For most of her young life, Brianna Farens was convinced she would pursue a career in medicine, inspired by the witness of her father, Dr. John Farens— except for that short interlude as a four-year-old when her passion was to drive an ice cream truck.
Throughout those years, she would often work at her father’s office in Shelton, and all the road signs pointed toward a life of caring for people as a doctor.
“I loved to accompany him on his rounds to the hospital and nursing homes and see the tenderness and compassion he shared with others, to see him helping to heal others,” she recalls. After graduating from St. Joseph High School, she began a premed major at Providence College.
But then something happened. She started to grow closer to Jesus in her spiritual life…and she realized she wanted to get even closer. Her prayer was a simple request: “Lord, I just want to be closer to You.”
Jesus took her at her word. She never realized how close she would become.
Today, Brianna’s mother Donna says the young woman whose smile lit up a party, who was known for her contagious laughter and her tender hugs, who traveled to Latin America to work with the poor in mountain villages and to Denver to help the homeless, is Sister Maria Antonia of the Holy Wounds of Jesus, a member of the cloistered religious order at the Poor Clare Monastery of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Roswell, New Mexico.
“She always had something a little different about her,” Donna Farens said. “From a young age, if someone was making fun of somebody, she would say, ‘You shouldn’t do that’ or ‘You could be somebody in a wheelchair.’ She was a generous and kind kid, always looking out for others who were left out.”
Donna still recalls the time Brianna, then a fourth-grader at St. Lawrence School, said, “Mom, I think I want to become a nun.”
The topic never came up again until years later, when she was in high school and dating a guy she had a crush on. “I don’t know, I just get this feeling sometimes that I’m supposed to be a nun,” she told her mother.
“I said, ‘Bri, if that’s what you’re meant to be, you’ll figure it out,’” Donna recalled. “After that, she never brought it up again and talked about getting married someday.”
When she graduated from Providence, she didn’t want a party or gifts. Her request was simple. She wanted to go on a mission trip to Peru with Sister Flo, who taught at St. Joseph and was a member of the Marian Community of Reconciliation, also known as Fraternas.
“She graduated from college on the weekend and was on a plane the following Wednesday with other college students,” Donna said. “She came back changed. The experience moved her. She knew she wanted to help people and work with them.”
Sister Antonia, in a written response to questions, said the great turning point in her life— her “radical moment of conversion”—occurred on that trip to Peru, where she worked with the poor in shantytowns.
“Up until this point, I thought I knew what happiness was, for I had all of the circumstances in my life that easily allowed for it,” she said. “However, it was in encountering the radiating joy of the destitute that I was confronted with the fact that these people possessed something that I lacked: They had a joy that was not dependent on circumstances—their joy came from their relationship with Christ. And during that trip, the same joy was poured into the depths of my heart and filled it to overflowing. I personally encountered God’s overwhelming mercy and love for me, and it was everywhere. It was everything. I was all in.”
During this time, she said, “It felt like this little prayer of mine was cast out into the darkness. Although it seemed like nothing was really changed in my life, it was a time of patient waiting.” Sister Antonia describes it as “Our Lord stretching my heart to be able to receive the outpouring of gifts.”
That summer she made plans to join the Christ in the City program in Denver, where she worked as a missionary with Fraternas and lived with 20 young adults serving the homeless. It proved to be a period of discernment. She had stopped dating and considered joining the religious community.
At that time, she embraced the Lord’s call to the consecrated life. She stayed there for several years, serving in different capacities—leading youth and women’s groups, assisting at a Catholic OBGYN and family practice, helping at retreats and giving talks.
“All the while, my prayer life was deepening and intensifying,” she said. “I was spending more and more time before our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament, and I just couldn’t get enough. Being before the Lord and gazing at Him, caught up in His love, it felt like my heart could just leap out of my chest and go out to Him. He was drawing me into this divine intimacy, and the only response I could make was that of totality, anything less would not satisfy.”
She said that one evening while in adoration, “I heard Jesus calling me so clearly in the utmost depths of my heart to the cloister. And in hearing this, it was like my innermost being was illumined, and it felt like I was on fire with peace, consumed by Love.”
She was filled with awe and an indescribable joy.
“It seemed like from the very place within me that our Lord drew out this call, there also came all my love and therefore my response,” she recalled. “This profound moment of realizing my vocation was simply an encounter of Love: His Love meeting mine.”
