Erin Kinsella
The early years of my life were very blessed - I am part of a family of four, which includes my mother, father, younger sister Kelly and myself. My dad was in the RCMP, so we moved around a lot…from B.C. to Nova Scotia, and a bunch of places in between. My mom’s family was Catholic, and my dad became Catholic when I was two years old. I was raised in the faith and went through catechism classes or Catholic school (depending on where we lived and if Catholic school there was a possibility) and received all the Sacraments.
However, I didn’t have an understanding of what it meant to have a personal relationship with the Lord. While I was in high school, I was involved in some retreats called Christ in Others (COR) retreats, both as a participant and then a leader. I remember the nights we had adoration- I remember feeling a lot of peace, but not really understanding what was happening. In my pre-conversion life, I don’t think I really had a belief in the True Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist, even though I knew it was something very important.
In high school I got good marks and graduated third in my class. I also spent a lot of time trying to prove to people around me that I fit in. I think from the amount of moving we did I got really good at becoming something that people around me wanted me to be so that I would have an abundance of friends. I had a lot of fun in high school, but I was also definitely getting into a habit of partying, and this carried into university.
I went to Dalhousie University in Halifax to study Microbiology and Immunology. Actually, at first I wanted to study biochemistry, but after memorizing things like the Krebs Cycle I realized I had almost zero interest in the chemistry part of biochem. But then I took my intro microbiology course and was totally hooked. However, the last two years of my degree were really difficult both academically and mentally. During my time at Dal, I spent a lot of time trying to find happiness in all the places people typically look for it- partying, relationships, prestige, academic success, popularity, and more.
The more I looked for happiness, the more elusive it seemed, and it was compounded by the fact that I DID find enjoyment in the places I was searching, but it was only fleeting. It only lasted for the duration of whatever activity I was focused on and I would always end up back in this spot of emptiness. I began having issues with sleep, mood, focus, motivation and more, and was diagnosed with depression.
Shortly after starting in Winnipeg, my supervisor was asked to go and lead the new BSL4 lab being built in Galveston, Texas at the University of Texas Medical Branch. He asked if I wanted to go down and continue studying there, and I was more than happy to go! However, shortly after I arrived there I faced a bunch of brick walls. My relationship with my supervisor was strained and eventually broke down, I was having issues accessing the building because of security issues and mix-ups, I was separated from friends and family, and I felt incredibly alone and isolated.
I began to have more serious symptoms of depression, and I remember starting to have thoughts of suicide and to wonder if people would really miss me. At that point, two things happened: I started to go back to Mass, which I had stopped going to since the beginning of my undergrad, and I began to think about leaving Texas, because I knew I wasn’t healthy. Shortly after that, I left everything- my program, my furniture, my dreams and plans- and came back to Canada.
My parents were living in Orangeville at the time, and I basically knew no one there. One day shortly after I arrived there, very broken and very despairing, there was a knock on the door. When I answered it, no one was there, but there was a plate of home-made goodies and a note that said, “Heard you’re back home…looking forward to hanging out with you!”. It was from the Life Teen group at St. Tim’s, including some pretty amazing people who are still in ministry in the Archdiocese of Toronto, and to whom I owe a huge debt of gratitude.
I started hanging out with this crowd from Life Teen and helping with the youth ministry program. I was also learning SO much about this faith that I grew up in…things that I felt like I’d never really been taught in my schools or catechism classes. There was so much beauty and truth that was resonating with me from the experiences I’d had, and I felt like my eyes were starting to be opened to something very new and very good.
We had a Life Night on confession, and I knew I had to go back to this Sacrament. One Saturday before Mass…because I didn’t know you could make an appointment for confession…I asked for Father to hear my confession. I word vomited everything- all the sin I had been carrying came out in a slew of words that poured out all of my pain. When Father prayed the prayer of absolution, I felt a weight physically lifted off my shoulders that I didn’t even realize that I had been carrying, and I met God in a deeply personal way for the first time. I knew at that moment what people were talking about when they spoke about having a personal relationship with Jesus. I knew it was possible, and that I was experiencing it. I knew that I was forgiven, and that I was loved in the depths of my being in way that was complete and encompassing and full of love and mercy.
This changed everything for me. It was like seeing life through a whole new lens and seeing my purpose in life become more about God and His will than about solely seeking my own happiness in transient things that are not able to satisfy. I really do liken my conversion, or reversion, or whatever you want to call it, to a St. Paul moment. I was struck to the core and the Lord broke into my entire reality to show me that He is real and that He is merciful and that I am loved.
After this experience, I started to pray more regularly, but I also had the kind of zeal that people often have when they experience a profound conversion of heart. Because I had started seeing my life as something that I desired to be an expression of God’s will in and through me, I also started to consider my vocation. I figured that the most radical way you could give yourself to God would be as a Sister (for someone who is a woman), so I visited the SOLI sisters in Cambridge for a week. It was truly a beautiful week and opened up my eyes to the beauty of religious life, but I also realized that I had a lot of work to do in my own spiritual life and spiritual maturity in order to really discern more seriously.
