Jaquelyn

my mother always loved people of faith, and her dearest friends were usually Catholic or Christian.

Our family endured several losses including my mom who passed when I was 17, my brothers just 14 and 11. I would later learn in conversations with her sister, my aunt, that she was starting to open again to belief in God at the end of her life. Now, it is a deep consolation and sign of His mercy that she looked toward Him in her suffering and that He was so close to her during her last years on earth. It was a hard time for our family with lots of grief to process and no real belief system to make any sense of it. It wouldn’t be until some years later when I came to the Church that I was able to reflect on these things anew in dialogue with God’s compassion.

I had been musical in middle and high school playing the clarinet with interests in classical singing, music composition and conducting. I rediscovered my love for it around age 19 when I decided to start taking classical voice lessons, which subsequently inspired me to go to college for music. I had an unshakable instinct to go to Berklee College of Music in Boston. I couldn’t explain why. I just knew it had to be that school and that it would all be okay, even good.

In 2015, I moved from California to Boston to start my bachelor’s degree where I met my composition teacher who was very open about his Catholic faith and willing to have substantive, lengthy talks about life and what it means to be human – we held many beliefs in common.

The loss and loneliness I felt from my family’s bereavements and the isolation of being in a spiritual vacuum whilst craving truth and belonging all came colliding together into a full existential crisis and divine revelation. God had revealed Himself in such a way that I hadn’t asked for or invited, yet He was gentle and patient. Once I saw this and understood that it was God before me, I just knew I had to join the Catholic Church. I told my composition teacher that I was thinking of joining the church, and he introduced me to a priest from the Fraternity of San Carlo Borromeo. He enrolled me in Rites of Christian Initiation for Adults programme so that I could receive the Sacraments of Baptism, Confirmation and First Communion on the Easter Vigil in 2018, my 25th birthday. This remains one of the most beautiful and joyful days in my memory.

A couple months later I completed my bachelor’s degree in composition and worked full-time for a year. My new faith was well educated and strengthened by my sponsor’s invitation to join the lay Communion and Liberation movement, which was richly guided and directed through the priestly Fraternity of San Carlo Borromeo. I stayed active with my church and faith community working as a parish secretary and cantor.

I completed my master’s degree, then applied for and was accepted to the PhD programme at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. By May 2021, I was exhausted and burnt out by a very work-heavy life and the incessantly loud, hateful, and despairing culture that felt inescapably omnipresent. Noise seemed everywhere. I called another priest from the Fraternity of San Carlo Borromeo who suggested that I take a retreat at a Discalced Carmelite monastery next to the high school where he taught. I was beyond joyful and grateful for this suggestion. I kept saying, “Yes, Lord! Now we can talk! We really need to talk together, don’t we?”

The Discalced Carmelites generously invited me to stay safely in isolation in their guest house for nine days. When I arrived, a nun greeted me with a few small papers about their order and their community. One of them was a vocational pamphlet that said, “Is Jesus calling you to be his beloved bride?”. This frightened me and felt like a provocation. It scared me to have this question put in front of me because it was true. This fear would help me realize that this question was a real calling because it was in fact Christ’s idea and not mine. How could I be so frightened by my own idea?

The priest came to visit and talk a couple times. I told him how I wanted so much to have all the quiet and intimacy with God that these beautiful Carmelites had but out in the world. How could I live like they did and pay all my attention to God while in the world? That was when the priest made me confront the reality that I needed to seriously consider that I might have a vocation, a calling to something else. This, of course, terrified me all the more. After a few more days of reluctance to this idea, it sank in and I accepted the reality of a vocation. But in the solitude of the Discalced Carmelites guest house, I had for the first time walked away from the noise of the world and entered into silence – the very silence through which He would seduce me more and more (Hos. 2:14). Again, through the crystalline view of hindsight, I can now see how He invited me into solitude and silence to propose a question, “What if I want you to join me here and stay here forever?”, a question asked and soon to be answered in solitude and silence.

I had already been accepted to a PhD programme in Scotland and wasn’t sure yet where the question of a vocation would lead yet, but I had the same ‘knowing’ as before that I had to go to Scotland and that this was good.

After a very solemn Holy Week and Triduum with the Missionary Sisters with strict fasting and no talking or music, after the Easter Vigil Mass, it was time to celebrate the glorious resurrection of Our Lord. It was time again for feasting and music, but I found I didn’t really want food or music or talking again. I was happy to be alone and quiet with my joy on Easter Sunday. In the silence of my heart was a complete joy that could not have been added to and only required the presence of the One who was there with me in my heart. That’s when I realised that I had to go to the Carthusians – that was where Christ was leading me through a gentle and soft voice speaking in the interior from within my heart, not the exterior through other peoples’ ideas and suggestions.

I went back from Rome to Glasgow and contacted Mother Marie-Ange, the Mother Prioress of the Carthusian nuns of Certosa della Trinita in Italy. I stayed there for a month in August 2022. The whole experience reaffirmed what I now understood that Jesus was trying to say, that this is where he wanted me. I loved the midnight prayers and keeping watch in the night. I was tired, of course, but it was so precious to me to always wait for the unknown hour of the Lord’s coming. I loved working in quiet recollection and just wanted to do a good job cleaning or helping to organise the library.

My Italian was only strong enough for some conversations, very basic, but I never felt it was hard to explain myself to the other postulants or novices. We understood each other quite easily because of what Carthusians’ founder St Bruno said, “what benefits and divine exaltation the silence and solitude of the desert hold in store for those who love it, only those who have experienced it can know.” They understood what I felt more than anyone in the world could relate to in the desert that calls to us. I still feel they are my sisters and I miss them often.

Some things were challenging, of course, but nothing was ever an obstacle or so hard that it made me doubt. I felt more confident than ever in my calling after that month. I was conflicted as to whether I should leave or finish the PhD, but Mother Marie Ange felt it was important for me to finish, so it was agreed that I would complete the PhD first, which I did in June 2025. This was a very painful time of waiting, during which sweet Jesus answered many questions and taught me much along the way. It is the fruit of purification: there is no better fruit, but it is a slow and painfully tended fruit that only God can harvest. The waiting has continued even into 2026 after the formation for novices in Italy was relocated to France and the matter of my debt became a more immediately barrable obstacle to my entry. The Mistress of Novices was positive toward my calling and remained very close in communication and prayer; her communion was a deep blessing from which I drew much strength and confidence in His presence. I live in something of a perpetual Advent spirit of expectant awaiting, asking “How long, Lord, how long?” until He who is faithful to the very end “brings to completion the work he began. ” (Phil. 1:6).

In searching for options to pay off my debt, I found the Fund for Vocations and shared it with the Mistress of Novices. There are no more doubts for us, only the obstacle of my student debt; a burden too great for me alone, too much for my community. Two mother prioresses and a mistress of novices have come to share in my conviction that this is my vocation, a confidence which we share with great wonder and joy together. It is not only my hope, but now our hope that you will share in our confidence and agree to support my cause for student debt relief, so that I may say “yes” as firmly in my action as I have been within my heart.