1 March, 2022
By Cal Abbo
In 1922, during the aftermath of World War I, Father Anton Zebouni, a Chaldean priest in Baghdad, wrote a letter to then-Patriarch of the Chaldean Church, Mar Yousif Emmanuel II Toma, requesting permission to form a congregation of women dedicated to serving the poor, orphaned, and uneducated. At the time, the world, including Iraq, was in chaos. Poverty was widespread, notably among women and children. Women had nearly no opportunities for education. Iraqi Christian women began leaving the villages, converting to Islam, and finding jobs to support their families. Father Zebouni looked for a way to keep them in the faith.
His request was granted. On August 7, 1922, the Congregation of Chaldean Sisters, Daughters of Mary Immaculate, was born to serve the Chaldean community, especially neglected women and girls. The congregation, which began with six sisters, now has nearly 100 sisters serving in many villages in Iraq as well as Lebanon, Rome, Australia, United Arab Emirates, Detroit, Chicago, Arizona, Turlock and San Diego. Their Mother Home based in Baghdad. I
n 2022, the Sisters are celebrating their founding with a fundraiser on June 7, 2022 at Shenandoah Country Club.
The Chaldean Sisters, as set up by Zebouni, are an apostolic congregation. That means that their lives not only involve prayer, but also ministry and works in the community.
The first mission of the Chaldean Sisters was to address the crisis of homeless Chaldean youth. In 1927, the Sisters founded an orphanage in Baghdad. Because of war and security issues, the orphanage was moved up north to several different Christian towns. Eventually, it settled in Alqosh, where the orphans and the sisters that care for them still reside today.
Sister Angela Morkos spent seven years caring for these orphans. In 2018, the congregation sent her to Detroit as the Novice Mistress to the American vocations, aiding young ladies in their discernment and forming those that have entered.
Becoming a Sister
The journey to becoming a Sister is long, beautiful, and arduous; its ultimate end is to become a bride of Christ and a gift to the world. It requires years of contemplation, discernment, and prayer. The first step involves discerning a vocation. The call to religious life is a direct one from God. Sister Angela experienced it firsthand when she joined the convent at the age of 14.
“When I was a little kid, I didn’t like to go to church,” Sister Angela said. “I was forced to go to church. My sister would wake me up and I would cry and tell her I don’t want to go.”
This attitude continued until her first communion. In order to receive it, she had to take daily classes. This catechism changed her life. “I felt different. I became close to Jesus. From then on, I started going to church everyday,” she said.
By the time she turned 14, Sister Angela felt God calling her to a vocation in religious life. She told her family how she felt, but was met with disapproval. Her mother wanted her to finish school, something she was good at, and felt the convent would stifle her growth and education opportunities.
“When your mom says no, you go to your dad,” Sister Angela said. That’s what she did. Her father held the same position as her mother, but she was persistent. Eventually, he told her she should go if she truly feels called, but Sister Angela wouldn’t go to the convent without her mother’s permission.
Sister Angela prayed to Mary. “My vocation is in your hands. Please help me convince my mother to let me join the convent.”
Not two days later, Sister Angela’s mother woke her up at 7 a.m. “Get up, let’s go to the convent,” her mother told her. Mary appeared to her mother in a dream, telling her to let her daughter follow her vocation.
“Thank God Mother Mary heard my prayers,” she said. Sister Angela was so excited she forgot to say goodbye to her family, who were all fast asleep. In any case, she never looked back.
Sister Angela’s case, however, is an exceptional one. Girls that feel called to the religious life nowadays go through a process of discernment which includes digging deeper in their relationship with God while meeting with a spiritual director and the Novice Mistress on a regular basis.
When a girl is accepted and moves into the formation house, she becomes a postulant. This period, which lasts about one year, is meant for her to discern whether she is truly called and if this life is right for her as she becomes acclimated to the convent life and schedule. After this phase, she becomes a novice and receives her habit, the unmistakable clothing the sisters wear, and her religious name. A sister stays a novice for about two years.
In general, the novitiate years are met with various challenges. “During the novitiate years, you’re stripped from the world,” said Sister Bernadette Setto, who finished her novitiate period last September when she made her first profession of vows. “In the novitiate years, you get your intellectual and spiritual formation. You grow in virtue, pluck out your vices, and grow in humility. It’s a time of going in the desert and fighting your old self.”
Sister Bernadette’s novitiate years were particularly difficult as she recreated her identity before God. “You don’t realize how imperfect and how wretched you are until God puts that mirror in front of you and you see all those spots you have,” she said. “I realized how attached I was to myself and my ideals, to the way I thought things should go. You have a perception of how things are and God crumbles that down.”
