Dominican Sisters Offer Insights on How to Foster a Strong Vocation Culture – Detroit Catholic

“If young people do not encounter Jesus in them, Jesus has died for them,” sisters tell members of the St. Serra Club in Grosse Pointe

GROSSE POINTE FARMS — Sr. Mary Jacinta, OP, and Sr. Mary Bernard, OP, grew up in very different situations – one in a strict Catholic family, the other with unmarried, lapsed Catholic parents. But for both of them the path to religious life lay through Eucharistic adoration.

“There is no vocation story in which the Eucharist does not appear,” Sr. Mary Jacinta told the audience at a Nov. 6 meeting of the St. Serra Club Detroit-Northeast at the Canfield Center of St. Paul on the Lake Parish.

Sr. Mary Jacinta and Sr. Mary Bernard are both members of the final profession of the Ann Arbor-based Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist. Both are experienced teachers currently assigned to St. Isaac Jogues Catholic School in St. Clair Shores. And true to their role as educators, they gave the St. Serra Club homework to read “The Laity,” the fourth chapter of Lumen Gentiumthe Dogmatic Constitution of the Second Vatican Council on the Church.

“The call to holiness is universal,” said Sr. Mary Jacinta. “Holiness is within everyone’s reach.”

A culture of vocations cannot exist unless the laity are committed to living as true disciples of Christ, she explained.

Sr. Mary Jacinta’s parents nurtured their ten children’s relationship with Jesus and introduced them to religious life at a young age. These experiences bore great fruit: two daughters in religious life and a son in the priesthood.

“Encourage the habit of Eucharistic adoration,” advised Sr. Mary Jacinta. “I am a sister because I have been given the opportunity to cultivate a relationship with Jesus through the time of silence before the Eucharist.”

Her participation in the work of the Missionaries of Charity in Detroit in the 1990s and her consecration to Mary also helped further her vocation, she added.

Although Sr. Mary Bernard’s parents did not practice the faith, her mother sent her to a K-8 Catholic school where she experienced stability and love from her teachers. As a teenager, she began attending adoration, lecturing at Mass and becoming involved in her parish. The people in her parish noticed her, encouraged her and supported her financially to join the sisters.

“I am here because these people loved me,” Sr. Mary Bernard told the audience. “The world is starving for validation and young people are struggling with their needs. Love them where they are. If they don’t meet Jesus in you, Jesus died for them.”

Both sisters encountered obstacles that stood in the way of their calling. For Sr. Mary Bernard it was the temptation to achieve worldly success as a rider and horse trainer. For Sr. Mary Jacinta, her desire was to become a mother and start a family. “I have learned that I am called to be a spiritual mother to many,” she said.

To promote a culture of vocations, both sisters emphasized living the evangelical counsels and being open to one’s faith, including commitment to Christ and daily reading of the Scriptures.

The sisters also warned against assuming that young people have the same questions about religion and faith as their parents.

“Ask them the questions they have,” Sr. Mary Jacinta suggested. “You could be in a very different place than you were 20 or even 10 years ago.”

For example, the sisters said that it used to be common for young people to ask, “What is it like to be a nun?” But now fewer young people even know what sisterhood is.

In addition to emphasizing the importance of Eucharistic adoration, the sisters recommended countering the “messages of the world” by “finding out where we can meet young people and challenge them.”

“The world, for example, says ‘autonomy’ and puts the self at the center of its own little world,” noted Sr. Mary Bernard. “The counter-message is ‘self-surrender.’ The world says, ‘Go rogue.’ The counter-message is ‘virtuous courage.'”

And to young people who want to discern their calling, the sisters advise: “Speak to Jesus and ask him. You will get an answer.”

Marcia McBrien is vice president of communications for St. Serra Club Detroit Northeast.