Grace allows our uniqueness to be lived in harmony

I don’t have a twin sister. At least, as far as I know, I don’t. This means that there is no one who shares my DNA. I am quite unique. Actually, I believe that even identical twins have some slight genetic differences, so even with a twin, I would still be unique.

Since I am unique, there is no one exactly like me. Of course, this is true for each of us: we are each of us unique and each of us can say “There is no one exactly like me.” There are seven billion people on this globe, each of us unique and in some way different from everyone else.

The reason I write this is because we are 11 nuns in my community, 11 people different from each other. We all speak English, but some of us speak it as a second language. Our ages range from 28 to 94. Our family backgrounds span the globe from Asia to Europe, passing over the whole continental United States. We have different temperaments and different likes and dislikes, different political outlooks, and different devotional and liturgical preferences.

The only things we have in common is that we are Catholic women who try to be faithful to our Catholic faith and our Carmelite vocation. We are called to be harmoniously united into a community under the same roof. And we can’t just take time out and drive off to the mall for relief!

Living in harmony is not something we can do by ourselves. It doesn’t happen because similar-minded women want to join us. When God gives a contemplative vocation, the vocation is to a specific community. Our duty is to verify that the applicant has a vocation to our community. She may be very different from the rest of us. If God sends her to us, then he will give her, and us, the graces to live in harmony.

Ultimately, this is the challenge to every society: how can people live in harmony, people who are all similar as human beings and yet individually different? The important phrase is “in harmony,” not just “in tolerance.” Nobody wants to be tolerated. You tolerate mosquitoes if you can’t get rid of them. You don’t tolerate people; you cherish them, as God cherishes us.

And this brings us to the ultimate challenge of harmony: to live in intimate harmony with God. We are created in the image and likeness of God and yet God remains immeasurably different from us. Human language “really does attain to God himself, though unable to express him in his infinite simplicity. Likewise, we must recall that ‘between Creator and creature no similitude can be expressed without implying an even greater dissimilitude’.” (CCC #43). Through faith, we can know him, and through love we become one with him, but we need to get used to being one with someone who is essentially similar and intrinsically different. The only comparison for this union is marriage: two similar and yet different persons becoming one. That is why the Sacrament of Matrimony is an icon of the union between Jesus and the Church. It is also why the highest stage of spiritual life is called Spiritual Marriage.

Here we are, 11 very different women living in the same building. We are here to let God bring each of us into that intimacy with him, that deep intimacy with an invisible, inaudible, intangible, incarnate God, and to show the world that God’s grace can create among us a vibrantly united harmony with all our diversity.

So how does this harmony come about? There is a saying in the spiritual life: “The closer people come to God, the closer they come to one another.”

And if I do have a twin sister in heaven, then, dear twin, please pray for me!

Sister Gabriela of the Incarnation is a member of the Discalced Carmelites order in Flemington. Learn more at www.flemingtoncarmel.org.