ARTICLES

Handmaidens

BI-NATIONAL NUNS OUTSIDE OF TECATE

By Robert Kumpel

During the last weeks of her life in February of 1920, Fatima visionary Jacinta Marto shared a message from heaven regarding priests: "Our Lord and Lady are very offended with people because they do not obey they Pope, nor the bishops, nor the priests.... Our Lady wants them to be respected as [if they were] her Son."

On a pilgrimage to Fatima in 1992, Lillian Diaz, a Third Order Carmelite missionary, received the call to start a new order of nuns who would live a sacrificial life offered for priests, the conversion of Catholics, and religious unity. Her order, the Trinitarians of Mary, live, work, and pray at Mount Tabor Monastery. The monastery is 10 miles southwest of Tecate, high atop a hill overlooking the road to Tijuana.

The monastery is composed of three residences for nuns, a temporary retreat house for visiting priests, and a just-completed church for Sunday visitors. Each of the three whitewashed brick residences contains an adoration chapel and cells where the 30 nuns live. Every chapel has an altar, a tabernacle and a monstrance atop each altar, a statue of Our Lady of Fatima and is decorated with traditional Catholic art. There is a nun praying in each chapel around the clock.

Mother Lillie, as she prefers to be called, says that the order was started with no food, water, shelter or electricity, "But we had the Lord." On March 19, 1992, the Feast of St. Joseph, Mother Lillie and Sister Nayelly Pagnan began the community in an old, leaky camper.

Tijuana's then-mayor Carlos Montejo arranged for the monastery property. Raymundo Musquiz of Tijuana and Diane Chapman of Oakland donated the materials and labor for the buildings. Francis Margelus of San Jose dug their well and provided electricity.

Born in Nogales, Mexico in 1951, Mother Lillie was the only daughter with four brothers, her mother Catholic, her father a Jewish atheist. "I wanted to enter the religious life at 14, but he refused to allow it. When I finally did become a nun, he was very, very angry."

At 5'4", Mother Lillie's slight build gives no indication of the passion that drives her vocation. "My reason for living is priests. They give me the sacraments. They gave me baptism. The Eucharist. If you are sanctifying my life, the least I can do is be on my knees praying for you.

"Priests are beautiful. They are also the most desolate souls in the church. We ask too much of them. People expect so much from them, and there is no support for them."

People have responded to Mother Lillie's vision of priestly support from around the world. "Five of our sisters are from the United States. We have Sister Wendy Mitchell, an ex-Franciscan from Riverside. Sister Margaret Naughton was a Benedictine in Los Angeles. Sister Lupita Jimenez comes from Fontana. Sister Nydia Contreras is from San Diego, and Sister Melissa Shoskey came to us from Michigan."

"We have a psychologist (Sister Nydia, a UCSD graduate), architects, accountants, even engineers. Our oldest vocation is Sister Jacques. She's 95, but she entered as a novice at 92. She was one of our benefactors. One day she asked me if she could join, too. She said, 'I want to die wearing the habit.' She was in a wheelchair when she entered and is now bedridden."

When asked why so many Americans came to Mexico to join her order, Mother Lillie offers a list: "Tradition. Roots. The magisterium. Obedience to the Holy Father. We want to live the gospel. We want respect for the men in the church. We want to imitate our Blessed Mother. She never became a priest. We want to imitate Our Lady and be real women in the church."

Daily life at Mount Tabor begins at 5:30 with the rosary and a walk. The sisters eat breakfast, study, pray at noon, eat, rest, spend another hour in prayer, study more, have recreation then rest for the night. Every nun studies something. "We study theology, the catechism, and the Bible. Some girls are finishing high school. We are all learning Gregorian chant. We have a Russian man who comes to teach us each week, and we have a beautiful choir. And we all share a special devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary."

Each nun shares a cell with a roommate. The cells have tile floors and two mattresses on the ground. Each bed is neatly made; a crucifix lies on top. The walls are bare except for a crucifix or picture of Mary. Except for a second habit, the nuns have no personal posessions.

The Trinitarian habit is both simple and traditional: sky-blue with a white veil. Mother Lillie explains, "Our habit reminds us of our duty to live in the world but not of the world. It reminds me to create new habits -- we need new habits to get rid of our bad habits. And it also reminds us of Our Lady. We want to be one family in the church."

The life of the Trinitarians is semi-contemplative. Families and friends from Mexico and the U.S. come to visit on the first Sunday of each month. They provide food and clothing for poor children as well as recovering drug addicts at a nearby rehab clinic. Twice a month, doctors come to treat the poor children. "It wouldn't be realistic for us to be completely cloistered -- not with our ministry," says Mother Lillie. "But we're lucky. we get to see our families once a month. Mother Teresa's sisters (the Missionaries of Charity) only get to visit their families (once) every ten years!"

Mother Lillie first met Pope John Paul II on November 25, 1994 and received his verbal blessing for her order. At two subsequent audiences he has repeated his blessing, she says. Former papal nuncio to Mexico Giralomo Prigione proclaimed Mt. Tabor "An oasis of peace" when he visited from Mexico City. In spite this success, Mother Lillie is cautious: "We still do not have formal canonical approval. But I told the Lord, 'If this isn't from you, I won't do it!'" The sisters are not dismayed by the lengthy process involved to gain recognition from Rome.

Divine Providence is considered a key charism of the Trinitarians. Mother Lillie believes this is why her order is growing while other religious orders have lost vocations. "We need to let go of everything. We must surrender and leave behind what is not real life."

Neighbors have not been a problem, since the monastery is located over a desolate valley. "We had no neighbors originally," says Mother Lillie, pointing to a new two-story house near the monastery. "Those people built that little place just so they could live near us!"

Like everything else in the Trinitarian order, the monastery got its name from the gospel. Sister Margarita Diaz offers this explanation: "At the Transfiguration, Jesus took three of His followers, Peter, James, and John up on Mount Tabor and they saw a glimpse of eternal life and eternal glory. Appearing with Christ was Moses and Elijah. Immediately, Peter wanted to build three tabernacles, but it wasn't time. Our Lord wanted to usher in the third millenium, calling Mother Lillie -- the last one you'd expect -- to build the three Tabernacles on Mount Tabor, Tecate Mexico!"