On February 2, 2026, Angie Hollar became Sr. Angela Jonah as she officially entered the Redwoods community as a novice. Sr. Angela Jonah has lived at Redwoods as a postulant for over a year and is already a valued and much beloved member of our community. Please join us in welcoming her and thanking God for the gift of her vocation.
On January 7, 2025, with a stomach full of butterflies and a photo of my cat in my pocket, I entered the community as a postulant. This happy and momentous day arrived 13 years after my initial visit to Redwoods. In the fall of 2012, during my first year in the Master of Divinity program at the Jesuit School of Theology of Santa Clara University, two friends and I made the journey north for a Monastic Experience Weekend. As an only child from northern Indiana, I remember feeling absolutely giddy at the thought of a weekend of silence, stillness and lush wilderness after my first few months adjusting to living in an intentional community in the Bay Area. While delighting in the luxury of reading a novel under a canopy of redwoods, I had no idea that these days of respite were actually laying the groundwork for a new path of vocational discernment.
In addition to leaving with newfound appreciation for miso salad dressing and homemade muesli, I drove away feeling—in some vague way—that the place and the beautiful people committed to manifesting God’s love there would remain important to me throughout my life. And I wasn’t wrong! It is so tender and moving for me to look over the arc of my life since my first visit, when my monastic inclinations and contemplative spirit were first aroused yet totally nascent, and see how all the threads of my life wove together to lead me back to Redwoods.
I write this from my vantage point as a very mature (I write with a laugh!) novice. I have been a member of this community for a little over 15 months. On February 2, 2026, the day after our Sr. Veronique passed away, the community enveloped me in love and prayer and formally welcomed me into the Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance. At this ritual I received a cape and a habit, and I took a new name. Once known as Angie, I am now Angela Jonah. The inclusion of the name Jonah is an homage to both the prophet, my frère de cœur, and my love of Merton’s The Sign of Jonas.
The graces continue to emerge and unfold in totally surprising ways. This life is surely ordinary, obscure and laborious, but it is truly never dull. Deo Gratias!
Sr. Angela Jonah, OCSO
