Sister Vera Lea Virant

Hello!  Thank you for wanting to meet me.  I’m Vera Lea (rhymes with sea) Virant (Ver ant’).  Although I look young I’m seventy years old now and have been in Carmel for fifty years.  Amazing!  Every life is a journey.  I feel like I’m into the best part of it now, and that I’m growing younger.  I’ve known loss and hard times and seriously considered leaving Carmel when I was in my forties.  With the help of prayer and friends I came to know myself on a deeper level and chose Carmel once again.  I look back on my journey thus far with gratitude and joy in the Lord.

My life began in a devout Catholic family here in Cleveland.  Catholic schools kept before my mind the worth of a meaningful life.  In the eighth grade I read the life of St. Therese of Lisieux, a Carmelite nun who died at the age of twenty-four in the 1890’s.  She had great desires, wanted to be everything and help everybody, and wondered why God gave her such desires.  What did they mean?  She found her answer in the thirteenth chapter of Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians.  If we seem to do everything for everybody but do not have love, we are just sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal.  Therese realized that the body of Christ needs more than hands and feet, and voices that proclaim.  A body needs a heart!  In the body of Christ she would be love, and in that way influence all the members.  Therese lived a life of love for God and others as a Carmelite nun.  I very much identified with Therese’s desires and wanted to fulfill them as she did.

These desires stayed with me even when my dad made the army his career and my family moved to Germany.  They stayed with me when marriage became very appealing.  After two years of college and with the help of a Jesuit spiritual director, I felt ready to take the big step.

The old-time customs of Carmel and the authentic life of prayer I learned and entered into here were, at first, an exciting adventure.  Then came the settling in to a dry desert trek.  The “honeymoon” ended and I had to dig deeper into a life of faith.  But the Lord kept the desire in my heart nourished by the liturgy, Scripture, the writings of Therese, Teresa, and especially John of the Cross, and by the support of my sisters in Carmel and deep friendships.

Let me conclude this brief “bio” with a saying by Adam of Perseign, a Cistercian abbot of the Middle Ages:

           “Nothing is happier in this life than to love faithfully and to be loved.”

I wish you life and love in abundance!

                                                       Sister Vera Lea of Christ the High Priest