Editor’s Note: At the request of the Abbey of St. Walburga and out of respect for the hiddenness of the beautiful Benedictine vocation, the names of the nuns interviewed have been removed. This and subsequent articles are the fruits of exclusive interviews and tours of the Abbey, granted by Mother Maria-Michael, O.S.B., for the edification of the archdiocesan community.
Nestled near the Wyoming border, the Abbey of St. Walburga is far removed from much of the world. The nearest town is 30 miles away. Cell service is spotty. There are very few people around. By the world’s standards, it’s in the middle of nowhere and not worth much attention.
But somehow, in the divine economy, this humble Abbey in the “middle of nowhere” matters more than we know.
The Benedictine nuns put St. Benedict’s famous motto, “Ora et labora, prayer and work,” into action each day. Gathering throughout the day and night to pray the Divine Office, the Liturgy of the Hours, they dedicate their lives to prayer and praise to God for the Church. They also serve in various capacities around the Abbey property, from the kitchen to the retreat center to the larger property.
The quiet work and prayer of the nuns of Walburga somehow, mysteriously wins graces from Heaven for the global Church, even for individuals they might never meet. Their vocation of loving service to the Lord somehow transforms the Church from the inside out, in and through God’s divine plan. Despite going largely unknown, unseen and unrecognized, this spiritual powerhouse invigorates the Church from afar through their dedicated devotion.
“We’re not here to be known,” said Mother Maria-Michael, O.S.B., the abbess of the community. “We’re here to love and to pray, so that’s secondary in a sense. Whoever God sends us, we are happy to greet them as Christ. But our first order is to love God in everything. It’s really a life of prayer, of coming back and forth to say, ‘I love you, Lord. You are not forgotten. We want to love you every moment.’ That’s just the joy of our life.”
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Their lives are permeated by their persistent prayer to God and for the Church. First and foremost, they are to pray in praise, drawing ever nearer to their Bridegroom. In so doing, they act as the Church’s lungs, continually breathing glorious praise to the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
“We’re called to be like the Blessed Mother and to hold the Church, the Body of Christ, with our prayer. That’s what he asks of us. We don’t do it to be seen or not to be seen. It’s our mission, but we think of it less as a mission and more as our response of love to Christ, who is our Bridegroom.”
As brides of Christ and members of the Mystical Body, the Church, the contemplatives at Walburga occupy a privileged place beside the King of Kings and can intercede for his people in a particular way.
“It’s sort of like the bride next to the king, saying, ‘You know, your people need this. You know, I want to just mention this to you.’ You feel that you bring these people to Christ in your prayer,” Mother continued. “If your husband’s the King, you bring people to the King. You implore God, your King, ‘Please take care of your people. Show them the way.’”
That very intercession carries the archdiocese, bringing the local Church in northern Colorado ever closer to the King of Kings.
“We’ve always had a very clear intention that we are here for the archdiocese,” one nun from Walburga added. “In many ways, we are just so happy to carry the Archdiocese in prayer and to feel that our presence as an abbey within the archdiocese does make a difference. There can be fruit from our presence. Just our presence before God will bear fruit within the Archdiocese. In just the last two years, we’ve had many priests come up and visit whom we’d never met before.”
In and through their prayers for the Church, the nuns of Walburga bring forth manifold graces and blessings from the heart of God. In accord with the mysterious divine economy, God provides for his Church thanks to the hidden nuns of Walburga, even though they will never meet many of the people that benefit from their intercession.
At the Abbey itself, the nuns at Walburga create a “thin place” between God and man, a place where he can be encountered all the more easily, through their hidden fidelity to God. This “thin place” serves as a respite for the faithful across the archdiocese, allowing countless Catholics a place to encounter God in silence.
“I think the presence of the contemplative life always affects the area around it because we are always here, praying, and creating a ‘thin place’ where the wall between God and us is almost translucent like Mother likes to say,” the Walburga nun continued. “So we can become kind of a magnet for people to be drawn here and experience God because we have an atmosphere of prayer that reveals more easily, perhaps through the Word, nature or silence, a place where people can be quiet and experience God.”
By the world’s metrics, this place of peace, quiet and divine encounter is unproductive and difficult to understand. Without many “practical” measures of success, the effectiveness of these contemplatives can be overlooked by those without the eyes of faith.
“If you’re running a hospital, teaching or feeding the hungry, you have that sense of ‘I’ve done this. I’ve saved this person from starvation or put a roof over their heads.’ But if your mission is to feed the world or the Archdiocese spiritually, that’s really hard for someone who doesn’t have faith to understand,” said another nun from Walburga.
“But that’s what makes it powerful,” she continued, referencing the Gospel story of the women who anointed Jesus’ feet at Bethany (see Mt 26:6-13). “If you don’t believe, it makes no sense. She just emptied out a whole year’s worth of wages. For us, it’s our whole lives and everything else we could have been doing. It all hangs on faith. And we do it because we love God. God has asked this of us for his people. We’re called to be like the Blessed Mother and to hold the Church, the Body of Christ, with our prayer. That’s what he asks of us. We don’t do it to be seen or not to be seen. It’s our mission, but we think of it less as a mission and more as our response of love to Christ, who is our Bridegroom.”
“our first order is to love God in everything. It’s really a life of prayer, of coming back and forth to say, ‘I love you, Lord. You are not forgotten. We want to love you every moment.’ That’s just the joy of our life.”
Through their hidden fidelity to prayer and praise of God, ever-deeper unity and intimacy with him, and to constant prayer for the Church, the nuns at Walburga hold and sustain the Church just as Mary, Mother of the Church does. Somehow in the divine economy, their prayers equip leaders for the mission God has for them.
In short, another nun from the Abbey said, “My constant seeking of the face of Christ, my constant praising of God in my life as a contemplative, is what I know gives people in the world their ability to do their missions as lay apostles and busy people in the world.”
“It does feel like we are very much a part of your life in busy Denver,” the first nun concluded. “Our prayer, we do definitely hope, sustains you and promotes your mission.”
