Mother Catherine Marie, C.P.TOTALLY YOURS, JESUS
Why in the world would a talented, attractive American girl
"throw away" her life by joining a religious community?
How can you live without sex?? Don’t you want to fall in love and get married? Aren’t you afraid of being awfully lonely?
Well, if you think you have to become a religious, why are you going to waste your life doing nothing in a cloister? Isn’t that a bit selfish?
If you are honest, you might have to admit you have asked these questions and perhaps many others. I admit that I too had these questions. In fact, at one point of my life I angrily told my family that no one was ever going to get me into a convent!! You see, I was running from the Lord. I was bargaining with the Lord. I did not really know Jesus. I only knew about Him. I had not yet experienced how much He loved me and how He had a plan for my happiness.
The grace of vocation developed gradually. I felt convinced at the time of my First Communion that I was called to be a nun, though I can’t say it really influenced me a lot. A few years later, in viewing the movie "The Story of Fatima," I felt Our Lady’s presence strongly, and seemed to realize how important her message is for our era. The movie touched my heart so profoundly that there was born in me a great desire and longing to answer her call for prayer and sacrifice. I began to get much more serious about prayer, and to start reading Catholic magazines and periodicals that kept me abreast of the challenges facing the Church, and particularly, the threat of militant atheism. I truly wanted to take part in what the Church was going through in our times. There was a sense of urgency about Mary’s call to me, but it was not all that clear how I would answer it. Unfortunately, in about the 7th and 8th grades, I turned my back completely on religious life. I was too fascinated by boys and having fun going to parties and the like. All this time, Jesus was watching me and patiently waiting. He had set his heart on me. Scripture says He has chosen us before the foundation of the world, and He calls us even before we are formed in our mother’s womb. Jesus wanted me for his own but I no longer wanted to belong totally to Him. You see, I thought that if I gave myself completely to Jesus, I would somehow miss out on all the happiness and love I wanted in life. Afraid of being cheated, I didn’t yet know how Jesus alone can satisfy the deepest longings of the human heart.
When I got into high school, a career as a musician opened up for me. I had been playing the piano since the third grade and the organ since the 5th. Music was very much in my father’s family and I inherited a big dose of it. We had a grand piano in our living room, and often on Saturday afternoons I would practice for three hours straight, besides one hour each day. It came natural. One of my recital pieces was 16 pages long in 6 flats. During one of my high school summers, I competed and won in a statewide piano competition to play the piano, together with other students, with the then-famous Liberace in the Coliseum of the Kentucky State Fair Grounds. Besides training in piano, the high school also offered me training in directing the school’s three large choral groups, one of which numbered over 200 students. On one occasion I was chosen to direct the singing of the entire student body of over 1000 Catholic girls. All of this led to the offer of a scholarship to the University of Louisville School of Music.
As long as I avoided being open to religious life, I was restless deep down in my heart. There was this emptiness inside that kept gnawing at me. It was as if I was always looking but never finding what could really satisfy my heart. My restlessness continued until one day, amid lots of tears I said to Jesus: "I surrender. I’m going to be a nun." His love had finally broken my heart. It was a moment of truth. Saving grace came to me as I experienced the sorrow and loss of a broken relationship. This was a wake-up call to me for I saw clearly just how limited human love can be. In light of this, I finally realized that only Jesus’ love is everlasting, and that my vocation was to be totally His. That day, I gave my heart entirely to Jesus. I told Him I would be His bride. I had known for years that He was inviting me to be His bride and His helpmate in saving the souls for whom He died. Why had I waited so long to say "yes?" Why had I been running and stalling for time?? I think I was afraid that if I had only Jesus, I would miss out on so much else! How wrong I was!
Once I surrendered to the "Hound of Heaven," I thought about becoming a missionary sister. I wanted to give up everything, even my country, for Jesus, and to spend my life bringing as many souls as possible to Him. God truly did want me to be a missionary, but not in the way I first thought. About this time, a religious at my school gave me the autobiography of St. Therese to read. There I learned that a cloistered nun was actually a missionary to the whole world. Her mission field was not limited by time and space. A cloistered nun could be everywhere, she could work for Jesus everywhere—by means of prayer and sacrifice. This became my great desire. It surprised even myself, because just two years before that, I held the opinion that cloistered nuns lived selfish lives in "ivory towers". I felt they were wasting their time and should "get out here and help us save the world!" How totally wrong I was! I learned that St. Therese is co-patroness of the missions along with the active missionary, St. Francis Xavier, even though Therese never set foot outside her cloistered monastery! I began to think of entering the Carmelite monastery in Louisville, but although Carmelite spirituality greatly attracted me, somehow I just didn’t feel called to their life. Slowly I realized that what I was looking for was a community devoted to Jesus in the mystery of His love---that is, in His passion and death.
