DATE: Wednesday, September 3, 1997          TAG: 9709030443

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B12  EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS 

DATELINE: CROZET                            LENGTH:   62 lines

NUNS FIND SILENCE, LOVE IN VIRGINIA'S MOUNTAINS

In the C.S. Lewis novel ``The Voyage of the Dawn Treader,'' Aslan the lion peels off crusty layers of dragon skin from Eustace.

``That's a wonderful picture of what life is supposed to do as we get down to our core person,'' says Sister Barbara, a nun at Our Lady of the Angels Monastery in Crozet.

``It's in our inner core that we're united to God and relate to each other in love. That's why we're here, not to make cheese and sing.''

Learning to love, Sister Barbara says, can happen in any life that is ``lived rightly.''

These nine women have chosen to do it on 507 acres of fields and woods on the east side of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

Our Lady is a young community. In 1987, six nuns came from their ``mother house'' - Mount St. Mary's Abbey in Wrentham, Mass. - to live in two cabins. They moved into a brick house when it was completed in March 1989.

The sisters belong to the Order of the Cistercians of the Strict Observance, known as Trappists. The order was founded in France in 1098.

Trappist monasteries can be found on every continent and in almost every country. There are 12 Cistercian abbeys in the United States.

Trappists follow the Rule of St. Benedict, which can be summed up in the injunction, ``Let the Sisters prefer nothing whatever to the love of Christ.'' Their constitution says: ``Our way of life is consecration to God, expressed in union among the Sisters, in solitude and silence, in prayer, work, and a disciplined life. By a hidden apostolic fruitfulness, this monastic life contributes to the growth of the whole Church.''

The sisters spend about 4 1/2 hours a day in church and 2 1/2 hours in private prayer and study. They work about five hours a day.

Part of the Cistercian tradition is to support themselves through manual labor. The nuns make and market Monastery Country Cheese.

The nuns maintain the property around the house. A neighboring farmer uses most of the fields for grazing and crops in return for keeping the fences mended and the grass cut.

All work is done quietly. The ``Great Silence'' is observed from 7 p.m. to 8:30 a.m.

``We are silent pretty much all day, unless there's a need,'' Sister Barbara says. ``We don't chatter as we go about the day.''

When most people are sound asleep, the sisters are rising at 3 a.m. to pray and study.

``The phones aren't ringing; the world is quiet,'' Sister Barbara says. ``It's not just a verbal silence, but an interior silence. Those hours are precious.''

Sister Kay is the librarian. She says there are close to 10,000 books in the library, visible through the floor-to-ceiling windows that encircle the courtyard.

``With that many books to do, I have some job security for the next few years,'' she says.

``Reading is important - it nourishes our prayer,'' says Sister Claire. ``We feed on the Word and the works of the fathers.''

The loneliness that is inevitable when a woman first enters the monastery usually turns them to the life of prayer they seek.

But, says Sister Claire, ``there are many ways of escape. It makes you see your own poverty - you see yourself and God.''

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