Carmelites balance prayer and missionary work

VANCOUVER—Carmelite sisters in the Downtown Eastside say the largest trial they face is balancing prayer time with an often-exhausting mission.

Sister Chita Torres and Sister Emily Duran clean, sort donated goods, coordinate volunteers, and entertain guests at The Door is Open drop-in centre.

"On the days that we serve breakfast, I usually wake up very early (to pray). I have to be here at 5:30 a.m.," Sister Torres explained.

The Door is Open serves 400-500 meals to the less fortunate every day, including at least one free lunch and sometimes an additional breakfast or dinner. Various volunteer groups cook and dish out the food, but the two sisters run everything behind the scenes.

Sister Torres said the most physically demanding part of her work is unloading thousands of food bank donations in the pantry, where she takes on the time-consuming task of sorting the goods by date.

Before serving every meal, the Carmelites pray and sing a hymn for the guests. Then they join the throng, greeting everyone by name and providing things like free clothing or plastic bags on rainy days. Sister Duran often plays the guitar for them.

"The biggest challenge for us as religious is balancing your prayer life and your ministry," she said. The sisters pray the Divine Office, which includes regular meditations, in the morning, afternoon, evening, and nighttime.

They also attend daily Mass and often walk through their Downtown Eastside neighbourhood to Holy Rosary Cathedral. At 8 p.m. they have a "grand silence" to pause, meditate, and do some spiritual reading. They don't talk to each other until the next morning.

"We have to unwind what we have experienced during the day. Sometimes you will be drained because of all of this work," Sister Torres explained. Both sisters prefer sketchbooks to journals when they put their reflections on paper.

Serving Vancouver's poorest neighborhood is not what Sister Torres expected to do before she joined the Carmelites in the Philippines in 1995.

She had been a dean of a college for seven years and was teaching business and education courses. She lived with her brother, who was a lawyer. "Life was really good."

One day two of her cousins, a nun and a priest, invited her to visit the Carmelites. She was charmed by the congregation's simplicity.

"It was a twist to the kind of life I was enjoying before," she recalled. "True to all Carmelites is this simplicity that we live in our lives. It's the grace of God that brought me to this congregation."

Sister Duran was also drawn to the simple Carmelite charism when she joined as a nurse five years ago. "It's a very simple congregation," she said. "There's something about the congregation I was really drawn to. I could not express it, but deep inside me I know that this is it."

She started a small clinic that handed out free medicine in the Philippines before she was sent to The Door is Open in September. Sister Torres had been working there since January 2014. Members of their order have been operating it since 2012.

There are several branches of Carmelite sisters; the nuns at The Door is Open are Carmelite Sisters of Our Lady, a congregation that was first established in 1982. Sister Duran guessed there are more than 60 members in the Philippines, a number that is slowly growing.

The archdiocese of Vancouver also has Teresian Carmelite Missionaries and the Carmelite Missionary Sisters of St. Therese of the Child Jesus, as well as several Discalced Carmelite priests and one lay community.