During the following weeks, she pondered “the mystery of the call” and confidently turned over all the practical considerations to God, willing to be led by him. And everything unfolded according to his plan, leading her to the Poor Clare monastery in Roswell.
“When I arrived at the monastery for my first visit, I knew I was home,” she said. “Everything spoke to my heart. I was especially moved by the sisters’ youthful joy that witnessed to brides in love with Christ. There was just something so familiar about it all.”
She returned six months later for an interview and was given an application.
“In discovering my vocation, I discovered more of myself,” she says. “Here and again, and all throughout, it’s really just another step in the blessed adventure that essentially is life with Christ.”
During Christmas 2018, when she told her family she was considering the cloistered life, her parents thought that she would be able to come home occasionally…and urged her not to make a hasty decision.
Brianna said to them: “Do you really understand what the cloistered life is? Mom and Dad, the place I have in mind, once I go in, I won’t be coming home for anything.”
Dr. Farens recalled visiting another convent with her, and she asked if they had perpetual adoration. They didn’t, and that was a disappointment because her love of the Eucharist was so intense it had become central to her existence. Sometime later, a priest who knew Brianna told her parents that she would sit before the Blessed Sacrament and pray for four or five hours at a time. “I can’t even do that,” he said.
When she arrived at the Poor Clare Monastery of Our Lady of Guadalupe, she felt like she was home, her father said. She left Connecticut in June 2020, during the middle of the COVID-19 lockdown, to begin her new life.
Last year on October 18, Sr. Maria Antonia of the Holy Wounds of Jesus received the habit of St. Clare. It is a path she believes Jesus chose for her, and it was the answer to her prayer. Mother Superior chose her name, which pleased Brianna because she had a lifelong devotion to St. Anthony of Padua.
The order says, “The nuns are called Poor Clares because they are poor, living by the work of their hands and their minds and on the alms of the faithful, and because they are followers and daughters of one of the most charming women who ever lived. Her name was Clare, Clare of Assisi.”
Sister’s parents, John and Donna, and her two brothers, Jonathan and Christopher, may visit her two to three times a year, but not during Advent or Lent.
“We’re very happy she’s so joyful,” Donna said. “In every picture, she has the biggest beaming smile on her face.”
John said, “She is really a special kid, always giving and kind and generous. And it can be hard because we miss her physical presence.”
Donna told her that she was having a difficult time explaining why she entered the cloister. It was hard for Catholics—and even harder for non-Catholics—to understand.
Sister replied, “Mom, it’s all based on how strong your faith is. You’re either going to get it or not.”
At one point, Donna said, “God gave you so many talents and you’re so good with people. Why would God want you holed up there?” Sister responded, “God has a greater plan for me. Few people can pray 24-7, and with the way the world is now, we need vocations like this even more.”
“We believe Jesus led her to this life,” Donna said. “And who are we to question God’s plan? He knows what’s best for her better than we do. We’re just so blessed that he gave her to us. Brianna told us, ‘Mom and Dad, I’m in your life now more than ever, and I’m praying for you guys all the time.’ …We are very proud of her.”
Responding to the news of her investiture, Bishop Frank J. Caggiano said, “This should be an occasion for the entire diocese to rejoice and also pray for Sister Maria Antonia.”
Father Joseph Marcello, pastor of the Parish of St. Catherine of Siena in Trumbull and friend of the family, celebrated the Memorial of the Immaculate Heart of Mary with a special blessing for Brianna as she prepared to enter the monastic life.
In his homily, he recalled the examples of the Trappist monk Thomas Merton and St. Therese of the Child Jesus, who died at 24 in the Carmelite monastery in Lisieux, France, and said, “With her love, with her prayer, with her sacrifice, she embraced the whole world while never leaving her cloistered monastery.”
He said: “That is what a monastery is—the place where men or women, mysteriously chosen by Jesus Christ to live for him alone live deeply hidden, behind the protection of the cloister, yet suffusing the whole Mystical Body of the Church with love, and silently ‘purchasing’ souls for God with their love, their prayer, their sacrifice.”
He told people at the Mass: “My friends, Brianna will not stop loving us, and we will not stop loving her…. Her love for us and for the whole Church and for the whole world will be now joined to the love of Jesus Christ, the redemptive love which bought back the whole world from sin and death, and with Mary, at the foot of the Cross, now rejoicing with her Risen Son in the unending glory of Heaven.”
(For more information about the Cloistered Poor Clare Nuns, visit their website at www.poorclares-roswell.org)
By Joe Pisani • Picture from Holy Parish Name Facebook page
