Sister Mary Baruch: The Early Years Read online

  Praise for Sister Mary Baruch: The Early Years

  Sister Mary Baruch shows how ordinary struggles become the stuff of a divine life of grace. Through the imaginative eyes of Sr. Mary Baruch, Fr. Jacob has given us a look into the mystery of the Dominican cloistered nun and captured the intersection of the human with the divine.

  —Fr. Basil Cole, O.P., Professor of Moral Theology, Dominican House of Studies, Washington, D.C.

  I would thoroughly encourage anyone to read this book. It is truly an abundant presentation of Monastic life yesterday and today. We had the opportunity of having Fr. Jacob as our chaplain for six years, and during his homilies at Mass we heard many of the stories that make up the foundation of this book. Once you start reading this book, you won’t be able to put it down, believe me!

  —Sr. Theresa Marie, O.P., Monastery of the Mother of God, West Springfield, MA

  Such a blessing, this book. Fr Jacob is a gifted storyteller who can be hilariously funny and yet pierce the heart. His years of experience as a monastery chaplain give him authentic insights into the trials and the profundity of cloistered life, and he skillfully balances a story of delightful simplicity with profound insights into human nature and the mystery of the monastic life.

  —Sr. Mary Dominic, O.P., Monastery of Our Lady of the Rosary, Buffalo, NY

  Father Restrick’s novel offers characters, settings, and life situations that are realistic and recognizable to a wide-range of readers. One is easily drawn into sharing the ups and downs, joys and sorrows of Rebecca’s life and spiritual journey while experiencing the pulse and culture of New York City living. Readers will smile, chuckle, and knowingly nod as they are unexpectedly lead to gentle reflections of God’s providential impact in their own lives. A delightful story that begs to be continued!

  —Marianne T. Jablonski, O.P., Dominican Laity

  Fr. Jacob’s attention to detail is what makes everything come alive for the reader. At times he made me laugh, at other times weep, and at times he made me pray. He weaves truths about the Catholic faith into the story’s fabric, educating even as he entertains the reader.

  —Darillyn Paterson, Dominican Laity

  Sister Mary Baruch

  SISTER MARY BARUCH

  The Early Years

  Fr. Jacob Restrick, O.P.

  TAN Books

  Charlotte, North Carolina

  Copyright © 2015 Jacob Restrick

  First Edition, 2009. Second Edition, 2015. Third Edition, 2019.

  All rights reserved. With the exception of short excerpts used in critical review, no part of this work may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in any form whatsoever without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Cover design by Caroline K. Green

  Cover image: The Ceiling of a Gothic Church. Photo by kombattle/Shutterstock

  ISBN: 978-1-5051-1455-3

  Published in the United States by

  TAN Books

  PO Box 410487

  Charlotte, NC 28241

  www.TANBooks.com

  Printed in the United States of America

  This humble work is dedicated to today’s cloistered daughters of

  St. Dominic who walk this road less traveled, and to the sons of our

  Holy Father Dominic who serve them and depend on their prayers.

  Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

  I took the one less traveled by,

  And that has made all the difference.

  —Robert Frost

  CONTENTS

  Foreword

  Preface

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  FOREWORD

  THIS IS THE story of Sister Mary Baruch’s deep loves. As we come to know Becky Feinstein (her name “in the world” before becoming a contemplative Dominican nun), we learn about her love for warm bagels and good chocolate, for Broadway theater and good books, for her good friends and her close-knit family, and, of course, for New York City itself. But it is another love—one that comes upon her quite unexpectedly—that gives her story its power: the love of Jesus himself.

  This is a story of conversion, acknowledging all of the crises and consolations, both small and large, that come from that. We follow Becky as she first comes to hear the Lord in that “still, quiet place” in her heart and then as she follows that newfound love and encounters its (sometimes bittersweet) consequences.