Then one day I was out at a country club with some close friends. As we all waded in water up to our necks, I overheard some of them talking about making a retreat at a monastery in Owensboro. They were so excited about it. My heart gave a leap, and as I waded over to them, I said: "I’d love to go with you!" With a great deal of surprise they jokingly responded, "You??" Being an introvert by temperament, I chuckled, because I saw that my plan to keep a secret of my growing deep relationship with Jesus was quite effective!! I didn’t want people to know how much I was falling in love with Jesus, because I was afraid of the ridicule I had seen others go through. This was the way I dealt with peer group pressure.
Well, the day I was to leave for the Passionist retreat house in Owensboro, my car broke down, and I nearly missed catching the Greyhound bus to Owensboro. Then, don’t you know---half-way to Owensboro, even the bus broke down, forcing us to wait for another to take us the rest of the way to Owensboro!! I have often wondered if the devil was trying to prevent me from going. In the midst of all this, my heart had a steady peace and a kind of certainty that I was on a spiritual journey, but I had no clue what was going to happen. I remember looking out the bus window as we left Louisville, and feeling the strangest sense that I was "heading home." At this time, I had no idea of who the Passionist Nuns were, nor that I would ever feel so drawn to their life.
When we finally got to the Passionist retreat house in Owensboro it was late, and we were the last to arrive. The steep walk up the hill toward the monastery entrance was awesome. The grounds seemed cloaked in stillness and peace even though I could hear the noise of traffic from the highway below. Little did I ever dream what a surprise awaited me. As soon as I set foot on the monastery grounds, I knew in my heart that I had found my home, my place in life, my vocation. And yet I had never even known there were Passionist Nuns! God seemed so present on the holy ground of the monastery, and this presence seemed to reach out and envelop me. Throughout the entire retreat, this experience never left me, though I kept it to myself. I didn’t quite know what it all meant. Everything was so new and intriguing, going inside a cloister. It was like going into God Himself. I had always felt drawn to Jesus in His sacred Passion, and here was a whole community of nuns who were totally dedicated to loving Him and bringing souls to Him! I also loved the idea that prayer was so powerful for changing our world, and here was a community who made prayer their work for the Church! The thought of joining a community that offered retreats to lay people attracted me very much also. It all seemed to "fit" what was stirring in my heart.
When I got back home to Louisville and resumed my daily life, there were some pretty rude awakenings. It was as if I now had "new eyes" to see through the cheap allurements with which the world tries to dazzle us. I began to feel like a fish out of water, and lost interest in lots of things. I realized I no longer belonged to the world of craving for success, for pleasure, for the money and nice clothes that had so possessed me before. Somehow I was different inside and knew I would never be the same. My life changed forever during that first retreat at St. Joseph’s Monastery in Owensboro. Even my mother commented to me how much I had changed. In about a month, I wrote to the retreat directress, Sr. Mary Bernadette, and told her I wanted to be a Passionist. She told me to get a spiritual director and to keep in contact with the monastery. All seemed to go smoothly until Christmas break, when a great temptation nearly changed the direction of my life forever.
I had continued dating young men, because I didn’t want any of my peers to guess the grace that was powerfully moving in my heart. It was a secret between Jesus and myself, and found myself drawn to spend more and more time with Him in the Blessed Sacrament. This was easy, as I had a job as a parish organist. I often had a strong, felt experience of the presence of God, even when standing at a busy street corner in downtown Louisville. But then the great test came. At Christmastime, my best friend got me a date with a fine young man who was studying at Notre Dame University. I really fell for him, and had a good time that night, not realizing how close I was to losing my vocation. He said he was going to call me for another date, but when I didn’t hear from him after a day or two, I began bargaining with Our Lord. I said rosaries that he would call me for another date, telling myself that after all, a good Catholic marriage was a tremendous vocation. I also began to tell myself that I could serve God well enough by becoming a nurse. "Being a nurse is so selfless. I could do that and remain in the world, and marry and have a family. What a great way to serve God and other people!!" I went on rationalizing…and all the while, Jesus watched and waited and understood me. He knew I had to learn some lessons about my own weakness. Finally, when the young man never called back, my infatuation wore off. In a few weeks, I realized what I had done and how close I had come to throwing away my precious religious vocation. Never again did I get caught like that, although I continued to date until my graduation. After the senior prom, I stopped dating entirely. I had learned a hard lesson about my own weakness, my ability to rationalize, and how easy it is to lose a religious vocation.
