The place where infants nod off and teens open up is also where
road-weary adults will probe their spirituality: in the car.
That’s the secret behind a new religious community, the Little
Poor Friars and Poor Nuns of Jesus and Mary, who dress and live like St.
Francis of Assisi: in poverty, entirely dependent on God’s providence. They
were founded in 1999 by a 25-year-old Sicilian and approved by the Catholic
Church in 2014.
They are a throwback order, offering something that feels like
the original to young adults wary of cheap imitations. Thirty-some Catholics
already have joined, fulfilling a bold mission: to make like the apostles and
spread the Good News. So they stand at the edge of a highway in their
khaki-colored habits – garb that resembles sack cloth – with Bibles on their
backs and sandals on their feet. The women are in veils, the men wear their St.
Francis hairstyles shaved into a crown and they stick out their thumbs.
Evangelization by hitchhiking.
Sister Effata was 24 when she set out hitchhiking for the first
time as a Little Nun, intending to travel with two friars from Sicily to
France, their community’s new home. She stepped outside and promptly asked:
“OK, do we have to go to the right or the left?”
Surrendering to the unknown thrilled her. “I had that radical
call in my heart,” she said. “I wanted to be all in.”
Born Mirijam, the young German chose the Hebrew name Effata as
her religious name because it means “be open.”
To hitchhike as a Little Nun was to embrace the open road, she
felt, to be born of the Spirit, like the wind: “you do not know where it comes
from or where it goes” (Jn 3:8).
“It’s an experience of letting yourself be guided by the Holy
Spirit,” Sister Effata said. “It’s amazing to have that freedom, to go in the
direction of the highway, stand there and stick out your thumb and wait till
someone stops and can give you a ride to the next town.”
One morning during her first hitchhike, Sister Effata had a
premonition that she would meet someone who had attempted suicide. This was
close to her heart: as a teen, she had plunged into anorexia and depression and
attempted suicide before finding God.
Sure enough, the trio soon encountered a young woman who had
tried to take her life the day before. Her name was Miriam.
“God works mysteriously,” Sister Effata said. “When we pay
attention, we can catch those moments when we can really touch people’s
hearts.”
Now 37 and working toward a master’s of theology from the Notre
Dame Seminary in New Orleans, Sister Effata has spent thousands of days
hitchhiking. “People will bring up their most profound struggles. When we enter
their car and say, ‘Peace to this car and peace to all who enter it,’ sometimes
people will respond, ‘I need some peace.’ It can happen quickly. They get
emotional or share a struggle.”
In turn, Sister Effata has learned to accept the invitation of
strangers to join them for a warm meal and to sleep on the couch. “I have seen
how God’s providence works through people. God takes care of us all, like the
birds of the sky.
“There is so much evil in the world, but when we hitchhike, we
meet so much goodness. You have to dig for it. You have to make a sacrifice to
reach it. It’s why we need to evangelize: to bring that good forth, to make it
shine.”
Capecchi is a freelance writer from Inver Grove
Heights, Minn., and the editor of SisterStory.org.