  This book is the fruit of the contemplation and the rich experience of a wise and gifted preacher. Fr. Jacob Restrick’s long service as a chaplain to different communities of Dominican nuns has given him a privileged insight into the experience of this form of intimate friendship with Jesus, and its moments both sublime and ordinary. The reader who accompanies Sr. Mary Baruch on her odyssey is receiving not only the story of a soul but a profound lesson about the spiritual life itself.

  —Jonah Teller, O.P.

  PREFACE

  The nuns of the Order of Preachers came into being when our Holy Father Dominic gathered women converts to the Catholic faith in the monastery of Blessed Mary of Prouille. These women, free for God alone, he associated with his “holy preaching” by their prayer and penance. Our Holy Father drew up a rule to be followed and constantly showed a father’s love and care for these nuns and for others established later in the same way of life. In fact, “they had no other master to instruct them about the Order.” Finally, he entrusted them as part of the same Order to the fraternal concern of his sons.

  —Fundamental Constitution of the Nuns 1.1

  I WAS PREACHING AN Advent retreat at one of our cloistered monasteries and the readings at Mass for the Monday of the Second Week are from Isaiah and the Gospel of Luke. I wondered how a cloistered nun would reflect on these reading and how they pertain to the life of a cloistered nun. And so Sr. Mary Baruch of the Advent Heart was born. I “discovered” a journal she had written with her own reflections on these readings and shared them in my homily. The nuns seemed to identify with her, and so she would appear in homilies thereafter. Through her journals, we eventually got to know her family and the story of her own conversion from Judaism. Here the full story can be told.

  Sr. Mary Baruch was originally written for Dominican nuns, as I had been chaplain to two of our cloistered monasteries, and familiar with most of the others. But her story has entertained, and I hope, inspired, many beyond the cloister walls: Dominican laity, priests, Sisters, Brothers, Catholic and non-Catholic friends alike.

  We welcome a new and revised edition of Sr. Mary Baruch, O.P. The Early Years. There have been a few factual errors in the original which have been corrected, while the storyline remains the same.

  I am especially grateful to two of my Dominican brothers, Jonah Teller and Henry Stephan, for their editorial expertise, desire, and diligence in editing and reformatting the entire novel. I am also grateful to the many Sisters who have come to know Sr. Mary Baruch and welcomed her into their hearts, and have offered their personal reflections.

  Sr. Mary Baruch is completely fictitious, as is her monastery of Our Lady Queen of Hope in Brooklyn Heights, New York. The Sisters, priests, family, and friends of Sr. Mary Baruch are also completely fictitious, while the churches and places in New York are factual (except for Tea on Thames).

 
If you have not met Sister Mary Baruch before, the early chapters will introduce you to her and her family and friends, and her coming into the Faith of the Holy Catholic Church. If you are reacquainting yourself with her, you will follow her again into the monastery and the grace-filled life of a Dominican nun. Whether you are reading for the first time or renewing the acquaintance, may you be moved to laughter, to tears, and, most of all, to prayer. May you find something of yourself in Sr. Mary Baruch, who has found that loving God with all one’s heart is “such a blessing.”

  Fr. Jacob Restrick, O.P.

  October 31, 2015

  Vigil of All Saints

  One

  MY NAME is Baruch; I know, it’s not a girl’s name, but it’s my name…Mary Baruch, actually, which gives it a nice feminine flavor, yes? Sister Mary Baruch to be exact, but Sister is a title that we nuns are all called by. I did not choose Mary Baruch as my name when I became a nun; it was chosen for me. It was a day I’ll never forget. In my journal I have written right after the date, November 1, 1970, My Wedding Day.

  It was a crisp, autumn-in-New-York kind of day. The community had just chanted Lauds before the Solemn High Mass for All Saints’ Day. I had come into the choir, the nuns’ part of the chapel, dressed in an eggshell white Chantilly lace wedding dress. It was a used dress; I don’t know how many nuns before me had worn it, probably not too many, as it came off the extra-large rack and even then had to be let out some. Most of the more portly nuns don’t acquire their portliness till many years after their wedding day, but I came in as a size 18 and a half. Some of the nuns had even worn their own mothers’ wedding dresses, if they passed the inspection of the prioress; they couldn’t be too exquisite, but plain and not tight-fitting.

