Many Catholics are aware that there are cloistered orders of nuns in the Church, and they probably would be vaguely aware of the Carmelite family and perhaps the Poor Clares, if only because of St. Francis. But the average person in the pew is not likely to know the Congregation of the Passionists, founded by that dear holy man, St. Paul of the Cross in 1720 in Italy.

Which is a shame, because they have the mission to keep the Lord’s Passion forever in their hearts. When the world is going about its business, and people are living their lives oblivious to the salvation won for us by Our Lord’s Passion and death, these sisters ponder it anew every day, every hour, for us!

The nuns make altar breads as a means to support themselves.

The IRL has three Passionist Affiliate Communities in Whitesville and Erlanger, Kentucky; and in Ellisville, Missouri. This blog post is to alert you that the Ellisville Passionists have a new blog! Through the kindness of some lay people who love them, the blog is an effort to make them better known. Death has taken some of the beloved sisters to their eternal reward and their faithful friends would like to see them receive holy vocations!

So please, visit their blog and ‘like’ it and pass it on to young women who might have a vocation to this life of Prayer, Solitude, Penance and Community. They profess a five-fold vow: poverty, chastity, obedience, enclosure and devotion to and grateful remembrance of the Passion.

A newly professed Passionsist nun wrote: In the cloister, it is so much easier to turn one’s thoughts to God, and to remember also His Church, and all persons in the world, those in and out of the Church, so many living lives of sin and needing God, and to call upon God’s mercy for oneself and others, remembering the dying. In His work for souls, Our Lord relies on us His religious far more than we know. How He has used us will all be revealed in the next world.