After graduation, I began to let people know that I wanted to be a nun. My faith-filled parents had known for quite some time and they supported me, but others couldn’t understand why I was walking away from all that the world offered. My friends respected me, but they didn’t understand why I wasn’t going to use my musical talents. And how could I just walk away from a career and from marriage? The boys I had dated respected my decision, but didn’t think I would really stay in the convent. My mother told me that one boy even kept coming back to visit my home, hoping that I had come home from the convent. As for my teachers and classmates, they thought I could easily have a religious vocation, but asked why in the world a cloister of all places??
Once at a family party, my cousin’s boyfriend found out that I was going to enter a monastery, and he said to me: "Why would someone as cute as you, ever want to be a nun?" It must have been the Holy Spirit, but I laughingly said immediately: "Well, Larry, do you want Our Lord to have only the ugly ones??" He looked quite astonished at my reply. This young man, by the way, eventually became a married deacon. I realized from this that many have no notion whatever of what religious life is about, much less a cloister. My story is as much a love-story as any two people falling in love and planning to get married. Religious life is all about love. It is about preferring Jesus Christ to any earthly lover. This is called a "preferential love."
I entered the Passionists as soon after high school graduation as they would take me. The date was August 5, 1961, a day marked with the mystery of joy and sorrow. I felt tremendous joy in finally entering religious life, yet missed my family terribly. I was determined, however, that I would stay with Our Lord "for better or for worse" no matter what it cost me. One day before I entered, I felt worried about my Mother needing me to help at home, since we had so many small children in our family of 10 children. As I was praying about this, it seemed that Jesus said to me: "Kay, come and take care of My family, and I will take care of yours." I immediately understood that He wanted me to work for His Church, and that just like a bridegroom, He would show special care to His bride’s family. Over the years, I have witnessed how faithful He has been to that promise!
During my early years in the monastery, many times I cried bitterly from homesickness; many times I wondered if I would make it and also if the community would accept me. These are normal ups and downs for every candidate in religious life, and one can grow strong by working through them. I just kept praying and trying to draw closer to the One who loved me and had died for me. Little by little, the homesickness went away and my family began to be so happy about my vocation as well as the tremendous fruits they began to see coming to our family. My prayers and those of my Sisters here in the community have always been a source of comfort and strength to the family at times of joy as well as times of suffering and sorrow. This is part of the hundredfold Jesus promises to one who is willing to leave family and the good things of this world in order to follow Him in religious life. Jesus never makes empty promises. They learned from experience that in and through the Heart of Jesus, a cloistered nun is even more present with people outside the community. Each time another of my brothers and sisters got married, people remarked to me that they felt my presence and prayers among them during the Mass and celebration afterward, even though I was not there physically.
Our God has been called a "God of Surprises." After leaving totally and forever all my music behind and entering a monastery, it never occurred to me that I would ever use my musical skills again, but God had something else in mind. Shortly after my first profession of vows, I was assigned as organist and choir directress! So, what I used to do more or less for myself, I am now doing for the glory of God and to enrich the liturgical life of our monastery and retreat house. God has a sense of humor.
Having lived Passionist life for a long time now, I would have to say that even though there have been many hardships, as in any life here on earth, I have found more joy and satisfaction and fulfillment as a bride of Jesus Crucified than I ever dreamed possible here on earth. This shouldn’t be surprising. Jesus Himself promised that whoever would leave all things for His sake, would receive even here on earth a hundredfold back in return, along with heaven itself!! Jesus always keeps His promises. Sometimes human lovers do not keep their promises. They are unfaithful. They break the hearts of their marriage partners. They break the hearts of their children. Why? Humans are weak and sinful. Without the grace of God they cannot be faithful to their spouse. They are limited, and cannot give the total love that our hearts were created for. Only God can give total love. So, there is never any fear for one who gives her whole self and her entire life to Jesus. He is faithful forever. Scripture says of him: "His love endures forever." Forever will I sing the praises of His love! Great is His faithfulness. "Greater love than this, no one has---that one would lay down his life for his friends." Jesus is that great Love.
Mother Catherine Marie, C.P.