our wider family in the order, there are 300 Sisters in Nashville.
“But also a heavenly family with the saints – particularly the Dominican saints – and obviously God.
“But we can’t just be supernatural. We’re bodies and emotions and souls, and life in the convent gives us a family and a sense of belonging as well.”
‘It’s a pure gift from God, because you can’t do it on your own’
I pointed out to Sister Angela Marie that as a journalist, I only fulfil that role until 5pm. Whereas she has chosen a life, rather than a job or career.
I asked her what being a Sister means to her.
“My life is a gift for God and through that, it’s a gift for others,” she said.
“Gratitude is the word that comes to mind.
“I’m just so grateful for the strength and joy I get from living for God, and that I can be a strength and joy for others.
“It’s a pure gift from God, because you can’t do it on your own.”
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