What a flock of sheep taught its shepherdess

Sister Karla Gonçalves, O.C.S.O. was initially put off by working with sheep, but over time shepherding has both illuminated and affirmed her vocation to contemplative life. Here she gives DW some extra attention with a handful of grain. (Photos courtesy of Mount Saint Mary’s Abbey)

In a small town in a quiet corner of Massachusetts is a lovely piece of heaven on Earth, a farm on some 500 acres of land that make up Mount Saint Mary’s Abbey. The abbey is home to 40 nuns as well as a small flock of sheep and several chickens.

We Trappistine nuns, also known as the Cistercians of the Strict Observance, have lived, worked, and most important, prayed here for 75 years. Every Trappist monastery strives to have an industry to financially support the life of the community. When our monastery was founded in 1949, our industry was a dairy farm with more than 50 cows, milked by hand for many years. As industrialization increased, our dairy farm no longer was profitable, and we now have a candy business, Trappistine Quality Candy.

When the cows left in the early ’90s, a flock of sheep moved in, a gift from a neighboring men’s monastery. The flock helps us to maintain our values of simplicity and care for creation, ingrained in us since we were founded. Precisely because it is not an industry, the farm and animal work allow for a more relaxed attitude toward labor and eventually the self, which most newcomers come to appreciate and incorporate into their call to the contemplative life.

Our shepherdess, Sister Karla Gonçalves, O.C.S.O., spends much of her day tending to our sheep, and I have asked her to share a little about what her work means to her in the light of our contemplative vocation.

—Sister Katie McNamara, O.C.S.O.

I GREW UP in the city. The closest interaction I had with farm animals was in the refrigerator aisle of the supermarket, grabbing a gallon of milk and a dozen eggs. Clearly I did not join Mount Saint Mary’s Abbey because I was attracted to the farming component of their way of life. Much to the contrary, when I first came, I dreaded the days I was assigned to work at the barn with our flock of sheep: the smell, the dirt, the uselessness of it all! Being with the sheep meant putting on my garment of grumpiness and praying for the time to zoom by.

Transforming moment amid sheep

During my first winter at the monastery, we had a day that was brutally cold, and somehow inside the barn was colder than outside. With that winter came all my doubts: “Is this really what I want to do for the rest of my life? Is it worth it? Did I discern this right? Is this really me?” As I scooped manure into a wheelbarrow, I ruminated on my doubts and questions, but the noise of the sheep, who were particularly vocal that afternoon, was overpowering my interior noise. Seeing my frustration, the sister-shepherdess asked me to go across the street to dump the cart of manure. “But I am not finished,” I replied. “That’s OK. You don’t have to do a good job.” Though confused by her remark, I welcomed the task: fresh air and a break from the ceaseless baaing.

I was only a few yards away when the baaing came to a complete halt. Singing followed: the “Salve Regina.” I rushed back to the barn and peeked through the half-open door. The voice filling every nook of the barn was that of the sister-shepherdess, standing in the middle of it. And the flock? Every single sheep gathered around her was transfixed, mesmerized. The sung prayer finished, the flock settled, and there was complete silence.

I was filled with awe and a sense of the divine that I could not understand. Exteriorly, everything was the same: the smell, the dirt, the seeming futility of it all; inside, however, something moved within me. I looked down at my feet: filthy jeans, worn-out boots, cold, smelly. Was simplicity the key to my vocation? I did not have to strive for scholarships, to compete for jobs, or be up-to-date with the latest technology to keep my job. I was doing “not a good job,” and I was feeling complete, fully me—not despite my doubts and questions but with them still lurking. I was complete in my incompleteness, and finding it in the smell, dirt, and uselessness of our flock of sheep.

I returned to the cart of manure and told myself, “There is something greater here. I don’t know why it allures me, but I need to open myself to the experience.” As far as I can remember, this was my second yes to my vocation—the first being when I entered the monastery.

Operating from a different rule book

Another time, after I became the sister-shepherdess, a farmer came to visit. He spotted our ewe, Skippy. “What’s wrong with that one?” he asked.

“She has a hernia; she has had that lump since she was a lamb.”

“Why don’t you get rid of her? Send her to the meat market. You can’t breed her; you won’t be able to sell her to another farmer. She will be one mouth less to feed.”

Thoughts rushed through my mind. Skippy smiles. She is the guardian of the flock, keeping watch at the gate while everyone grazes. She is kind to the lambs when they first join the flock. She smiles at me when I wish her good night. Skippy smiles.

I broke the silence: “We don’t do that here.”

The farmer went home confused. But I wasn’t. I was changing. I was less preoccupied with gain, productivity, and efficiency, more accepting of what is enough, and able to see strength in weakness.

Simplicity is my way to God and my true self, and I am finding it through shepherding. It fulfills humanity’s first vocation: to be stewards of God’s creation.

Together through the storm

Here is one more story that reveals how caring for sheep fits our life of prayer and has been a source of spiritual growth for me. After midday prayer, I rushed to the pasture. A thunderstorm was predicted, and I needed to fix the roof of the pasture shelter.

Up on the ladder, I saw birds dancing in a sky bluer than any other blue. I questioned the weather forecaster. I lost sight of the sheep that were grazing out on the field only to find them surrounding my ladder. I kept on with my makeshift repairs. They started to baa. I continued to ignore them. Then, KRACK-BOOM! The loudest explosion I’ve ever heard. I looked behind me and saw massive dense black clouds swallowing the blue sky, the birds nowhere to be seen. I alone remained in the sky.

I climbed down from the ladder and into the shelter with the flock. All 17 of us snuggled in, and through the still half-open roof we witnessed torrential rain and endless thunder peals that seemed to shake the earth beneath hooves and feet alike. Lightning was striking all over the pasture. We were motionless. One of the sisters called, and amid the noise I guessed she was asking if I wanted her to drive to the pasture to pick me up. I knew that if I walked away the flock would try to follow and be even more vulnerable than we already were in the shelter. “No. We’ll be all right. It will be over soon.”

I bent down and whispered to them, “We’ll be all right. It will be over soon.” Smell, dirt, fear, powerlessness: the flock and I were one, and the sense of being complete in incompleteness was palpable again. Then I thought: maybe this is what my life of prayer is all about. I can’t always be prepared for the storm; I can’t always fight or stop a storm; but I don’t have to escape it either. Because of my faith and my life now consecrated to God and for the church, I am called to stay, to be with the fearful, the vulnerable, the powerless. There, as one with them, my call is to whisper words of hope in their ears and words of trust in God’s ears.

The storm was over. The flock dispersed to graze on the lush, wet grass; birds danced in the blue sky again. It was almost time for Vespers, and I needed to go to church and join another flock: my sisters. But this time, we will be the ones storming heaven.

Related article: VocationNetwork.org, “Living simply, centered on prayer.”

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article incorrectly identified Sister Robert Blough, O.C.S.O. as Sister Rafaela Polando, O.C.S.O. We have updated this article on August 22, 2024.