FEMALE MONASTICSM ¿What are they searching for?

We have the pleasure to introduce to Andrés Ugueruaga, who works and lives at Reconquista, Santa Fe. He often collaborate in many webpage’s y has published the following books: “El bronce de los días,” “Ensayo y Crítica,” “En las clales de la eternidad.” He has collaborated in the Mexican Cultural Journal “Sábado Uno más Uno”, and nowadays publishes in our page. [Editor/s] 
Translation: Andrés Ugueruaga.- 

According to Wikipedia, the oldest habit of the consecrated women to the chastity survived since before Christ to our days. The fact surmounts to the Antique Egypt’s warm sand, 2920-2613 B.C., when those women were the same sap, the Harem of a forgotten god. The theory estates the highest hierarchy was to be his Wife, but she must saving her vows of chastity. That was the Akhenaton´s days, the first monotheism divinity. Since then, the woman has got the possibility to give to a god away, destined her existence, time, energies just to him.

Female Monastic life then derives from the masculine one. They both had risen in Rome, when holly maids were ordained to the goddess of the Home, Vesta. Although there are people who do not be familiar with the Monastic Female life, despite the writings by some historians as Plinius the Old and Philo of Alexandria testified about the day in day out of them. At their lines rests the proof of their penny-wise lives, fasting, dedicating to the reading of wisdom books, professing what they read.

One day Jesus born, the waters had separated. The Chastity of the Christians, finds their heritage among the Roman and Egyptian monasticism, but those tried to fade the own roots of the tree.

Black tunic, not colored, a cape without tassels, the same color in the wool sleeves that embraces since arms to the fingers, the haircut, a cape without tassels on the shoulders. That was the aspect of a woman dedicated to the Monasticism according to Athanasius, a historian of that earlier époque.

Then and then, the centuries rushed so far and in a hasty blinking, came the witches’ chase, the invention of the printing, the creation and fall of the Communism, the arriving of the neoliberals. Too much water ran under the bridge, even today the cloister sister’s lack of the hierarchy into the Church of the men; it is unknown which really are their necessities, we hardly discern that they transmit the Message of God.   

But what does look for these women? In the collective imaginary, they cover their heads with peculiar capes, a crucifix hangs over their white breasts, and a black tunic, performing humanitarians works in a slight and calm manner…Affording the works with a smile.

They have got many faces to develop. First of all, the extreme renounce to the erotic life it is a serious topic. Georges Bataille alleged, influenced by Freud, that the physic reproduction guards affinity with the death. The chastity therefore is the contradiction of that. Then the complete surrounding to the mystic love as spiritual practice is a possibility to be everlasting.

To deep at this thought, since the Stone Era to the Space Conquer, the life always is difficult. Always the shadows of the pain fell over this world under the sun; however, some lives went beyond the joy and worldly passions, the voluptuousness, the friction of the bodies, the blood, the seasons, the corruption, and the sin of the flesh. Those breaks the cycle to be born the new being and the death of who has gave birth to.

The celibacy is a rule where those considerations inn, it tries to cut the rules of life. With dove eyes, they refused to give to the world would offer something new as a truth, that’s why they resigned, dedicated to the simplest habits. Suddenly, the full 21th Century have welcomed with the open doors. The banks are the new cathedrals and the money the new god. Consumers, hyperrealist, globalized onstage into its careless seeking to pleasure, goods, materialism, but its sufferings always were there: the illness, the death, the abandonment and the starvation.

They avoided all the doubts, maintained his eyes on archaic exercises of prayers, contemplation in convents. A way to live far from the hurricane of promotions, shopping rooms, bounced checks, storms of social classes, the woman vindication – they are a naturalized fact although what strange they are if we would analyze at an objective perspective, after all the nuns kept their paths. Into this happy world which pretends to deny the pain and the death, their religiosity wants to look this fact in front of, to find the transcendent light beyond all. God calls them and they asked going to Him. When we see an antique and oriental root, for them all it deals with the same sap into the life tree. But what do they want to make us believe, these chaste women, consecrated to be the Wives of God? Of a God often draw with platonic brush-strokes, twisted today by ecclesiastic institutions besides many others interests? They are the internal organs of that body called Church.

Many of them were on: Juana Inés de la Cruz, Santa Teresa, Teresa of Calcutta. They left a testimony to us.

Haiti, African countries, Philippines, India, force us to talk about a second aspect. Congregations of nuns profess the help to relief to poor countries, in diverse points of the globe. Stoic, their universe stars system respites in the chastity, faith and hope, the own trident that put them into the stillness eye-of-the-storm. ‘Cause the world is a hard place, but in front of a calm spirit, the reality drops its weapons.