  Mine was not my dear mother’s, who would have been horrified at the thought of her gown being worn by a Catholic nun, even if—or especially if—it was her own daughter. She wasn’t even in our lovely chapel that All Saints’ Day to see me in Chantilly lace with the little pillbox lace veil. I may have looked like a chubby old gal making her First Holy Communion, but I couldn’t have been happier. My wearing the wedding dress was an exception to the rule, as the custom had been let go some years before. “Letting go is always difficult,” Mother John Dominic, the prioress, would often say; we seemed to be more reluctant than others. Mother also had another reason to make this exception in my case, which I’ll explain later.

  Like all the nuns that came before me, I was dying to know what name I would receive. When I entered and officially became a postulant, I was called Sister Rebecca; Rebecca was my “name in the world.” As a postulant, just entering the cloister, I wore a 1930s style schoolgirl’s jumper and white blouse with a black caplet and a shoulder length black veil. We were three postulants in 1970. I was the third from that group to receive the habit. We entered the chapel as brides on our vestition day, the day we were married to Christ, although we didn’t take our vows then, but were clothed in the habit of the Order. Our hair was cut for the first time, and we were given our new names.

  I had never heard of a Sr. Mary Baruch before and doubt that Baruch is even counted as a saint. I was hoping for the name of one of the Apostles, or one of our Dominican Saints. Well, I confess, I thought Mother John Dominic would probably name me after Thomas Aquinas; I think he may have worn a size 18 and a half tunic too. But I learned later that Mother wanted something from the Hebrew Scriptures, or the Old Testament, as we Catholics called them. Rachel or Ruth would have been nice, even Judith, as there’s a bit of the old warrior in me. Of course, I would have been thrilled to have been given the name Hannah, my dear old mother’s name. I called her Hannah of a Thousand Silver Hairs. And Ruth is the name of my younger sister; she would have been thrilled to no end. So it was to my surprise that I was to be called Mary Baruch of the Advent Heart. Baruch? I didn’t know the Hebrew Scriptures all that well, and Baruch, for me, was the name of the college on Lexington Avenue and 24th Street where my cousin Esther went to get her teaching degree.

  Mother John Dominic no doubt thought she was being clever naming me Baruch, as the Old Testament Baruch was the personal secretary to the Prophet Jeremiah. Actually, “Jeremiah” would have fit me better as I was often given to jeremiads, even before we were encouraged to speak up at community meetings. I’ve grown to love my name, however, as I know it means “Blessed.” And I have certainly been blessed. Hannah, I hope, loved it too, as Mama used to say that we, her children, were each a blessing. Even when we’d make awful or dumb mistakes, or have accidents, she could see the blessing in everything. “Such a blessing for you,” Mama would say, usually while remedying the situation.

  Before all that, I was just a nice Jewish girl from the Upper West Side of Manhattan. I grew up on West 79th Street between Columbus and Amsterdam, in the shadow of the Museum of Natural History and the wonderful Hayden’s Planetarium. How I loved that mysterious place; I think it made us kids both awestruck and giddy with joy. They could make the whole night sky—the Big Dipper and everything—shine and move on the ceiling-dome above us. My older brother, David, always wanted to go see the dinosaur remains, but my sisters and I loved the Planetarium. Actually, we didn’t go to the Museum of Natural History very much, even though it was just a half block away.

  Across the street was a synagogue where we went. I would like to say that we went every Friday night or Saturday morning, but we didn’t. I did go to Hebrew School, along with my sisters Sally and Ruthie and my brothers David and Joshua, so we got the basics, as Mama would say. “Such a blessing you should have to know a little Hebrew!”

  We were not the most devout of Jewish families, but we did keep Shabbat every week; that was probably the strictest…or at least the most self-conscious part of growing up Jewish; and it was one of the nicest too. I have emblazoned on my memory Mama lighting the Shabbat candles on the dining room table, which was always covered with a special lace tablecloth only used on Shabbat. I can still see her covering her eyes while she prayed aloud in a voice that I will always remember; it was somehow different from her normal voice the rest of the week. The Hebrew words seemed to roll off her tongue like a quiet brook flowing in the woods.