Up until this time, I had been working in research positions, but when I moved to Ottawa with my family, I got a job as the Youth Minister at Annunciation of the Lord parish. It was a huge gift for me, and in the three years I was there the stability in my prayer life grew a lot…and was hugely impacted by the availability of adoration chapels in the city.
After my first year at Annunciation, I met a local religious community and felt the same stirrings to give myself completely to the Lord that I had felt shortly after my conversion.
After a discernment retreat with them, I joined the community and experienced religious life for a year and a half. However, during that time I also experienced a long period of spiritual desolation. It was a very difficult time, and I won’t go into details that aren’t necessary, but I left the community on the Feast of St. John of the Cross. Unfortunately, I also left with a huge wound that resulted in me questioning my own goodness at a very deep place in my heart. I felt like I was unlovable- like everyone around me was tolerating me, and like I wasn’t someone who could be delighted in…by God or by anyone else.
After three years at Annunciation, I did a year with NET Ministries of Canada and was in Victoria for a year helping start a youth ministry. Like so many NETters before me, I would describe it as hard, but good. I’m so thankful for my team and the way we were truly invested in trying to love each other well.
After NET I spent some time in Ottawa and then moved to Winnipeg to work as the Director of Youth and Young Adult Ministry for the Archdiocese of Winnipeg. During the three years I was there, I met so many incredible people and am so grateful for having had the experiences that were part of that time. It was also during those years that I started to realize the real depth of the wound that existed in my heart.
Almost 8 years ago, I started a new job working in campus chaplaincy at the Newman Centre at the University of Toronto. During that time, I was incredibly blessed with a wonderful spiritual director, amazing community and friends, benefitting from a diocese that is truly a gift on so many levels, and lots of opportunities for prayer and spiritual/intellectual growth. One of the great blessings of those years was forming a friendship with the Sisters of Life in Toronto. Through their love, God started to uncover and heal with wound of “unloveableness” in me. I remember feeling as though there was some kind of perpetually present veil between the Lord and I; I knew He was there, but there was something in the way of the intimacy that He wanted for us. I remember having one of the scriptures keep coming up that would say, “Your walls are ever before me”, but that it was an affirmation from God that there was, indeed, something wounded in my heart, and that He was working to heal it.
During one retreat with the Sisters, I came to the Lord with a prayer that expressed the deepest desires in me: “Lord, I want to know Your love in the depths of my bones.” And He did it. He broke the veil in my heart and I had a new and deep sense of His love and presence that reminded me of the way I had first encountered Him in the confessional a decade before.
After that, I started having a very deep sense of the Lord drawing me to Himself, and the desire to belong only to Him. With my spiritual director’s encouragement, I went on a few Come and Sees with religious communities, and I felt so at home with the life of prayer (especially the Divine Office and the depth of the interior life that is fostered in religious life), the desire for radical self-gift, and the thought of my heart belonging completely to Jesus. However, the doors to those communities kept shutting for various reasons. I had some health issues at the time that were a potential barrier to living communal religious life in one community, another community was undergoing a big time of transition, and another didn’t hear a call surfacing in me towards their particular charism. I felt like the Lord was calling me to Himself, but at the same time rejecting me. It was devastating at times.
Since the doors to religious life seemed to be closing, my spiritual director suggested that I look again at marriage. For the next few months, I made a real effort to go places, meet people, remain consciously open to a relationship, and give God permission to really move if He was bringing me in the direction of marriage. However, all during that time (although I won’t get into details!), God kept shutting and re-shutting doors that seemed to be leading to marriage. I also had to ask myself the question- “Am I truly open to marriage, or am I running from it because of my own brokenness or fear or impatience?”. Again, after continuing to pray and meet with my spiritual director, I felt a huge peace at knowing that I wasn’t running from marriage, but that I was created for something different. This left the question: if it’s not marriage, and it’s not being a Sister, then WHAT!!??
I knew of Consecrated Virginity through another person in the ministry world in Toronto, and I began to look into it. At first, the idea seemed pretty awful…you have no community to look after you when you’re old and creaky like you would in a religious community, but you also have no husband to kill spiders. I use those things as funny examples, but I really didn’t sense an immediate draw to Consecrated Virginity. After some time, though, I started to see that many of the things that bring me joy and make me feel fully alive are exactly the things that are part of a vocation to Consecrated Virginity. For example, I have a love of not knowing what the future holds, and the adventure of a completely open and unpredictable path in life. I also love being totally free to respond to the Lord at any time to go wherever He wants and do whatever He wants. Of course, we all should aspire to this, but there is a different kind of freedom for it possible through Consecrated Virginity that isn’t possible in a vocation to marriage where there is a responsibility to spouse and children or in religious life where there are inbuilt structures of governance and obedience. Just to confirm: I’m not talking about a freedom that shirks responsibility or stability, but one that is free to go and be and do in a way that is different to that seen in other vocations. One other thing that was important was my sense of joy at being able to be available to my family. My grandmother was the Matriarch extraordinaire on my mom’s side, and she upheld our whole big family (her six kids, their children and their children) in prayer (along with my grandfather both before and after he died). I felt a huge call to continue to follow in their footsteps of praying for our whole family, and I feel them very close to me!
