Malta’s only prospective nun was “disgusted” at the thought of a cloistered existence when she felt a calling to a religious life in her early 20s.

Now, at 36, Roberta Huber has joined St Margaret’s Monastery in Cospicua as a postulant nun. And beaming from ear to ear, the bubbly former IT programmer is the happiest and most fulfilled she has ever been.

“When I was younger, I used to observe nuns and think theirs was a terrible choice. I was repelled by the idea,” Huber says from behind a grille.

But today, her excitement to embark on this “adventure” is palpable. Even though she is moving from a web-designer world to restricted internet access and will never tick off her bucket list a trip to the US, or see the sea again, Huber feels “really free”.

She may be speaking from behind bars – the Teresian community of eight nuns leads a traditional cloistered life – but she does not feel imprisoned as, she acknowledges, others may believe, having shed the shackles of material needs and ego.

Huber understands people could find all this incomprehensible; and think she is ‘wasting her life’ when she could be putting her skills to a worthier cause, rather than confining herself; and possibly escaping her problems.

Her life choice may seem “odd” given the “many opportunities and distractions out there, so much media to consume, so much more to detach from nowadays, easy travel…

“But my vocation was not something I conjured up myself… It was a ray of light.”

‘I was actually praying for a boyfriend’

From a young age, Huber stopped going to Mass and receiving the sacraments. Then, in her 20s, because she felt so “uncomfortable” in life, she decided to “give God a try”.

Always uneasy, she felt awkward about everything, she admits. “I felt something was not right.”

In hindsight, she already knew God existed. “I felt I was talking to someone and not an imaginary friend when I asked him to give me a sign.” That sign came, and Huber “fell in love” with God, describing it as “amazing”. She started attending prayer groups and took it seriously.

But while she was getting closer to what she wanted, she still could not find a community she really belonged to.

“In that moment, as I was praying before the Blessed Sacrament, I understood that God was calling me for a religious life. How did that happen? I just understood it.”

Huber was happy and excited, but she was also shocked. “I did not like the idea at all. I thought it was terrible”, she admits.

You have to be here for the right reasons; otherwise, you will make everyone miserable- Roberta Huber

Huber had a boyfriend at the time, and she resisted the calling. Eventually, they broke up and she started praying for another. “I was actually praying for a boyfriend, but it seemed it was not God’s will, so I got upset and abandoned everything again.”

Things just went from bad to worse after that: “I knew it was something I would keep feeling. The thought did not go away. “This was an invitation. It is my path to my final destination. Anything outside that would make my life doubly hard and, in fact, it was doubly hard. Things that seemed so easy for others were much harder for me.

“I knew it was the right thing to do, but I was not happy with the idea at all.”

Burying the thought, Huber worked with an investment management company… until again, she started to seek something she could not put her finger on. “At 30, something was still missing. What it was, I had absolutely no idea.” So, Huber decided to move to Poland for a couple of months to figure out what to do with her life.

The next step was a boot camp computer programming course “because I like problem solving” – and she really enjoyed it. She found a job as a web developer with a video game company in the Czech Republic for over two years. But although she had just started a career in programming and loved the job, she still felt incomplete, and the anxiety persisted. “Four years older, life was still the same, so I decided to surrender myself to God.”

It was a short process. Huber stopped going out and meeting people. She was working from home and her life was about prayer. “This was it! I had prayed for a couple of months about it, and I felt it was the right and most obvious thing to do.”

Confident about her decision, Huber resigned her job. But still resisting the cloister idea, she got in touch with the Dominican Sisters, with a plan to “start lightly”. She was invited to the UK for three months and the idea kept maturing to the point that she felt a need for more silence, more prayer and more time with God.

Huber got in touch with St Margaret’s community almost a year ago, spending the first three months visiting every weekend until she entered officially as a postulant in February. It will take her eight years for her solemn profession, with the first five being temporary vows, and the rest, her novitiate.

