From interviews starting in 2005, Author Abbie Reese’s Dedicated to God: An Oral History of Cloistered Nuns (Oxford University Press, 2014) tells the stories of Poor Clare Colettine nuns at the Corpus Christi Monastery in Rockford, Illinois. Seldom leaving their 25,000-square-foot cloistered monastery or fourteen-acre gated enclosure, members of the religious community devote their lives to prayer. As intermediaries between humanity and the supernatural realm, they strive to become saints on earth, "mothers of souls."
“In a time when abstaining from social media for a few days passes for asceticism, the lives of poverty, chastity, obedience, and enclosure to which the Poor Clares make vows seem especially worthy of our attention. ... That is another one of monasticism’s surprises: where the world expects sorrow, the cloistered feel joy. Reese’s attentiveness and patience allows that joy to reveal itself. She also shows clearly that these women are not disingenuous: they know all they have left outside the cloister walls, and they acknowledge how hard it is to live together, not only in quotidian ways by sharing space and limited resources but in spiritual ways, praying for a peace that none of them may live to see.”
“A fascinating read, this book lifts the veil of mystery surrounding women who forsake contact with the outside world to become brides of Christ.”
