Freedom was a topic discussed often in the classes I was given by an older sister, who usually focused her teaching around one particular line from the Rule of Saint Augustine: The Lord grant that you may observe all these precepts in a spirit of charity … not as slaves living under the law but as free women under grace. “Free women under grace,” she would say, tapping her copy of the Rule. “Not little girls under mindless submission. It’s not real obedience unless it’s free obedience.”

As she said this, my mind would wander back to the sight of those Good Friday prostrations, to those identical but unique acts of love which had first sparked my desire for convent life. I’d known then that I wanted to be like those sisters. But now that I was inside the convent, preparing first to receive the habit and later to profess vows, I was increasingly unsure how I could get to that point from where I was now. How on earth had those sisters become free women under grace when they were living the same life with which I was slowly, painfully familiarizing myself: a life of rules, restrictions, strict parameters, and – I simply couldn’t let this go – so few choices?

Lying face down on the stone-cold floor was the first step to freedom.