From now on, she will only go outdoors for health reasons and anyone visiting will do so from behind iron bars, she says matter-of-factly.

One of four siblings, everyone has supported her, and her parents were “very happy” about her decision.

Huber is the youngest of her new family. Madre Paulina Xuereb is 58 and the next nun is in her 70s. The oldest is 96; one is in a wheelchair and another blind. But Huber does not feel the age gap, she says as she points out that one sister has watched the grand total of three films in her life. The young nun feels her own presence among the community has brought hope and joy. “They can pass on the life.”

St Margaret’s Monastery went from 21 nuns down to nine in the last 50 years, and vocations are on a sharp decline in Malta’s five cloistered communities.

Huber, however, never really gave much thought to the fact that she is the only woman to choose this path. “I suppose it is exciting for me. It feels like God is up to something; that he is leading us into a new season; some new age.” Neither does she have any specific project to entice others through her own enlightening experience.

“We are open to guiding, helping and putting in a good word. We do not shut the doors as opportunities arise. But our vocation is about prayer, and we must preserve time for that.

“The cloistered life is also important because the less distractions and the more silence, the more open you are to God.

“I am not keeping my schedule busy with appointments. We are here for that interior solitude, alone with God and no other thoughts.”

But if she had to send a message to the girl she was in her 20s, engulfed in turmoil and holding back, what would she say?

“Trust God. Take the leap. It is exciting,” Huber says about a life of intense prayer, and about loving God. “If you do his will, even in the smallest of ways, you will be a channel of grace for the rest of the world,” she says about her role. “This is an adventure – experiencing heavenly joy. You are spending your time with the source of life. Can you be doing anything greater than that?”

Finding freedom

Huber will miss the sea but prays for those enjoying their summer and the views she will never set eyes on.

In the outside world, the young woman was obsessed with make-up and loved perfume. But giving up brands – and her favourite fragrance, Viva Voce by Valentino, starring Lady Gaga – has been so liberating.

“I did not find it that easy to shed them. But while I was discerning a vocation, this was the first thing the spirit led me to do. I started wearing different clothes and I stopped using perfume. That is the spirit of God working.”

Huber also stopped looking in the mirror as much, and realises it was in preparation for her time in the convent.

“There aren’t many mirrors here; just one in the elevator and I have my own small one,” she giggles, admitting she did check it before the interview “to see if I had any aerials sticking out of my head”.

On the topic of chastity, Huber says this is a grace. It could sound like nonsense to others, she admits. But Christ says: ‘Let anyone accept this who can.’

“We are called to be intimate with God,” she continues, adding it is hard to explain, and that the physical aspect just does not enter the picture.

“I had a boyfriend at the time and recall saying to myself that I seemed to love this guy like a mother and that I really wanted to love everybody else like that too. I did not feel like I want to be fully committed to one person.

“Later, it occurred to me that I wanted to be a spiritual mother really. These things are buried in the soul and find ways to manifest themselves.”

For Huber, the biggest sacrifice of cloistered life is living in a community, which means having to sacrifice your ego.

“It is all about purging yourself of your ego and filling up that space with God… I lived a very independent life, doing things my way; what I wanted, how I wanted,” she says. “Now, I’m in the process of learning to surrender my ego and sacrifice my will. When you are free from your ego, that is true freedom. I feel really free.”

People question whether being a cloistered nun is a form of escape from the big, bad, outside world. But Huber insists that “unless it is your vocation, you would not survive it in here”.

She was psychologically screened before entering. “They check for this kind of thing,” she points out. “You have to be here for the right reasons; otherwise, you will make everyone miserable. It has to be genuine. It is really about picking up your Cross every day.”

About facing the outside world, Huber believes people need to discover God, insisting they need him, whether they resist it or not. “In so doing, you will start to find him more interesting than anything else, including the self.”

Huber has a different perspective on life: “It is not about this one, but about eternity.” For others, again, this may be nonsense, but for her, being in communication with God is “so real – even more real than anything out there, which will just fade away”.