SCRANTON, Pa.—If you get a knock on your door tonight, it might not be the paperboy or the Jehovah's witnesses.

The Parish Visitors of Mary Immaculate, a religious order of nuns based in Monroe, N.Y., have been knocking on doors for more than 75 years.

They say they have been delivering the same message Pope John Paul II will send to the world when he knocks on the Jubilee door of the newly restored St. Peter's Basilica this December: Open wide the door to Christ.

“We go out looking especially for the ones who are away from the Church, those the Church can't meet in any other way. We show that we care about them, that we are missing them,” said Parish Visitor Sister Carole Marie Troskowski, the order's General Superior.

“We just knock and say we are coming on behalf of their parish priest, that he is concerned about the spiritual welfare of the people. Then we try to get into a conversation and show an interest in them. We just converse. We might see a guitar lying on the floor or a picture of children. It's amazing what people will disclose to you,” Sister Carole Marie said.

“And we always come back. This surprises many people. We come back and we visit many times. We offer them informal instruction in their faith, but we only give them what they can take initially. If by God's grace they have the courage to want to see a priest for confession or to rectify their marriage, we direct them. If someone has left the Church because of a bad experience they once had with someone in the Church, we never take sides. We tell them everyone is human. A lot of times, though, people will use this as an excuse to stay away,” Sister Carole Marie said.

Parish Visitor Sister Mary Gemma, who made her final vows in 1963, has knocked on a lot of doors in her day. Now serving as treasurer for the order, she told the Register that she was drawn to the Parish Visitors as a young girl when a member stopped by her family's house one day for a visit.

“I saw their work and I learned a little about their prayer life and their apostolate. I liked both. I was attracted to their hour of adoration before the Blessed Sacrament and to the person-to-person contact you have in doing door-to-door work,” Sister Mary Gemma said.

Today, the sisters have a total 68 members in the United States and Nigeria, including 16 new vocations at various stages in their formation.

“It's a wonderful work because you meet so many different kinds of people. A few slam the door in your face, but not most. Most will listen and hear you out. I've found that most people have an inner desire for God, even the ones that are not practicing their faith,” sister Gemma added.

“Many times we hear things that you might hear in confession and in some of these cases I ask them to repeat it to a priest. Some think their sin is so bad that they can't step inside a church. When you hear some of the things they are doing, you just take it like another piece of information and try to leave yourself open to talk about it later in the conversation,” she said.

Both Sister Gemma and Sister Carole Marie agreed that being a Parish Visitor doesn't require an outgoing personality. “It's a strange phenomena that you can be shy and still have a vocation to our order,” Sister Carole Marie said. “A number of our sisters are shy by temperament, but they love the person-to-person apostolate. Sister Carole Marie said the same is true for the lay missionaries her order trains to do parish missions on their own. “Its amazing how these people blossom when they witness to the Lord and to their Catholic faith,” she said.

Sister Carole Marie provided the Register with a brochure which described the life of piety lived by the Parish Visitors. “Our life of prayer includes Holy Mass in community; Morning and Evening Prayer of the Divine Office together; a daily Hour of Eucharistic Adoration; a half hour of meditation; Rosary; Scripture reading and other spiritual reading; and that spirit of prayerfulness throughout … called recollection.”

Why all the prayer when the nuns have such an active mission? Sister Carole Marie explained that the order's life of ordered contemplation is the “soul” of its apostolate.

“Our first commitment is a life of prayer that aims at a real contemplative union with the Lord. ‘Contemplation first because God is first,’”Sister Carole Marie said, quoting a favorite phrase of the order's foundress, Mother Mary Teresa Tallon.

This commitment to contemplative prayer as the center of an active apostolate has not gone unnoticed by major figures in the Church today.

“I think they are a marvelous community,” said Franciscan Friar of the Renewal Father Benedict Groeschel. “They've kept their religious spirit beautifully. They are one of the few communities that weathered the storm of the post-conciliar period well. And they did it by keeping a unified apostolate, a realistic and honest observance of their vows, and their habit. It's surprising to me that the other orders don't learn how essential these things are. The Parish Visitors are a ship afloat in a stormy sea. And anybody who does-n't know what I'm talking about is crazy,” Father Groeschel said

Parish Visitor Sister Marie Clare, 33, also spoke of the importance of contemplation for her work. “Without that prayer we couldn't do the job. We have to go to the Chapel first and ask Our Lord and his mother to help us because it is the Lord's work we are doing,” Sister Marie Clare said, adding, it's the Holy Spirit that converts the people, but the Lord wants to use us as his instrument. You know, It's not easy for somebody to just get up and knock on a stranger's door. The only weapon we have is prayer. That's how we get our strength.”

In a letter to the Parish Visitors, New York's John Cardinal O'Connor said God is able to make house-calls because the Parish Visitors take Him with them on their visits. “They take him to those who have never really known him as he wants to be known or who, having once been his close friends, have for whatever reason become virtual strangers. The Good News is a Person, the Lord Jesus Christ. The Parish Visitor Sisters make it possible for him to go where he just might never make it otherwise,” Cardinal O'Connor wrote.

The Parish Visitors celebrated their seventy-fifth anniversary in 1995. Sister Marie Clare said that she is making efforts to see that their foundress, mother Mary Tallon is beatified.