CNA Staff, Mar 10, 2025 /
06:00 am
Tucked away in the Tehachapi Mountains of California, a group of cloistered nuns is chasing puppies, making artisanal cheeses, and praying the Liturgy of the Hours — all part of reviving a 900-year-old religious order.
With roots going back to 1121, when St. Norbert of Xanten founded the first community, the Norbertine Canonesses of Bethlehem Priory of St. Joseph has grown since it was established nearly 30 years ago.
“The process of founding our priory was unique since there are no other Norbertine Canonesses on the continent of North America,” explained Mother Mary Oda, the mother prioress of the Norbertine Canonesses.
Contemplative prayer is foundational for the community. The nuns’ daily lives are modeled on liturgical prayer. They rise from sleep at midnight to chant the office of matins and pause from their daily tasks throughout the day to pray.
Mother Oda shared how their cloistered, contemplative life is “rooted deeply in the liturgy.”
“The praise, adoration, thanksgiving, and intercession that permeates the prayer of the liturgy also permeates the daily life of the canoness, making her very existence a sort of ‘living liturgy,’” she told CNA.
“As cloistered canonesses, the Liturgy of the Hours is the framework of our entire day and governs all our other activities,” Mother Oda said. “For, while we may have much work to do around the convent, our primary work is the praise of God in choir.”
Part of the Norbertine Canonesses’ monastic life also includes self-sustaining projects. The sisters often work with their hands to grow, create, and mend what they have. The sisters have daily tasks, such as tending to their animals, artisanal cheese-making, and apple-picking.
But as a contemplative order, their whole lives are rooted in prayer.
“It is fitting that all other work, be it cooking or sewing or tending the animals or making cheese, is interrupted to return to this most important work,” she continued. “It is from the liturgy that all of our other work derives its true meaning, so that they become so many ways in which we, in and through Our Lord, seek to radiate this prayer of praise and petition out to the world, and in turn bring creation back to God.”
Raising Labrador retrievers and Anatolian shepherd dogs
“Striving to live by the work of our hands and to make our communities as self-sustaining as possible has been a tradition of our order for over 900 years,” Mother Oda explained.
In addition to apple-picking and cheese-making, the sisters began a dog breeding program in 2016. It started with a dog named “Blitzen,” whom the community acquired to herd their cows.
After Blitzen had her first litter, the sisters decided — with the help of a friend of the community — to breed and raise Labrador retrievers — a breed especially suited for service and therapy work. They have since added Anatolian shepherd dogs to the program, two of which help guard their sheep.
“Today we have bred and placed over 200 puppies in loving homes, with a number of puppies having gone to their new families as service dog prospects to assist those with PTSD, mobility issues, autism, and other disabilities or challenges,” Mother Oda said. “Because of our strict policies in this regard, none of our puppies have ever ended up unwanted or adding to the problem of overcrowded animal shelters.”
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A centuries-old tradition alive today
It was in the 1990s that the founding prioress of the community, Mother Mary Augustine (then Monique Petit) began working with the Norbertine Fathers of St. Michael’s Abbey to found a community of canonesses. The founding nuns spent time in various places in formation, ultimately finding their home in Tehachapi, a city in the Tehachapi Mountains of southern California in 1999.
“The groundwork of prayer and discernment laid by the founding nuns is being built upon as we strive to faithfully live our Norbertine tradition,” Mother Oda said.
It wasn’t until 2011 that the priory was officially incorporated into the Norbertine order as an independent canonry. In 2011, the first nine nuns made their profession of solemn vows, and in 2012, the permanent convent building was constructed.
“There was much work, prayer, and discernment to be done as they tried to establish how to live a 900-year tradition faithfully in the modern world,” Mother Oda explained.
Now, with more than 40 sisters, the priory has plans to complete construction of its monastery and chapel.
“God continues to bless us with vocations, and so space in the 2012 building, as well as in our converted ranch-house chapel, is increasingly becoming an issue which needs to be addressed in a timely manner,” Mother Oda said. “We place our trust in God that, in his perfect timing, the funds will come and the space will be provided!”
The contemplative life
Mother Oda shared that while the effects of the monastery’s works are often invisible in this world, the sisters sometimes see the fruit of their prayers.
“We daily receive prayer requests from all over the world and often also praise reports of happy outcomes ranging from vehicle problems semi-miraculously resolved to remissions from cancer to deathbed conversions, and the grace to fully accept and even embrace a difficult cross that a soul was struggling to bear,” Mother Oda said.
She explained that a contemplative life — dedicated to praise of God and prayer for man — “is certainly countercultural in an age that often glamorizes the selfish and self-seeking.”
“It addresses in a special way the wounds that afflict modern people and modern society, which has, by and large, forgotten God and suffers the frustration and meaninglessness that such a forgetfulness always creates,” Mother Oda said.
Mother Oda noted that all Christians are called to contemplative life, “a life of deeper prayer and union with God,” but some Christians are called to pursue this life of prayer “with greater intensity.”
“The contemplative life is important in any epoch of history, but is perhaps especially relevant in our modern day,” she continued. “God has always preferred to speak to the heart of man amidst silence, and yet today there is a sort of tyranny of noise and distractions, making it very difficult for modern man to be attentive to his voice.”
“Cloistered monasteries proclaim to the world that God is, that he is worthy of every ounce of our love and indeed of our whole existence, and that living in him and for him is not only possible but is deeply, deeply fulfilling,” Mother Oda said.
Kate Quiñones is a staff writer for Catholic News Agency and a fellow of the College Fix. She has been published by the Wall Street Journal, the Denver Catholic Register, and CatholicVote, and she graduated from Hillsdale College. She lives in Colorado with her husband.
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