Chosen: Custody of the Eyes

We recently watched an interesting short documentary, Chosen: Custody of the Eyes. The film traces the discernment and pursuit of a young nun’s vocation as a member of a cloistered community of the Poor Clares of Perpetual Adoration.

Most striking about the young woman was the sense of deep, quiet joy at the privilege of withdrawing from the world and devoting herself to contemplation and prayer for that same world. Watch any “coming of age” or “trial by fire” documentary these days and you will notice how the film’s subjects will stress the difficulty and challenges of their undertakings, how disconcerting the new environment, and how traumatic the privations or unpredictable the setbacks encountered.

But Sister Amata displayed none of this woe. She seemed throughout the documentary to consider herself to have won the spiritual lottery. A sharp critic of her own failings and weaknesses, she again and again expressed her astonishment at the love and grace of God through Christ and through the life she began thinking about even in her years as a high school student and blogger.

At one point in the film, Sister Amata tells us, while cleaning and scraping the floor with a knife, “My perfect job would be if I could be a janitor in a church.”

I liked this, because I think I understood exactly what she was saying. For me, my perfect job would be as a gardener in the most secluded valley my wage-slave’s mind could conceive. To kneel in the dirt and feel God’s good sun on my shoulders and the humming of the spinning earth beneath my knees, knowing that books and prayer and quiet conversation with my wife awaited me at the end of my day’s labors, never to be polluted by the shadowy toxins crouching at the entrance of Monday.

May our Father bless Sister Amata and all the contemplative souls who have withdrawn from the world in order to intentionally be forgotten and hidden except to Christ and the saints who are with Him. May these quiet ones with the downcast eyes be highly favored as they pray for the world and its troubles. As they pray for me.

~ S.K. Orr