How to Survive Quarantine, According to a Nun

A physician assistant by training, Sister Murray joined the monastery at age 35 in 1983 after working at a medical clinic in downtown Washington, D.C. She first discovered the Carmelites as a child, when she picked up Thomas Merton’s 1955 book No Man Is an Island.

Merton had mentioned the 16th-century Carmelite reformers St. John of the Cross and St. Teresa of Ávila, who returned the order to a more austere life that eschewed social interaction. When she came across a book about St. John and St. Teresa again in college, Murray devoted herself more seriously to daily prayer and mass.

“I probably grew up nominally Catholic, but I found that I was always attracted to Catholicism and my faith,” she said. “As an adult, I really wanted to put together contemplative prayer, simple lifestyle, and social justice.”

Shifting into the cloistered life wasn’t difficult for her. As a young adult in the 1970s, Sister Murray was an avid backpacker, a pastime that eased her into a lifestyle of silence and solitude. As a physician, she would sometimes feel the pull to return to the outside world, especially in response to a natural disaster, though she feels differently now during the ongoing pandemic. “My first responsibility is here on the medical team. I’m such a rusty scupper when it comes to medicine I would be more of a liability than an asset.”

Established in the late 18th century, the Carmelite Sisters of Baltimore are one of the oldest communities of religious women in the U.S. But 13 sisters live a modern life, dressing in lay clothes rather than the veiled frock worn by St. Teresa. Their long-standing confinement mirrors that of many Americans today: They only leave for necessities like grocery trips and doctor appointments.

“Silence is not a vacuum; silence is a reality.”

Little changed inside the order when Gov. Larry Hogan enacted a statewide stay-at-home order on March 30. (“The great advantage is we were already set up for that, and so we had the systems in place,” Sister Murray said.) The monastery has tweaked some logistics, like designating runners for essential trips.

”You preserve the people who can carry your country forward,’” she said. “We’re especially careful of our younger people because they’re the ones who would go forward. We’re also careful of our older people because we don’t want them getting infected or vulnerable. It’s the middle people who do the running so as to protect the younger and the older.”

Only the daily Catholic mass has shifted since Covid. With priests unable to visit the monastery to lead the service, the sisters have filled that time with prayer. It’s a crucial piece of Murray’s day that she misses, but one she acknowledges won’t change under existing rules barring women from the priesthood.

“We live in a patriarchal world,” she said. “The Church changes at a very slow rate, it’s a geological change. I can hope there will be change but right now that’s not the case. Maybe that will break something open, maybe that’s the silver lining in this cloud.”

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