GRACIAS SENOR JESUS, POR ESE SACRIFICIO DE AMOR QUE HAS HECHO AL MORIR EN LA CRUZ PARA RECONCILIARNOS CON EL PADRE, GRACIAS SENOR JESUS. CIERTAMENTE NO HAY PALABRAS SUFICIENTES NI QUE LLENEN LA MAGNITUD DE GRATITUD QUE DEBERIAMOS TENER POR ESE SACRIFICIO DE AMOR QUE HAS HECHO POR NOSOTROS; POR ESO, DANOS LOS DONES DEL ESPIRITU SANTO PARA CONOCERTE, AMARTE Y ENTENDER TU PALABRA; Y ASI QUE A TRAVES DE LA DONACION DE ESOS DONES, PONIENDOLOS AL SERVICIO DEL PROJIMO, PODAMOS DEMOSTRARTE LA GRATITUD QUE MERECE TU GRAN AMOR. OH SENOR JESUS CON LA FUERZA DE TU AMOR, CONCEDENOS LA DICHA DE SER AGRADECIDOS CONTIGO PARA PODER ESTAR JUNTOS EN LA ETERNIDAD. AMEN

As a subculture, cloistered monastic nuns live hidden from public view by choice. Once a woman joins the cloister and makes final vows, she is almost never seen and her voice is not heard; her story is essentially nonexistent in the historical record and collective, public history.
From interviews conducted over six years, Abbie Reese tells the stories of the Poor Clare Colettine Order, a cloistered contemplative order at the Corpus Christi Monastery in Rockford, Illinois. Seldom leaving their 25,000-square-foot gated enclosure, members of this community embrace an extreme version of poverty and anonymity - a separation that enables them to withdraw from the world to devote their lives to prayer. This removal, they contend, allows them to have a greater impact on humanity than if they maintained direct contact with loved ones and strangers.
Dedicated to God explores individual and cultural identity through oral history interviews with several generations of nuns, focusing on the origins and life stories of the women who have chosen to become members of one of the strictest religious orders. But the narrative is also one of a collective memory and struggle against extinction and modernity, a determination to create community within the framework of ancient rules.
The author's stunning photographs of their dual worlds, religious and quotidian, add texture to the narrative.
This artistic and ethnographic work highlights the countercultural values and dedication of individuals who, at incredible personal cost, live for love of God and humanity, out of faith in what cannot be seen, and with the belief that they will be rewarded in the afterlife.

In Subversive Habits, Shannen Dee Williams provides the first full history of Black Catholic nuns in the United States, hailing them as the forgotten prophets of Catholicism and democracy. Drawing on oral histories and previously sealed Church records, Williams demonstrates how master narratives of women's religious life and Catholic commitments to racial and gender justice fundamentally change when the lives and experiences of African American nuns are taken seriously. For Black Catholic women and girls, embracing the celibate religious state constituted a radical act of resistance to white supremacy and the sexual terrorism built into chattel slavery and segregation. Williams shows how Black sisters-such as Sister Mary Antona Ebo, who was the only Black member of the inaugural delegation of Catholic sisters to travel to Selma, Alabama, and join the Black voting rights marches of 1965-were pioneering religious leaders, educators, healthcare professionals, desegregation foot soldiers, Black Power activists, and womanist theologians. In the process, Williams calls attention to Catholic women's religious life as a stronghold of white supremacy and racial segregation-and thus an important battleground in the long African American freedom struggle.