The Benedictines of Mary may be one of the most unlikely success stories in the recording industry. Their third album on the De Montfort Music/Decca label, Lent at Ephesus, recently debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard classical chart. These 22 Sisters live a monastic life on a secluded farm in rural Missouri, and most are not aware of how successful their albums have been in the secular world.
What, exactly, makes the Sisters' music so popular? They do not have classically-trained voices, although the nuns sing together eight times a day as part of their schedule of Vespers and Divine Office. The music on their albums is selected from this sacred music they sing together daily.
Mother Cecilia, prioress of the Benedictines of Mary, leads the Sisters in song, acts as arranger and has co-written original compositions for their albums.
These are musical duties that she is well-qualified to perform. Before she became a nun, Mother Cecilia played the French horn in the Columbus Symphony Orchestra. She grew up as Martina Snell in a musical family, and studied music at the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University in Houston.
Snell played professionally with the Ohio orchestra for three years before making the decision to enter religious life, to the great surprise of her peers in the classical music industry.
"I know people were thinking, 'What is she thinking? She is crazy. She is throwing her life away. She is throwing her talents away,'" Mother Cecilia recently told the AP's Heather Hollingsworth. "But that is not how God works. He takes that offering seriously and he can multiply it 100-fold, which seems to be what he is doing. It is all his plans, his providence."
When she became a nun, she took the name of Cecilia, patron saint of music. Mother Cecilia may have abandoned her career in orchestral music, but she found another calling in sacred music, which seems to be working out miraculously well, both for her and for the Benedictines of Mary.
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