HOPE in LIFE

A week ago today I was scurrying around preparing to leave on a 15 hour bus ride with 20 members of my parish to participate in the 36th annual March for Life. I took a break in the packing action to make my weekly visits to the grade school. I decided to introduce them to the idea of the right to life with a little help from my friend, Dr. Seuss. I read them “Horton Hears a Who” which draws on the line “A person’s a person, no matter how small.” I told them that shortly after leaving their class, I would be going to Washington, D.C. to help make sure that the people who work there, especially our new president, knew that “A person’s a person no matter how small.” Those little ones got it, they believed it, and they couldn’t understand how anyone would question what Dr. Seuss says so plainly. One of them even suggested we send the book to our elected officials. Dr. Seuss aside, one would think that God’s word would weigh a little heavier and if that isn’t good enough, natural law stands well on its own, too.

Since November’s election results didn’t bode well for life, I knew that being in D.C. for this year’s March was particularly important, and when I arrived, my heart was filled with hope. FOCA may be looming its ugly head, President Obama may have reversed the Mexico City policy, but despite all of this, there is hope! There is hope in the nearly 300,000 mostly young people who swarmed the capital for the March to take a stand. There is hope in the thousands of seminarians who are preparing to preach the Gospel of Life and the priests and bishops already ordained who are faithfully proclaiming the dignity of every human person. There is hope in the young children on their parent’s shoulders, in strollers or baby backpacks who are being raised to value life from a young age. (Even the Pepsi advertisement I saw in the metro station reminded me of hope...not sure if their hope is the same as mine.)

The group our parish traveled with was part of the “Life Really Matters” pilgrimage of 18 bus loads, 14 floors of hotel rooms and almost 1000 people. Being a part of this group was a powerful reminder that no one walks alone in the Pro-Life movement. The youth that I brought were connected with so many others from our area who share their values and even I saw plenty of old friends and acquaintances from all over the country. (We ended up marching right next to a group of priests and seminarians from my home state of Rhode Island.) If all of us gathered there, and the many who supported us in prayer and sacrifice, continue to persevere in standing up for life and keeping our hope in Christ, then, as Pope John Paul II wrote in his encyclical Evangelium Vitae, “Life will be victorious!”

- submitted by Sr. M. Karolyn

Making His Merciful Love Visible in the Classroom

Catholic Schools Week is well underway. A time to celebrate the amazing gift of the formation in the faith that students receive in Catholic Schools across the United States. It's also a time when it brings to my mind a strong reflection on the Providence of God in our American Province, Saint Elizabeth.

Our community's first solid apostolic work in the United States was health care. Saint Anthony's Hospital and the Mother of Good Counsel Home were, for many years, our sole apostolates. We had a few Sisters involved in education through the 1960's and '70's, but it was not until the early 1980's that God saw fit to expand our apostolic work in education.

Many schools at the parish and diocesan level were in need of religious. Mother M. Ingeborg discerned that it was time to train Sisters specifically for education. Nearly thirty years later, approximately one third of the Sisters in our Province serve in education. We work at all levels, from daycare to university.
We serve in parish, diocesan or private schools. Unlike many communities, we do not have "our own schools;" we serve the needs of the Church in her educational mission through schools that have already been established. Always a minority on the staff, we show forth the merciful love of Christ through our service as administrators, teachers, professors and aides. I remember one priest said to Mother, early on, "I don't necessarily need a Sister to teach. If she could just come and be in the school."


Recently, Archbishop Naumann specifically reflected on what we do as Sisters in the schools. In his column, he wrote about the various religious communities in the Archdiocese. About our Sisters, he wrote:

"While it is true that others could have been hired to teach the math, Spanish or even theology classes taught by the Sisters, no one else could give the students at St. James Academy the powerful witness of complete trust in Jesus and his Gospel that is the fruit of the radical faith of consecrated religious women."

It is His merciful love that we make visible in our service...then we teach.

---submitted by Sister M. Luka, Kansas City, KS

Contemplating the Apostolic Work of a Superior

On January 18th, Saint Francis Convent witnessed a gathering which takes place early each year. The superiors and Sisters-in-Charge all come together for a time of reflection, prayer and discussion, to strengthen and support them in their apostolic service to our Sisters.

So often in thinking about the vow of obedience, we think in terms of the subject, "the one who obeys" and the responsibility and privilege of giving our lives to God through the full dedication of our wills. But there is always the one who is called to mediate that mystery. In order to make obedience concrete and real, we have to have a face and a voice to obey.