“With Mary to the Highest”
“Therefore if you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any common sharing in the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of others.”
— Philippians 2:1-4
This is the sisters’ motto. It references the profound significance of the highest virtue: Humility, the summit of their effort and spiritual journey.
“It takes humility to live obedience and to surrender our will,” Sister Bernadette said. “When we live out humility, it’s a perfect imitation of Jesus because he emptied himself taking the form of a slave.”
According to the sisters, God humbled himself so we might have abundant life. Humus, the Latin root of the word humility, means “grounded” or “from the earth.” Bringing Himself to the earth and rendering Himself in the flesh was ultimately a move toward humility. This virtue should motivate our own works.
When studying the lives of saints, Sister Bernadette said, the number one thing you’ll recognize among all of them, is the extent and depth of their humility. That’s the saints’ most important imitation of Jesus. Pride, the opposite of humility, was Eve’s original vice. In Mary’s Magnificat, she proclaims that God “has shown strength with his arm, he has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts, he has put down the mighty from their thrones, and exalted those of low degree.” Mary’s obedience at the Annunciation undid Eve’s disobedience at the Fall.
“God cannot dwell in prideful hearts,” Sister Angela concluded. “Only humble hearts can hear Him.” This hunger for humility and hatred of pride informs how the sisters live their unique lives. “People don’t want us,” Sister Bernadette said. “They want Jesus that’s living inside of me. They want something different than the world is offering.”
Sister Bernadette said she acquired a new identity during her formation. She learned how to grow in virtue and emphasize things like charity, selflessness, and sacrifice in her daily works. “Usually, our human nature is not inclined to goodness,” she said. “We’re inclined to rebelling, being selfish. When you go into the convent, that gets stripped away from you, and it hurts. Vices and personality defects that you have are uprooted.”
Living the Religious Life
Sister Bernadette describes their lives as living out the gospel radically. “We renounce everything,” she said. “Our family, our homes, luxurious things, pleasure. We leave everything for the sake of the gospel. To spread the gospel and make things known. Even our clothes are a witness that God is alive and he loves you … We’re trying to populate heaven and take as many people as we can with us.”
The outside world, including the Chaldean community, has a certain view of this way of life. The most common concern and misconception, the sisters agreed, is that they pray all day and girls think they’ll get bored. “Even Jesus didn’t pray all day,” Sister Angela commented.
“It comes down to people understanding what consecrated religious life is,” said Sister Immaculata Kassab, who made her first profession of vows at the same time as Sister Bernadette. “My parents’ generation, the image they have of sisters is what they saw in TelKaif or Baghdad, which is very different from what life is like now. Often, the support is very difficult and the encouragement is not there.”
Another common belief is that becoming a sister necessarily means you forgo an education. Sisters often receive a better education than they might have otherwise. This was the main concern of Sister Angela’s mother; now, however, she has a master’s degree in education. The reality is quite the opposite. Many of the sisters, including those living at the formation home are all furthering their education.
All other misconceptions tie into the idea that sisters give up their freedom. “Some people think that the convent is like prison,” Sister Immaculata said. She pushed back on this notion and offered a different view of freedom. “We’re so free in our vocation because our freedom comes from God,” she said. “To the world, obedience means you’re being oppressed. To us, there is complete freedom in obedience.”
The needs of the community in Detroit are very different from the needs in Baghdad or even San Diego. In Iraq, the sisters maintain the orphanage schools, and are quite involved in church ministry. In San Diego and Turlock, they have a retirement centers. Here, much of the sisters’ work involves ministry at the various Chaldean churches, especially among youth, as well as hosting talks and nights of reflection at their convent.
The sisters maintain there is a strong youth movement in the Chaldean church. “The teens that are coming to youth group are really on fire with the Lord,” Sister Immaculata said. “Seeds are being planted and God will do the watering.”
Young priests and sisters are working hard to minister to these teens and young adults because there is a need and these young people are hungry for something different than what the world is offering them. “The last 12 years has seen an influx in young men joining the seminary and young women joining religious life.”
Sister Bernadette’s experience with ministry has led her to believe that many Chaldean parents need to be evangelized themselves. “The parents are the first people that are supposed to proclaim the gospel to their children,” she said. “Perhaps the older generation may not realize that we were made for intimacy with God or perhaps they don’t know that God is a personal, relational, and loving God. They passed down what they were taught and the way they lived back home. Whatever the reason, it seems that the youth do not realize that the core of their identity is that of a child of God.”
The sisters’ final call was to try and let God into your life in all the activities you do, whether it’s piano, sports, or family life. “He’s the center of everything, the cornerstone of all that you do. God wants to be involved.”