Hidden away on a remote hillside near Georgetown is the mission-styled Carmelite Monastery, home to 13 Discalced Carmelite nuns who devote their lives to a ministry of prayer.

Four women seeking to share in this mission have traveled separate journeys to find themselves and God.

This is their story.

The most important qualifying factor to become a Carmelite nun, according to Sister Mary Bethany Beck-Meyer, director of formation, is “to love God with passion, before everything else.”

“It’s a determination to hold oneself rooted in faith and the belief God can do great things with us,” she said. “We’re working with the love of the Holy Spirit.”

Sisters Teresa Gonzales-White, Teresa Maria Gutierrez and Victoria Maria Hollcraft and postulant Anne Rooney are at various stages of a formation process that among Discalced Carmelite nuns typically lasts five to six years.

Left to right: Sister Mary Bethany Beck-Meyer, formation director of the Discalced Carmelites, postulant Anne Rooney and Sisters Teresa Maria Gutierrez, Victoria Maria Hollcraft and Teresa Gonzalez-White are dedicating their lives to prayer at the Carmelite Monestary in Georgetown. Nancy Westlund/Herald photo

During a recent interview with The Herald, each woman discussed how she made life-altering decisions, the special appeal of the Carmelite charism and how prayer is changing her life.

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Because her father’s career was in the military, Sister Teresa’s early years were spent living in a variety of cities across the United States and Europe. As a teenager she remembers seeking solitude, “spending time getting to know who I was and what God had in mind for me.”

At age 15, while attending a Catholic high school, Sister Teresa had a teacher who took her class on a field trip to sing at a Carmelite monastery.

“We couldn’t see the sisters, but I felt a deep presence, a peaceful presence I couldn’t explain,” she recalled. “I remember thinking ‘God wants me.’”

While for a time she half-heartedly pursued a career in computer science, Sister Teresa continued to feel drawn to prayer and to the Carmelites. She then spent two years living at a Carmelite Monastery in Seattle, WA, where she worked as an extern assisting in household tasks.

Drawn to contemplative life, she learned about the Carmelite Monastery in Georgetown and arrived there in August 1999. From the moment she walked through the door, she knew she’d found her home. Now a novice, Sister Teresa, 32, has received her habit and religious name. And she’s made one very important discovery.

“The greatest gift of being in community is discovering God’s grace,” she said. “No matter how I’ve fallen on my face, I’m still loved and if I persevere I can go far with his love and do much for the church.”

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Born in Guadalajara, Mexico, the third of five children, Sister Teresa Maria experienced hardships early in life. When her father died at an early age, her mother took over care and support of the family.

To help out, Sister Teresa Maria went to work at a young age, first in Mexico and then in the United States as a housekeeper in Southern California. Working and going to school to learn English were her priorities, and for a time Sister Teresa Maria found herself drifting away from her Catholic faith.

Time passed, and then one day she met a woman who began talking about what Catholicism meant in her life. Sister Teresa Maria found herself attending daily Mass and every religious conference available. In 1986 she went to a retreat at a Carmelite convent in Alhambra.

“My life changed completely,” she said. “I wanted to be in church all the time to get closer to God.”

She knew she wanted to help and care for people and decided she could do this by praying for them. But because she was 45 when she began making inquiries to religious orders, she was concerned that maybe it was too late for her.

“I just put my trust in God,” Sister Teresa Maria said. “I tried everything I could think of and wasn’t going to give up.”

Then in 1995 a priest told her about Georgetown, the Carmelite Monastery and a group of sisters unlike any she had known.

“I was on a cloud, in awe,” said Sister Teresa Maria, who soon after began the formation process to become a Carmelite nun.

On Oct. 15, Sister Teresa Maria took her final vows, joining a religious order that inspired her to share her gift of prayer.

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Sister Victoria Maria, 27, born and raised in the Stockton area, grew up grounded in the Catholic faith. An active youngster, she didn’t really give much thought to religious life until she was in her early 20s. It was then that she began reading about the lives of nuns, including St. Teresa of Avila, a 16th century Carmelite nun whose teachings serve as a primary guide to the order.

But it was her spiritual director, a local priest with a “contemplative spirit,” who focused her attention on one religious order in particular. And then at the priest’s invitation, she went with a group to a Carmelite monastery in San Francisco.

“It was so beautiful to me to see women so happy on the other side of the cloistered grill,” she said. “It was a joy that drew me to a life of prayer.”

She came a step closer in 1997 when she attended a retreat for young adults in which the Blessed Sacrament was exposed for adoration.

“It was very powerful for me,” Sister Victoria Maria said. “I knew I needed to give my life to our Lord.”

That same year she attended the World Youth Day in Rome, visited the catacombs, the tombs of saints Peter and Paul, and the Vatican.

“I knew I was experiencing the lives of Christians 2,000 years ago and knew our Lord because of their words,” she recalled. “I wanted to continue to spread God’s love.”

Sister Victoria Maria made contact with Mother Christine, prioress of the order, and formally completed application to the monastery. She made her first vows, becoming an official member of the order, in August. What the living the life of a Carmelite nun has taught her is to let go of self and live more for God.

“There’s a love here. It’s very real,” she said. “Everyone is themselves, which to me is beautiful.”

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Anne Rooney, a postulant at the Carmelite Monastery, is living proof that sometimes what you search for is in your own backyard.

A Sacramento native, Rooney, 38, grew up in a devoutly Catholic family, attending St. Anne School and the former Bishop Manoque High School. From childhood, she became a frequent visitor to the Carmelite Monastery in Georgetown with her mother and grandmother, Irene Rooney, who founded the Carmelites Auxiliary in 1935.

The auxiliary is a group of men and women organized to support the work of the nuns at Georgetown.

“The Carmelite order always fascinated me,” she said. “It was very holy, mysterious. When I heard the name I thought of a light.”

Following graduation from high school, she decided to pursue a career in teaching and attended California State University-Sacramento. For several years her life was full with teaching, and later in caring for her mother during a lengthy illness.

Then two years ago, Rooney began thinking about a religious vocation and it was the Carmelites who immediately came to her mind. So she traveled familiar Highway 193 to Georgetown and made a decision: Rooney wanted to live her life as a cloistered Carmelite nun.

While she has been in residence there less than two months, Rooney knows she is home.

She has found a life of prayer and reflection that is very appealing, and has come to care deeply for the other nuns.

“Mother Christine is a very holy woman, very much at peace in her vocation, and I see that peace on the faces of the fellow nuns,” she noted.

Rooney says she has found great joy in recreation periods and mealtimes with sisters connected in a life of prayer.

“I’m not anxious any more,” she said. “The sisters are my second family.”

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