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Cloistered Nuns in Haight-Ashbury?

SISTERS OF THE PERPETUAL ADORATION

By George Neumayr

"Venite Adoremus" is not a phrase one expects to find on a building in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district. But, thanks to the quietly heroic Sisters of Perpetual Adoration, this invitation to adore Jesus Christ still appears on a chapel wall amidst the moral chaos of the Haight.

Established in 1927, the Monastery of Perpetual Adoration stands at 771 Ashbury -- just blocks from "Ben and Jerry's," "Distractions/Euphoria," and near the 710 Ashbury home where the Grateful Dead once lived.

Inside, 27 cloistered sisters (almost all from Mexico), ranging in ages from 33 to 97, devote themselves to "the unceasing adoration of the Blessed Sacrament," as their handbook puts it.

Though in astonishing proximity to it, these sisters have not succumbed to the spirit of the age and represent a refreshing rebuke to it, as their traditional religious dress attests: a white habit, "the symbol of purity and spirituality," a red scapular, "the symbol of total consecration to love and sacrifice," and a black veil, "the symbol of death to the materialism of the world."

Rising at 5:00 a.m., the sisters pray the divine office, say the rosary, attend mass, study scripture and the doctors of the Church, perform manual labor, and, of course, pray before the Blessed Sacrament (each hour of the day, an assigned adorer kneels in Christ's presence).

In contrast to trendy nuns who ignore tradition in the name of "relevance," the Perpetual Adoration sisters remain faithful to the vision of their foundress, the Venerable Mother Mary Magdalene (born in 1771 to an aristocratic Italian family, Magdalene, animated by a vision of the crucified Christ, abandoned her life of privilege to found the order In 1814), and their patron Popes.

In 1814, Pope Pius VII described the order as "among the sacred virgins who, leaving their country and their father's house, have consecrated themselves to the divine service...a chosen portion, I might say a sacerdotal family, to which Holy Church confides the great and sublime mission of adoring without interruption Jesus Christ truly and substanially present, and of procuring the daily and solemn exposition of the Blessed Sacrament for the Adoration of the faithful."

In more recent times, Pope Paul VI said of the worldwide order:"You are not exiles from the great communion of the family of Christ. ...You preserve and affirm the values which are needed more than ever today...the supreme and exclusive seeking of God, in solitude and silence, in humble and common work, in order to give life a meaning of continual prayer."

The Perpetual Adoration sisters in the Haight are, indeed, preserving forgotten values, say priests who know them well.

"I think these women are very noble," says Father Francis Filice, who says mass for them daily. Father Thomas Merson, an administrative assistant to San Francisco Archbishop William Levada who has also said mass for the sisters, says, "Their contribution is extraordinary, but greatly unappreciated by people who pass through the Haight-Ashbury....It is an oasis of spirituality, grace, and prayer in the heart of San Francisco." Merson still remembers his first encounter with the sisters: "When I first met them, I asked one of the sisters, 'Do you have adoration all night long?' And she said to me, 'Oh yes. That is the best time to pray, because every one is asleep, so we have Our Lord's undivided attention."

The Monastery of Perpetual Adoration is, no doubt, a sign of contradiction to San Francisco. To a selfish world, cloistered nuns seem silly and unproductive. But Sister Maria, 97, who has not left the monastery in 70 years, can say what the restless, free-living San Franciscans on the Haight-Ashbury strip below cannot. "We have peace," she says.

For information about visits to the Monastery of Perpetual Adoration, write or call: 771 Ashbury Street, San Francisco, CA 94117, (415) 566-2743.

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