TO GET TO KNOW
Mother Frances Streitel
FOUNDRESS OF THE SISTERS OF THE SORROWFUL MOTHER
of the Third Order Regular of St. Francis of Assisi
The call
“August 1862: Büchold call to the convent”
In a notebook, Mother Frances writes: "August 1862: Büchold call to the convent". Büchold is a German town in Lower Franconia, in the district of Arnstein. We do not know what happened at that time, we do not know any details about the place, nor why she was there. Later, in September 1881, writing to Bishop Pankratius von Dinkel, Mother Frances recalls the experience of her first call as follows: "At the age of 17, I was called in a particular way to religious life".
Another detail emerges from an exchange of letters with her spiritual guide, Fr. Jordan, to whom she writes about her calling, noting: "the call I heard fifteen years earlier said: ‘You will die as a Poor Clare’. It is in this context that she also recalls the resistance that her desire to enter the convent aroused in her family:
“… my parents, after a hard trial of four years, gave me permission to enter a religious order, but at the same time they made me promise that I would not enter an austere order, nor one dedicated to caring for the sick. My so pious parents, who belonged to the class of state employees, attached too much importance to secondary things and had no idea to what a grave sacrifice they condemned me to with their restrictive measures”.
