A strange mixture of snow and rain swirled in circles and stung at my eyes. The blades of the priory's windmill chopped through the air at record speed in what the local paper recorded the next day as a tornado. I remembered that the windmill had been moved up here by helicopter two years before; its blades had shattered twice while it was located down the hill at the Glinodo Conference Center, where wind off Lake Erie is even stronger than up at the Mount St. Benedict Priory. I also recalled the words of Sr. Joan Chittister, the prioress: "They call Chicago the Windy City, but that's only because they haven't seen Erie."
The conference center was my destination. The blasts of wind grew more severe as I made my way down the hill and closer to the lake. Lake Erie, filled with churning water and large chunks of ice, stretched beyond my view and offered the desolate aura of an Arctic landscape.
The wind ripped the door away from Sr. Mary Margaret Kraus' grasp as she opened it to welcome me in out of the storm. She offered me a mug of hot tea and a warm smile, trademarks of the Benedictine hospitality that greeted me again and again during my stay with the Benedictine Sisters in Erie, Pennsylvania.
"Have you heard the story of St. Scholastica?" she asked. Benedictine tradition records that Scholastica was the twin sister of St. Benedict and the founder of a community of women who followed the Holy Rule that her brother had created for his monks. The two met each year to spend a day in prayer at a place located between their monasteries.
On the evening of the last of these days, Scholastica begged Benedict to stay through the night so that they might continue their conversation and prayer. Benedict replied that he could not be away from his monastery any longer. Scholastica folded her hands and bowed her head, wept, and prayed to God. Soon large, dark clouds rolled in, the sky was filled with terrible thunder and lightning, and the rain poured down in a deluge, matching her rain of tears.
Benedict chastised her and told her to ask God for forgiveness. She replied to him, "Behold, I made a request of thee, and thou wouldst not hear me. I besought the Lord, and He has listened to me." Benedict could not leave for the severity of the storm, and they spent the night in vigil together. Scholastica died a few days later, and Benedict about a month after her.
Fifteen-hundred years later, we were experiencing what the residents of Erie refer to as the "St. Patrick's Day storm," the last blanket of snow on the city before spring finally settles in. But the Benedictine Sisters, who celebrate the Feast Day of St. Benedict on March 21, say they know what the storm is really all about.
The story of Scholastica and the storm is just one small part of a long Benedictine tradition that is the bedrock of the community in Erie. Benedict was born in the year 480 in central Italy. When he was 17, he went off for three years to live in a tiny cave high in the Apennine Mountains, in order to "touch the face of God." Eventually he founded a monastery at Monte Cassino, and from its life emerged Benedict's incomparable Rule for Monasteries, which stands as the guiding code of monastic life to this day. The Rule reflects faith, service to God, and a respect for the individual combined with a concern for the common good of the community. Benedict took Pax or "Peace," as his motto, and made the gospel his message.
THE INTEGRATION THAT Benedict held forth is reflected in the life of the Benedictine Sisters in Erie. It is impossible to find one word that adequately reflects what is at the core of the life of the sisters. "Hospitality," "community," "peacemaking," and "prayer" all come to mind, and each of these commitments is abundant in the life of the community, in its writings and its worship. But what is most deeply at the heart of the community is that same urge that took Benedict off to the hills 1,500 years ago: the search for God.
The community began in 1856 when German nuns on their way to Minnesota decided to stay in Erie. Despite the wishes of their male superiors that they continue on to Minnesota, the nuns settled in Erie to teach the children of German and Irish immigrants, most of whom had come to the United States to work on the railroad system. The nuns soon founded St. Mary's Academy for girls, and 13 years later St. Benedict's Academy for boys.
For more than a century, teaching was the primary vocation of the community, as it was for most Catholic sisters. But in the late 1960s and early 70s, during the time of the Second Vatican Council, changes that were beginning to affect all areas of the Catholic church sparked radical transformation in the life of the Erie community.
Pope John 23 requested that all religious orders examine their lives with two elements in mind: first, a return to the scriptures and the spirit of the order's founder; and second, discernment of the needs of the time. This self-critical examination opened the door for renewal in the church's life.
