Victoria Westover’s Final Vows takes you behind the habits and into the daily lives of nuns of the Cistercian order. With their Abbey in Santa Rita, Arizona, in the middle of the high desert, this film offers viewers a fascinating glimpse into the reasons these women have joined this way of life, as well as the rituals and industry required to keep the convent alive.
If you thought that nuns merely eat, sleep, and pray, then you’d be wrong, as most who serve in the Cistercian order had lives before choosing to devote themselves to the Lord’s work. The sisters maintain everything. From maintenance of and around the Abbey, to working together to supply other churches with communal wafers in order to pay the bills, to preparing meals, to maintaining the mental and physical health of those who have taken the vows, the Santa Rita monastery is a hive of activity.
Besides the menial side of their operation, the order’s location promotes a great deal of reflection and introspection as the sisters endeavor to become closer to God and the true nature of the divine existing in all life by attempting to dwell harmoniously together as a community and offer services and spiritual guidance to all who seek it.
“…behind the habits and into the daily lives of nuns of the Cistercian order.”
Final Vows then shows us the challenges each sister faced in entering the faith, sacrificing all earthly goods and desires in favor of an existence free of distraction, coupled with the temptations of the outside world. Hearing from members old and new, there is a unique insight into how broken women who life has dealt cold cards find solace and sanctuary in what the nuns refer to as “the call”.
In equal measure, we experience daily prayers, organizational meetings, and the development of new members whilst hearing testimony from veterans approaching old age. However, the serenity of the Abbey is not devoid of conflict, albeit taken tamely and never escalating. We hear from a newly welcomed sister who endured personal conflict as she went through the order’s screening process. The Abbey’s long-serving prioress is reaching her late seventies and contemplating whether she wishes to remain in the position. All this plus the outside threat of a massive copper mine seeking to open in the mountains, not five miles from the convent’s location.
These elements, the characters, the ceremony of solace, the devotion, and spiritual enlightenment, make Final Vows a compelling portrait of women, either called or compelled to surrender their individuality to the service of something greater. Surrendering all the material and sociological distractions that plague the civilized world, here in the desert’s sterility, the order of the Santa Rita Abbey prays and hopes that all shall be well. Regardless of the trials or the obstacles they encounter, the sisters have the strength of unity and take comfort in the blessings of the holy spirit to see them through until their time on this earth is done.
"…fascinating...compelling..."