I approached Bishop Boissonneau, as he’s responsible for the Ordo Virginum (Order of Virgins) in the Archdiocese of Toronto. I began formation with one of the women already consecrated in the diocese, and instead of the experience of doors shutting or things not fitting, there was confirmation and encouragement at every step. Not that there weren’t challenges or doubts that came up (i.e. “Lord, You have to show me that You’re not going to leave me to live under a bridge by myself when I’m 80…You need to show me that You take care of all my needs!”). The Lord dealt with every fear or doubt in such a way that I was able to put them firmly to rest.
As an informational aside, there are about 5000 Consecrated Virgins in the world, and about 200 in Canada. This vocation was the first form of consecrated life in the Church, but the Rite of Consecration went into disuse with the rise of religious communities and was restored following the second Vatican council. So in some ways you could say that it’s both the oldest and one of the newest vocations in the Church. Some key things- Consecrated Virgins are Spouses of Christ in the same way religious Sisters are, but we don’t live in a religious community and generally have our own jobs in order to support ourselves. We don’t wear habits, but we do wear a ring to mark our consecrations. We don’t take vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, but our vocation is a celibate one, which means that I won’t ever be married or have children. My primary ministry is prayer- I am called to pray for all, but in a special way for the Bishop(s), clergy, and all others in the diocese that I am consecrated in. For a full picture of the vocation in terms of theology, history, formation, etc., check out “Ecclesia Sponsae Imago”.
Since there are no vows in Consecrated Virginity, there isn’t really anything analogous to the temporary vows of poverty, chastity and obedience that those in religious communities make. Instead, what many women discerning do, after a sufficient time of discernment and indication of evidence of the woman being called to this vocation, is make a private temporary promise of celibacy (often received by their spiritual director). I made such a promise with mine for a period of a year to see what fruits could be seen in it and to further discern if I was called to a life of celibacy. Also, just to clarify- a life of celibacy is not a repression of sexuality, it is a particular gift of God that is given to someone to live the universal call we all have: to give ourselves away in love. It just takes a different form than it does in marriage. Feel free to ask me about how I experience it!
Back to the timeline…After about three years of formation and discernment, I remember coming to a point where I asked myself the question, “If I come to the end of my life, will I regret having entered into this vocation?” I certainly felt called and confirmed in the vocation, but there is also always some uncertainty that remains, because we don’t know the whole story of our lives, or even what we’ll learn about our spouse/vocation/life trajectory after we enter the vocation we’ve been called to. Sometimes we get paralyzed in discernment because we don’t like not knowing the ending of things or what will happen if we say a definitive “Yes!”. But in my heart, I knew that I would not regret saying “Yes!” to the Lord, or to facing any hardships that are part of this vocation, because He is with me.
When I went on the first discernment retreat with the community in Ottawa, there was a time when the Sister I was meeting with asked me, “What would it look like if Jesus proposed to you?”. As soon as she asked the question, I remember having an image in my heart of Jesus, on the Cross, saying, “This is my proposal for you.” Years later, I became a Consecrated Virgin on the Feast Day of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, which is also the anniversary of my baptism.
Since that time, I can’t say that it’s been easy. I have fibromyalgia and have had to leave my job and potentially my career, my community, my apartment and independence, my friends, my financial security, and the Archdiocese I was consecrated in (whether temporarily or permanently, only God knows!). Sounds like a great honeymoon, eh? But really, through all this, I have seen the faithfulness of Jesus, my Spouse, over and over. There is a huge security in knowing who I am in Him, and that nothing can ever change it. I imagine it’s like the marriage vows…through the good and the bad, there’s a comfort in the permanence of the vows that have been made that allows freedom and security to flourish. Jesus will always be my Spouse, and the advantage I have is that, if there’s something wrong in the relationship, I will always know it’s me haha! But seriously, I don’t regret saying yes to this vocation, even in the difficulty. Even when I struggle to know that Jesus is with me. Even when it seems like I’m “doing” this vocation thing wrong.
For now, I know that my calling at this time is to learn how to suffer well, and to let others see in me that suffering is not devoid of joy. I’m completing my MTS thesis on “The Theology of the Suffering Body: Re-Reading Salvifici Dolores through the Lens of Theology of the Body”, so please pray for me, because my fibro brain needs all the grace it can get! I’m also one of the hosts of the podcast “In the Thicket”, where we talk about different forms of suffering so that it can (hopefully) help people feel less alone and less like a “Christian imposter” who looks good on the outside but is a mess on the inside.
So, to end, I want to say thank you for reading if you made it this far! My whole life feels like one big work of grace, and I am so grateful for what the Lord has done. I want to be a Saint, and I definitely know that there’s a long way to go yet, but seeing just how far the Lord has brought me gives me hope that it’s possible. If I had to say one thing at this point…especially for those discerning their vocation, but for everyone…I would say that a great prayer to offer is, “Jesus, help me to surrender.”