Amber Buchheit, a bride of Christ in her wedding gown, prepares for the Mass of her total consecration to Christ as a consecrated virgin in her home diocese of St. Louis. She is helped by attendants Loree Nauertz, the Diocese of Superior’s associate director of Evangelization and Missionary Discipleship, and Karen Bromeier. (Submitted photo)
Jenny Snarski
Catholic Herald Staff
Editor’s note: The U.S. Catholic Church celebrates National Vocations Week from Nov. 3-9.
Amber Buchheit, an emergency room nurse in Perryville, Missouri, first visited the Diocese of Superior as a Totus Tuus missionary in 2009. Little did she know Northwest Wisconsin would become a “home away from home.” She was even less aware of how the friendships established that summer would be instrumental to the discovery of her own vocation and in the celebration of her “yes” to Christ.
On Aug. 22, feast of the Queenship of Mary, at the Cathedral Basilica of St. Louis, Buchheit took, and was received by, Jesus Christ as her lifelong spouse. Dressed as any bride, Buchheit, 38, made a public vow of consecrated virginity during a Mass celebrated by Archbishop Mitchell Rozanski. She was accompanied by friends made in the Diocese of Superior, particularly Fr. Patrick McConnell and Fr. Adam Laski, whom she worked with in Totus Tuus, and people she met through St. Francis de Sales Parish in Spooner.
She first felt God’s call to total consecration while on pilgrimage in Europe at 16. Multiple friends of hers would go on to follow religious calls, but religious life in community never seemed like the right fit. Buchheit now sees the path of providence over many years and through close relationships of guidance, support, challenge and encouragement.
Buchheit actually learned about the vocation of consecrated virginity during a visit to the Superior Diocese for the priestly ordination of friend and former Totus Tuus teammate Fr. Adam Laski in 2015. After celebrating the first Mass at his home parish of Holy Trinity in Haugen, the two visited and talked about her continued discernment. She shared the struggle of her yearslong ride on the “discern-a-coaster,” but not willing to give up until she discerned Jesus’ specific and personal calling.
Laski mentioned another friend he knew of who had just become a consecrated virgin. It was then that Buchheit had what she called a “lightbulb moment of deep peace and clarity” and heard God calling her clearly to be a nurse and consecrated virgin.
Consecrated virginity is one of the oldest forms of dedication to Christ in the Catholic Church. With familiar saints as models, among them St. Cecilia, St. Catherine of Alexandria, St. Lucy, St. Agnes, St. Agatha and St. Philomena, they are women who responded to Christ’s invitation to give their bodies and hearts exclusively to him and spend their lives for others and the church.
Historically, religious orders grew out of these women coming to live in community with common charisms and missions of service. As the number of orders grew, women who felt called to consecrated life responded by joining any one of the wide variety of congregations and the form of secular consecrated virginity fell out of practice. As fruit of Vatican II’s call for the laity to participate ever more actively in the liturgy and life of the church, the Rite of the Order of Virgins was restored in 1970 for women living a life of consecration while remaining in the world.
Returning home, Buchheit’s conviction for consecrated virginity grew, and she immediately shared the revelation with her spiritual director, asking where to go from there. He gave her some other women to contact, one being Karen Bromeier. As Buchheit began her coursework to become a nurse, she connected with Bromeier and other women discerning consecration and would meet with them for prayer, friendship and formation.
“No one pushed,” Buchheit says of her experience. Reading, researching and praying her vocation “organically, naturally developed.” In 2021, she was invited to formally begin the diocesan application process and embark on the specific preparations for her consecration.
Buchheit explained that, unlike priestly formation with a formalized seminary structure, the formation period prior to consecration is very diocese specific. In the United States, the U.S. Association of Consecrated Virgins is a trusted resource, and she studied under a mentor “conversation-style” various documents, human and spiritual elements.
One of these is Pope St. John Paul II’s Apostolic Exhortation “Vita Consecrata,” promulgated in March 1996. Speaking of the Order of Virgins, he declared, “It is a source of joy and hope to witness in our time a new flowering of the ancient” vocation. He noted that “these women acquire a particular link with the church” through consecrated by their diocesan bishop and serve the church while still living in secular society. “Either alone or in association with others, they constitute a special eschatological image of the Heavenly Bride and of the life to come when the Church will at last fully live her love for Christ the Bridegroom.”
“I pray specifically daily for my bishop, for our clergy, for the people in my diocese,” Buchheit explained. While her consecration is total and lifelong, she is still a lay person. Her dedication to God is carried “in the midst of the world, bringing Christ into the every day.” Her vocation is very personal in this way, as consecrated virgins provide for their own economic needs through various jobs. Buchheit knows others who work in their home dioceses or parishes, others who are teachers, lawyers or work as medical professionals.
“What the consecrated virgin does in the world can be so, so different,” she said. “There’s a great freedom to be completely available to the Lord.” This aspect of the vocation also highlights the dignity of work. While many consecrated virgins do work in roles directly related to evangelization or church life, her nursing career allows her to care for souls without always including faith or religion.
“I have the freedom to serve wherever,” she added noting that she loves that during her night shifts, she can live her spiritual motherhood by quietly caring for the sick. When she realizes that a patient “is shortly going to see your spouse before you will,” Buchheit is conscious of the privilege to accompany someone in their dying hours.
During the Rite of Consecration, the bishop gives the consecrated virgin three symbols of her vocation: A veil signifying her virginity, a ring for the spousal element, and a breviary representing her maternal call to pray and serve the church.
If someone sees her ring and asks if she is married, Buchheit’s answer is an “easy ‘I am.’” It’s a sign and reminder that the Lord called, and she chose him from among all the choices she could make. Just like the sacrament of matrimony, “I chose the Lord, in love, for love and because of love,” Buchheit affirmed.
As a consecrated virgin, she has been “set aside as something sacred, an image of the spousal relationship between Christ and the church.
“The privilege consecrated virgins are given is to live here on earth what we all hope for one day in heaven,” she said, clarifying that it is a vocation for women only because of the spousal significance representing the church as Christ’s bride.
Her virginity goes beyond the physical aspect to include her whole person, to be “completely given over to the Lord” so that she can be more fervent in her love for Jesus and by extension of that to others. The Virgin Mary is a model and guide for these consecrated virgins, who now number in the thousands with about 300 of them here in the United States.
“A private vocation with a public witness,” Buchheit described her calling. One that is a testimony to lasting things and spiritual realities that can make “the world lose their collective mind, flying in the face of what the world says is necessary to be happy and successful.”
To those she sees struggling to discern, afraid of making a mistake or wrong decision, Buchheit reminds, “We are made to love. We all want to be known and loved, but we are made to know, love and serve God.” She added that knowing oneself is critically important and not something we can do well on our own without guidance and accompaniment.
“I’m created to belong to someone other than myself,” she said, adding that we are all called to commit our lives to love and service in some way and form. “We have to surrender ourselves to be open to receive what God wants to give.”
Writer’s note: For anyone interested in learning more about the vocation to consecrated virginity, contact your diocesan Vocations Office or Office of Consecrated Life, or visit www.consecratedvirgins.org for more information and resources.
