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Sister Mary went on to earn her master’s degree in music at Southern Methodist University, followed by a long and successful career as manager for the choral department at Southern Music. It was here her path crossed once again with her former teacher, whom she assisted with choral preparations for the sisters, and who came to play organ for her for a number of years at St. Pius X, where Sister Mary directed the choir. “Not only were we friends,” said Sister Mary, “but we were also professional colleagues.”
Sister Maria Goretti’s last occasion to play before the CCVI congregation was at Sister Mary’s novitiate ceremony on Aug. 15, 2001, just a week before her unexpected death from a heart attack as she prepared to teach a class at UIW. The sisters are not buried with their rings so, knowing of their special relationship, Sister Maria Goretti’s ring was held in safekeeping until Sister Mary’s final vows this August.
The thought of a religious vocation had briefly crossed Sister Mary’s mind at the time of her high school graduation, but she had wanted to attend college first. As she put it though, “life happens,” and she did not seriously consider it again until after her mother’s death in 1997.
She had been her mother’s caregiver at the end and quite close to her. In the reflective grieving process that followed, she found herself faced with the question of what she wanted to do with the rest of her life and thought again of the sisters around whom she had grown up and the possibility of a religious vocation.
“When you grow up Catholic, as a girl in a Catholic environment, you know that’s always one of your options,” she said. However, it was really the feeling of community she experienced through her friendship with Sister Maria Goretti and her invitation to work with her in the sisters’ choir, she noted, that led to her final decision.
She made initial contact with the sisters’ provincial coordinator and was put in touch with the vocation director, with whom she talked over the next six months. Several sisters were then assigned as “pre-entry” community contacts, meeting with her for discussion and discernment on the religious life, a process that extended for over a year.
This was followed by a year-long pre-novitiate, during which Sister Mary lived with a small community of sisters, though continuing to support herself with her job at the music store. Next came her novitiate, for which she moved to St. Louis.
Here she participated for two years in an intercommunity novitiate program, along with women and men from a number of different religious orders preparing for vows, culminating in her taking three-year temporary vows. During this time she worked in pastoral ministry, being assigned to St. Pius V in what is called the South City in St. Louis, and simultaneously pursued a master’s in theology at Aquinas Institute of Theology.
“My age and personal experience were taken into account in formulating my process,” she said. “It’s not a cookie cutter process.”
Starting as a pastoral ministry intern at St. Pius V, Sister Mary was later hired as a pastoral associate there, helping to revitalize that inner city parish in an unexpected way. St. Louis (and the whole state of Missouri), Sister Mary learned, were big on holding weekly fish fries during Lent. “All the churches have them during Lent,” she said, noting there are fish fry clubs, whose “groupies” go from fry to fry, later critiquing them online, and a local radio station personality whose list of the top fries is eagerly awaited.
The fish fries at St. Pius had not met with much success in the past and had eventually been discontinued. Some of the surrounding parishes with highly popular fries, however, had been closed or merged in recent years — a fate which St. Pius narrowly escaped by dint of a campaign by the parishioners. Deciding there was a “fish fry gap,” St. Pius decided to revive theirs and Sister Mary, new to it all, wound up volunteering to head it.
It succeeded beyond everyone’s wildest dreams when 500 persons showed up for the first one, instead of the 300 for which they had prepared. “For whatever reason — the grace of God — I had bought enough fish for two weeks,” Sister Mary related. Parishioners appeared from nowhere to help, thawing the fish under running water and popping them into the oven as the line outside the door continued to grow. “It was just a remarkable success,” she said, recalling the team spirit that pulled it off.
She appropriately drew on fishes then during her final profession of vows on Aug. 15, speaking of Jesus’ choice of fishermen as his first apostles and the fish as symbolic of “what is swimming around in our inner depth: possibilities, riches, expectations, potentialities and combinations, creativities hidden from our eyes because they are swimming in the dark — silent, mysterious and unseen.”
Referring to the passage in Luke, she recalled how it reminded her “that if we go out into the deep, we will find that we are full of possibilities lying unseen, brought to light once confronted with Jesus.”
Being a liturgist with a musical background, the liturgy Sister Mary prepared for her vows taking in the Chapel of the Incarnate Word was rich in both, and included her family, close friends and the sisters. “It was a wonderful community gathered,” she said, “and in a space that I’ve been familiar with since I was a child.”
Describing her new life, Sister Mary related, “I think we all know, deep down, if we’re truthful with ourselves, what is most life-giving for us and what is bringing us closer to God — whether it’s married life, or single life or religious life. For Catholics, we have the option of a life form that we can live that best leads us to God.”
“It is an option, if you’re a young woman, middle-aged or an older woman,” she said, “a way we have that, if we hear that call, we have that opportunity to seek God this way.” She paused and added, “And it’s a wonderful life!” |