Here's an article that was in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in 2002 about one of the Carmelites DCJ in St. Louis. I thought it might be interesting for Rachel since she is interested in the order:
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HEADLINE: FAITH'S KID SISTER

BYLINE: Lorraine Kee Of The Post-Dispatch

After three years in the Carmelite convent here, Sister Maris Stella, 20, takes her first vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. The Carmelites are reversing a national trend in the loss of Catholic sisters, as well the age disparity in the St. Louis Archdiocese, where half the nuns are 70 or older. The Kirkwood order has 19 postulants, novices and junior professed nuns -- sisters in formation -- to only five professed sisters.

Inside the convent of the Carmelite Sisters of the Divine Heart of Jesus, brown habits scurry and swish softly up and down the halls, disappearing through one door and reappearing from another.

A young sister carries the robe Bishop Timothy Dolan will don soon.

Another young sister is quickly running out of programs for the people filling the convent's chapel. She glances out the window and spots the arriving Dolan.

"He's here," she says, whipping around from the window. The convent's directress of vocation, Sister Mary Lelia, spins and is instantly down the hall greeting the bishop who will officiate at the ceremony this morning.

On this second day of July, the sisters are readying for a Mass of Religious Profession -- a special time in the life of this community of religious women, in Kirkwood. During the Mass, two sisters will make their first vows, one will renew hers and another will celebrate the 50th anniversary of the first time she uttered hers.

That's reason enough to celebrate. That the Carmelite Sisters are having a Mass of profession at all is just short of miraculous. It's a sign of vitality in a declining line.

That's because the number of religious sisters in the Catholic church in the United States has dropped by 54 percent since 1965. Half of the nuns in the Archdiocese of St. Louis are 70 or older, said Sister Eva-Marie Ackerman, the archdiocese's co-vicar for religious communities.

Yet, here and there, some religious communities are growing. Sister Ackerman's own Sisters of St. Francis of the Martyr St. George in Alton is one of those groups. The Carmelite Sisters of the Divine Heart of Jesus is another.

For the first time in a long time in the convent, there are 19 postulants, novices and junior professed nuns -- sisters in formation, or training -- compared to five professed sisters.

After joining the convent three years ago, Sister Maris Stella, 20, is about to make her first vows.

Poverty, chastity and obedience

All the ado inside the convent escapes Sister Maris Stella.

She is sitting on a bench and facing a statue of Jesus Christ in the sun-dappled convent garden. Her head, covered with the white veil of a novice, is bowed. Her slender fingers rest in her lap. Somewhere, a bird twitters.

She was sent to the garden to meditate, so she wouldn't be distracted by all the preparations inside.

But she is as excited as a bride on her wedding day.

Not that Sister Maris Stella has any doubts about taking her first vows. She's been pointing to this moment since she came to the convent nearly three years ago. Even farther back, if she allowed her memory to drift back that far. She and her sister had talked about it as kids.

But all she is thinking about now are the vows she will make in an hour.

She will commit to a life of poverty, chastity and obedience -- to live a Christ-like life.

"It's hard to express what I'm feeling ," Sister Maris Stella said, sitting on the bench. "I'm nervous, excited and I just want to do it and give everything -- and I don't want anything to hold me back."

What would hold her back? She is contemplating the enormity of the moment, wondering whether she can live up to her promise.

"I'm just trying to comprehend what I'm doing," she said. "Can I really even comprehend what I'm doing? The greatness of this. Certainly it seems too great for me at times.

"And there's just the whole act of profession," she added. "That moment that you become consecrated."

As she has done before, Sister Maris Stella said, she will her trust in him.

A visible sign of faith

Sister M. Lydia Ann, the cheerful superior of the Central Province of the Carmelite Sisters, recalled a time at the convent when seven nuns lived there.

That was before Pope John Paul II visited St. Louis in January 1999. The nuns started running ads in religious publications and the convent went high-tech. Now it has an informational video and a Web site. Its retreats, in which young women come to the convent to see how the nuns live, are well-attended.