Through the time of the renewal, the Erie community weathered a number of storms and created a few of its own for the church hierarchy. Mary Margaret, now the administrator of the Glinodo Conference Center, which is owned and run by the sisters, was prioress of the community for 14 years during the stormy days of renewal.
It seemed appropriate to be sitting in the main house at Glinodo, which is an acronym taken from the first letters of the words ''Gloria In Omnes Deus O." This Latin phrase means "That in all things God might be glorified." That desire to glorify God served as an anchor for the community during the turbulence of renewal.
Mary Margaret speaks calmly and humbly, with the ever-present warm smile, as she reflects on the changes. The most outward sign of the renewal was a modification in sisters' habits, leading eventually to secular dress, which was upheaval enough for many. Mary Margaret recalled with laughter that the clothing "was all so new. And we didn't know what to do with our hair—since we hadn't bothered much with it for 40 years, it was difficult to change."
Renewal brought a deepened emphasis on prayer life, on more silent meditation and faith sharing. Experimentation with small group living situations also evolved; before renewal all the sisters lived either at the community's motherhouse, or priory, or in a parish convent.
These changes brought a greater freedom and respect for individual needs, which led to the change that had perhaps the most dramatic effect on the life of the community: new forms of ministry. Until renewal all ministries were assigned, and 95 percent of the community was involved in elementary or high school teaching.
Sisters began to enter fields of nursing, social work, college teaching, and pastoral work. This precipitated a crisis for the administrators of parochial schools, who lost a significant portion of their teaching staff, but clearly called forth a new force for social change that had impact far beyond the schools.
I asked Mary Margaret what it was like to be the leader of the community during these changes, and she said simply, "That was traumatic." Then she continued, "What I found very hard was seeing the struggle the sisters went through, especially some of the older ones—it was very hurtful to them. When it came to making decisions about this or that thing, I knew that maybe 50 percent of the community would be happy with the change, and the other 50 percent may not. But if I had the conviction myself that it was the right thing to do, then I could say yes to it.
"I was able to do many more things than I thought I had the ability to do. I was upheld by my God and by the sisters. I was blessed to have the support of the community."
SR. MAUREEN TOBIN, who currently serves as sub-prioress, or assistant prioress, remarked that the changes came perhaps more easily to the Erie sisters than to other religious communities because "we were uprooted at the time of renewal." For a century the sisters had been contained in a complex on Ninth Street in downtown Erie, which included a parish church, their convent, and their two academies. The convent had been condemned as a fire hazard, so by 1965 they began raising money to build the Mount St. Benedict Priory, located on a large hill seven miles out of the city.
In October 1966 they held a groundbreaking ceremony for the new priory, an act of faith since they were still far short of the money needed to begin construction. The sisters finally moved into the new priory in January 1970. Maureen said, "The move helped us let go of many traditions and practices that probably needed to change."
She still remembers a community meeting in 1967, in the days when the sisters rarely ventured out of the convent and individuals didn't handle money, in which Mary Margaret suggested that when the sisters leave the convent they ought to have at least 10 cents for a phone call. Three years later the community was handling its own budget and raising money for the construction of a priory to house 150 sisters.
Some of the most interesting perspective on the changes comes from the older sisters. Sr. Ruth Morkin entered the Erie community in 1928 and celebrated her 89th birthday the day before I arrived in Erie. The hall outside her room had been decorated by the community's novices with balloons and computer print-outs that read "Happy Birthday, Ruth!"
As Joan introduced me to Ruth, she said, nodding at the computer paper, "I see they're launching you into the computer age." Ruth laughed and said, "Yes, and I was up most of the night trying to figure out how they did it!" When Joan asked her how she was feeling that day, Ruth replied, "I'm pretty well. I'm always pretty—today I'm also well." Then she laughed again.
Ruth has a perpetual smile and a beautiful shock of bright, white hair that peeks out from under her veil. She took me by the hand and led me over to a couch by the window in the "sunset room," a large room on the hall that houses the older sisters and the infirmary. Then she produced her well-worn copy of Wind in the Wheat, the book that she and Sr. Theophane Seigle co-authored in 1956 on the occasion of the community's 100th year in Erie.