It is an awesome responsibility and one that no human being can do perfectly. To wield spiritual authority, to have the obligation to provide an example to others of exemplary service, to exercise patience, mildness, and also to ensure the careful keeping of the Rule, to accompany the Sisters in their quest to serve Christ, to challenge them and to comfort them - who can do all of this without fault?

And yet, God, who is all-wise, has chosen this way for us to bring our will to Him, by subordinating it to His chosen instrument.

How much does he trust us! Not only the superiors He chooses, but the ones who desire to obey. He desires us to come to holiness through human instruments.

And He makes it work. Through the full dedication of our wills through the sacrifice of obedience, we come to holiness, to a fulfillment of our deepest longing and to a profound happiness.

It is indeed a mystery.

--submitted by Sister M. Luka, Kansas City, KS.

Obedience Works Miracles

Over the past couple of weeks, I have had a number of occasions to ponder our vow of obedience and how it is lived out in the day to day of my life. Last week at St. James Academy, where our Sisters serve, we celebrated vocation awareness week with Sisters, Brothers and priests from a variety of religious communities and the diocesan priesthood. It was a time for our students to ask questions about our life - and, as they feel most comfortable grilling their teachers, extorting our vocation stories from each of us. (It's also a great excuse to avoid a lecture on polynomials.)

And so in the process of all of that, I had the opportunity to tell the stories that mean so much in a religious life: how God calls initially, and the excitement and uncertainty of that initial call, and the ways in which His call grows as we respond.

I was a 'baptized pagan' living in Northern California, and a junior in high school, when I picked up a Catholic Digest and discovered that "they advertise for nuns!?!?" I had no clue that God was calling me to the life, but I wrote to about twenty communities just to ask questions. All but one responded that I was far too young to think about entering. (Just for the record, I had no idea of thinking about entering. I was just fascinated by the idea: "nun.") But a Sister in our community wrote back and answered my questions, and was so nice to continue the correspondence. After eighteen months, I was hooked, came for a visit, and never looked back.



Something about that guy.

And then, how obedience shapes the call. I am a math teacher today because a Bishop in Nebraska needed a math teacher in his diocesan high school. Although I was studying history at the time, my superiors had a lot of faith that I could do it (more than I did, actually) and I've been doing it - and loving it - for seventeen years.

We have a saying in our community that "Obedience Works Miracles." I have found in my life that it is entirely true. By handing our lives over to God, we receive the grace and strength and even a bit of added talent (Me, do Math?) to fulfill His will and work out His plan. Sometimes it seems a bit strange - His thoughts are not ours - but, in the end, it all works.



That's not to say that there is no challenge, no difficulty. Tomorrow, we celebrate the feast of Saint Agnes, one of the patrons of our congregation. She lived and died for Christ, following His will in the darkness of persecution and danger. And she is one of the fairest saints of the year.

May God bless you as you discern His will in the coming weeks.

--submitted by Sister M. Luka, Kansas City, KS

"Little Mary"

Sister Mariela
Age: 21 years old
From: Kansas City, Kansas

It's been four months since Reception when we received our habit, veil and new name. Now being a canonical novice, being gifted with a year of working at the convent and spending much prayer time getting to know the Lord in a much deeper way and learning many things about myself. It's truly a blessing to get to write about His outpouring of grace in my life.

On August 15th, the day of Reception, I took the name Sr. Mariela. Mariela means "little Mary" in Italian. When praying about the name I would take, the Lord kept leading me to the Visitation, the joyful mystery in which Mary visits her cousin Elizabeth. I continued to see traces of teh Visitation in my life, experiences of great joy given by Jesus Christ, through relationships, prayer, and yes-es to visits from the Lord. It's a great privilege to take my name after the Mother of God, and like Mary's, I want my soul to echo "my soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord, my spirit rejoices in God my Savior."

In class, as novices we have begun studying the vows we will take as a religious sister: poverty, chastity and obedience. As we have begun to study the first vow, that of consecrated chastity, Mary's perfect and total gift of self serves as an incomparable example for living a life of complete surrender and self offering to God. The Vatican II Document Evangelica Testificatio states that "when it is truly lived for the sake of the Kingdom of heaven, consecrated chastity frees man's heart and thus becomes a 'sign and stimulus of charity as well as a special source of spiritual fruitfulness in the world.'" Whether called to religious chastity or not, all are created to live chastely, giving all to God as our Mother Mary, thus producing a supernatural joy and fulfillment of heart. May she be our model. May this be our prayer. And in the words of St. Philip Neri "Allegramente!" (be cheeful!)