For her part, Sister Lydia Ann almost always knew this was the life for her. When she was 9, she started writing away to different religious communities.

"I knew this was what God was calling me to do," said the nun, the second of 12 children in her family.

She entered the convent at 18. She chose the Carmelites because of their dedication to prayer and to the care of the elderly and children. Furthermore, they wore habits.

"I just wanted everybody to know I was working for Jesus," she said.

Sister Mary Lelia said the young women, who come to inquire about the community, often ask about the habits. She believes the dress, along with the community's recommital to its roots, is partly driving the order's renaissance.

The habits are an expression of the nuns' poverty -- they show they don 't care about the styles of the day, Sister Maris Stella said. They're also a visible sign of the sisters' witness, she added.

They are called to be witnesses to the world. The habits make them visible witnesses.

"It's kind of like wearing a wedding ring, in the sense that you want people to know you're married," Sister Maris Stella said. "I am consecrated (committed to the gospel) and I want people to know that I am separate from the world."

A monastic life

This life isn't for everybody.

First, it's regimented. The sisters rise at 5 a.m. That's followed by morning prayer and meditation. Mass is at 7 a.m. Then there's breakfast, eaten in silence.

After that, they fulfill the mission of their foundress. They work with the elderly in the adjacent St. Agnes Home or with the children at the day-care center on their grounds.

At noon, they attend midday prayer. Afterward, the professed sisters return to the home for the elderly, the day-care center and the responsibilities that keep the convent running.

However, the young sisters head to their formation studies in a compact brown book, which contains the Carmelite's constitutions and directory. They also study how to live in a community. After evening prayer and dinner, there's meditation.

An hour of recreation is followed by night prayer and, finally, the "grand silence" which is kept until morning prayer.

The sisters eat family-style, together. Even the act of sitting down to eat is a reflection of their sense of community. Food is passed around the table, from one sister to the next, rather than grabbed willy-nilly.

"It's a very family time," Sister Mary Lelia said.

The nuns eat whatever is prepared. A typical Carmelite meal? Boiled potatoes with cottage cheese. They eat meat with meals three times a week.

Their living quarters aren't fancy. Though the professed sisters occupy their own cells, the sisters in formation share quarters. The flush of sisters has meant they live in close quarters. In one large room, only curtains separate their spaces.

Each cell contains a bed, nightstand, basin and chair. There's also a toothbrush, paste, comb, bar of soap, slippers and a glass. But there are no personal possessions. Books and videos, for instance, are shared. The walls are bare except for pictures of holy figures.

"Prayers are all we need," Sister Lydia Ann said.

The disciplined life is designed to let the sisters forsake earthly things, setting them free to get closer to God. Sometimes that can be painful.

As vocation directress, Sister Mary Lelia helps the young women discern whether this is what God is calling them to do. Whether they move on to the next step in formation can depend on how they adjust to living in a community and a life of prayer.

"For each person, God has a vocation," Sister Mary Lelia said. "That vocation is going to bring them to holiness."

Some find it in formation here. Others, maybe a couple young women each year, will have to seek it outside the convent.

Her own calling

It was like the old days. Sort of.

One day this winter, Brianne and her big sister, Bridget, are on the ice at a local skating rink. They're holding gloved hands and spinning on their skates, playing a game from their childhood. Then they both fall down, laughing, in a pile of blue denim and brown fabric.

Just like the old days, Chuck Ryder calls his daughter Bridget as they are leaving the rink. He immediately corrects himself. "Sister Maris Stella," he says, before bidding her goodbye for now. The sisters are returning to the convent after their icy afternoon outing.

Nancy and Chuck Ryder don't see their oldest daughter as much as they like. But they understand. They just miss her.

"It's gotten better," Nancy Ryder said recently. "But I still watch and watch for the letter."

