As the young Belgian girl was about to begin her novitiate in an order of nuns whose motto is "Pray and Work," the Superior General gravely warned her: "It is not easy to be a nun. It is a life of sacrifice and self-abnegation. It is a life against nature." Mistaking a will to do good for a vocation to serve God in the cloister, Gabrielle Van der Mal took 17 years to realize that she was not cut out for it. Renunciation of the world did not bring presence of the spirit, and the quest for selflessness became an unwitting...
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