  Barukh atah Adonai, Eloheinu, melekh ha’olam asher kidishanu b’mitz’votav v’tzivanu l’had’lik neir shel Shabbat. Amein Blessed are you, Lord, our God, sovereign of the universe, Who has sanctified us with His commandments and commanded us to light the lights of Shabbat. Amen

  The house was always quieter after the candles were lit, or so it seemed.

  My full family name was Rebecca Abigail Feinstein. My initials were thus shared with the British Royal Air Force. I was called Becky by everyone except Papa who always called me either Rebecca or Raf; I thought it was for the R.A.F. but Papa said it was short for Raphael and that I was his little angel. Papa’s name was Ruben, but people called him Ben; not Benny, but Ben. When I got a little older and Papa would call me “Raf, my little angel,” I would say, “What is it, Ruben, my little corned-beef sandwich?” And Papa would laugh and give me a hug.

  “Becky, Becky, my little side of coleslaw, why are you being such a sour pickle today? So serious you are, for sixteen years old.”

  And I would laugh too; Papa could always make me laugh…funny, huh? It makes me almost weep today when I remember it and how I thought I broke his heart, and he never showed it. But that was a few years after my sixteenth birthday. I don’t know what broke my father’s heart more… when my brother, Josh, at nineteen years old was killed in Vietnam, or when I became a Christian when I was twenty. These are not totally unrelated as I think about it all now. Funny how time changes the way we see things. Time is capable of putting things in a context, in a setting, like a fine piece of jewelry.

  I was a serious child, as Papa teased, at least compared to my sisters. Sally, or Sarah, was the oldest girl, just four years older than me. She was also serious, but in an academic way. She was the smartest daughter of the three Feinstein girls, or so I believed because
I heard it said once by Mrs. Melbourne at Max the Butcher’s. She was discussing something about lamb chops with her spinster sister, when Sally and I rushed past them with our newly butchered, but neatly wrapped, chickens. They were not wrapped tightly, and chicken blood dripped out from the brown paper and down my seersucker jumper. I, of course, gave out a scream of horror, causing the old ladies to jump three feet in the air and clutch their chests. Sally very calmly explained that our chickens were apparently leaking a bit and perhaps Max could double wrap them for us, and would he have a washcloth for Becky’s jumper? It wasn’t a highly intelligent explanation of the situation, but Mrs. Melbourne squeaked out, “Oh, my dear, look at your poor dress, all covered with blood. You mustn’t grasp the packages too close to yourself, dear, carry them straight down away from yourself. Oh my.”

  We were scurrying past the two commentators, now fussing over the wrapping of their lamb chops, when I heard Mrs. Melbourne nonchalantly say to her sister, “The older girl, Sarah, should be charge of the packages; after all, she’s older, and she’s the brightest of the Feinstein girls.”

  I never questioned anyone how Mrs. Melbourne came to that bit of knowledge, but it was true. Sally was always on the Honor Roll at school, and dumb ole Becky was just schlepping her bag of books around and letting chicken blood drip all over her dress.

  I did okay in school; Sally was already at Barnard, the women’s college at Columbia University, when I was a high school sophomore. She was going to be a teacher someday. I wanted to go to Barnard too, and study law or English Literature or creative writing and be a journalist for the New York Times! I wanted to write for the Sunday Times Art and Entertainment section and get free tickets to all the Broadway shows and be invited to movie premieres. Sally wound up being the journalist, not for the New York Times, but the Philadelphia Inquirer. She relocated, as we say today, to Philly which I would have found to be the greatest sacrifice in the world. I wouldn’t leave New York City for a million bucks. Why would anyone, I thought, ever want to live anywhere else? I wanted to visit all the grand cities in Europe, but not to stay, and not till all the wars were over.