At age 6, Bridget and her dad had a war of wills over a dish of broccoli and cheese, Nancy Ryder recalled. Bridget, clamping her lips together, won that round.

"She was always a strong-willed child," said Nancy Ryder, who home-schooled her daughters so they could train for competitive figure skating during the day. "Growing up, she always had to have a reason for things. She didn't do things just because."

Bridget had planned to study political science in college. But, shortly before 18th birthday, she and Brianne went to a Christian youth conference. At the conference, she met some Carmelite sisters.

Bridget had told her parents earlier that God was calling her to something, but she didn't know what. When she got home from the conference in Ohio, she told them she wanted to visit some convents.

A few days after her 18th birthday, she moved into the convent on Manchester Road.

"As a dad, not to have Bridget or Sister Maris Stella home where we can share a meal together and talk and just enjoy life together, yeah, that hurts," said Chuck Ryder, a deacon at St. Catherine Laboure Catholic Church.

But, he added, "she always recognized God's presence in her life."

Next in line

Last winter, Sister Maris Stella had watched another nun, Sister John Paola, take first vows.

And she's thinking, as she dusts the next day, that her turn is coming in six months.

She wonders what will it take for her to be ready to take the leap from novice to junior professed -- to accept the black veil, white mantle, crucifix and rosary.

"I hope I will be the person that God wants me to be," she said. "The person that can love. That's really what I think it all comes down to, to be able to love. That's why we do everything that we do so we can love better. Love God better. Love people better. To be able to love is the whole goal of everything we do.

"What makes it hard is our own self."

A long time ago, she had doubts. "I can think of a couple of times when I was really, like, stay or go, stay or go," she said.

Those doubts arose so long ago she can't even remember what inspired them. As she sits on the bench in the convent's garden, she contemplates this new commitment. Every year, for five years, she will take the same vow until she is a professed sister.

"Seeing myself and my inadequacies and my own temptations and a lack of faith, too," said Sister Maris Stella, wondering whether she will feel differently afterward. "If I had a tremendous amount of faith, I wouldn't be afraid of anything."

New kind of freedom

During the Mass of Religious Profession, Bishop Dolan talked about how easy it is to see only what the sisters give up in making a commitment to Christ. But they gain so much more, he said, in a world where you can go and do what you want, "you sisters profess obedience."

To a world that holds that immediate sexual gratification is the be-all and end-all, he said, "you sisters profess chastity."

To a world that covets possessions, he said, the sisters profess poverty.

Some might say the sisters are losing much.

But, Dolan said, they should tell the world they are gaining much more than they lose.

They are "gaining that greatest treasure of all: an intimacy of my relationship, my spousal relationship, with our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ," he said.

The sisters then took and renewed their vows.

"Into the hands of Sister Lydia Ann of the Mother of God, I vow to the holy triune God for one year chastity, poverty and obedience, according to the rule of Carmel and the constitution of the Carmelite Sisters of the Divine Heart of Jesus, with the firm determination of consecrating myself totally to Him and of following Christ more closely," Sister Maris Stella said.

Later, in their community room, the sisters crowded around Dolan for photographs. Chuck Ryder, who had helped during the Mass, congratulated his daughter. After a hug, he told her she was getting too skinny.

Nancy Ryder is proud, too. She has seen her daughter mature. Sister Maris Stella even ate broccoli and cheese during the postceremony celebration.

"You see her now and how happy she is," her mother said.

Living vows

A week after taking her first vows, Sister Maris Stella is in Toronto. She camped out July 28 so she could get a good view of the Pope John Paul II. Even in a throng of 800,000 people attending the World Youth Day Mass, she said she felt "as if he were seeing me in the midst of the crowd."

She hardly has had time to let the events of early July sink in. But she feels different.

"In a sense, I feel like a spouse," she said. "I think of myself in that way now. I'm even more committed to making sure I'm living my vows everyday."

Thank you so much

Makes me want to visit them even more!