Nun

A nun is a member of a religious community of women, typically one living under vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. She may have decided to dedicate her life to serving all other living beings, or she might be an ascetic who voluntarily chose to leave mainstream society and live her life in prayer and contemplation in a monastery or convent. The term “nun” is applicable to Catholics (eastern and western traditions), Orthodox Christians, Anglicans, Lutherans, Jains, Buddhists, Taoists, Hindus and some other religious traditions.

While in common usage the terms “nun” and “sister” are often used interchangeably (the same title of “Sister” for an individual member of both forms), they are considered different ways of life, with a “nun” being a religious woman who lives a contemplative and cloistered life of meditation and prayer for the salvation of others, while a “religious sister,” in religious institutes like Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity, lives an active vocation of both prayer and service, often to the needy, ill, poor, and uneducated.

A Catholic nun is a woman who has taken vows (the male equivalent is often called a monk or friar). A major traditional distinction between a nun and a religious sister is that nuns are members of enclosed religious orders and take solemn religious vows, through which they renounce all property, including inheritances, while sisters have “simple” vows, which allows them to inherit property. Also, as monastics, nuns commit themselves to the daily recitation of the Liturgy of the Hours throughout the day in church, usually in a solemn manner. As a result of this way of life, for those making this commitment, they are distinguished within the monastic community under the title of ‘choir nuns’, as opposed to lay sisters, who are entrusted with the upkeep of the monastery, or even running errands outside the cloister. This last task, though, is often entrusted to women, called ‘externs’, who live outside the enclosure proper. They do not belong to the order of the nuns and were usually either oblates or members of the associated Third Order, often wearing the standard woman’s attire of the period.

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Author: Wikipedia

Keywords: Nun, Monk, Monasticism, Monastic, Monastery, monkhood, solitary, asceticism, ascetic, Nunnery, Christian monasticism, Christian monastic, religious order, Desert Fathers, Hermit, Rule of Saint Benedict, St Benedict, Franciscan, Franciscan monk, St Francis, Francis, Saint Francis, Francis of Assisi, Eunuch

Bible reference(s): Luke 2:37, 1Co 7:1, 1 Co 7:32, 1 Corinthians 7:34, 1 Corinthians 7:38, 1 Timothy 4:3

Source: This article uses material from the Wikipedia article “Nun,” which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.

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