Ruth explained that she was listed in the book as Sr. Mary Louis Morkin, which was the name she chose when she entered the convent. Sisters chose new names, often the name Mary and a favorite saint, as a sign of entry into a new vocation. In 1967 sisters were allowed to return to their baptismal names, when it was recognized that a religious vocation was a continuity of baptism rather than a break from it.
Ruth became a nun, she says, because it was the "highest thing I could think of to turn my life to. I knew that when I died I'd want to be able to say that I took the best work I could and that I pleased God. And here I am close to that time now."
Ruth remembers the day she became a novice and received her white veil. She was sitting in a wheelchair to receive the bishop's blessing—she had slipped on the convent's highly waxed floor and broken her ankle.
When she arrived on Ninth Street in Erie almost 60 years ago, it was "a little, old, falling-apart convent. Silence was the great thing. We did not talk at table, unless it was a special feast day. Then we had a lot of jolly talk. We were happy people. If we weren't happy it was only because we didn't have the real feel of giving our life up to the Lord."
She described the floor-length habit; the broad, angular head covering; and the heavy, black, fringed shawl the sisters wore. She said with a laugh, "There was no danger of anybody seeing what kind of form you had! You couldn't find it underneath those habits."
She still wears a veil and black-and-white garb. She respects the younger sisters' choice to wear secular clothes, but found the changes difficult. She considers the religious life "a special dedication, a respected one." The habit let people know that "we belong to a community that is dedicated to religious duties." And she added, "I've never once had a regret, for a flash even, that I entered the convent."
One of Ruth's favorite subjects of conversation is Thomas Merton. At St. Bonaventure's University in New York, she studied 17th-century drama and methods of research—the latter no doubt an aid in her writing of Wind in the Wheat—with Merton in 1941, shortly before he entered the abbey. She recounted proudly, "I still remember his famous words to me" about a research paper she had written: "It was meticulous!" She leaned closer to me, and said with her largest smile, "I have loved that word ever since."
JOAN CHITTISTER, the community's current prioress, offered her reflections on the turbulent days of renewal: "It certainly looked from the inside out as if the whole thing was coming apart—there was going to be nothing left but rubble. But literally out of the ashes rose the phoenix; and the phoenix was the continuation of a sincere spiritual life.
"Every woman in this house came here for something. In the dark days of the '60s and '70s, we didn't know what it was. But the desire to do it went on, even when the definition of what 'it' was ceased to be clear."
A spiritual life anchored in community, in keeping with its monastic roots, kept the Erie sisters together. Members of the Benedictine community take three vows: conversion, stability, and obedience. Conversion implies lifelong growth, a continuing process of being open to God. Stability offers the lifelong bonds in community that root the sisters in faith and promise companionship on the journey in search of God. And obedience is a promise to listen to the Spirit, to the scriptures, and to one another.
The deep commitment to community that these vows engender is obvious, as is the joy it produces. Carolyn Gorny-Kopkowski (referred to frequently around the priory as Carolyn G-K), the community's director of human development, reflected: "In the world today, where everything appears to be unhinging, we think of community as one of the finest gifts we can offer; not a confining community—narrow, to contain us—but a community that helps us discover who we are, a community that can burst open to ministries."
Joan added: "When people are able to be who they are, they're more creative, more energetic, more committed people. A convent should be a place where women can be the happiest and fullest and 'wholest' of any place around—and where they can take the most risks with the most support. That's community—saying to each other 'We really trust you, we really love you. God gave you great value. Together let's find out what it means—for you and for us and the people we serve.'"
Community is built through prayer, through presence, through care. It is built at the breakfast table, where conversation ranges from St. Patrick's Day plans, to a discussion of St. Benedict Academy's chances for winning the district basketball championship, to the retelling of the story about the time a sister's false teeth flew out during morning prayer. "We love to tell the stories," one of the sisters said to me. "We tell them over and over."
The wisdom and faith of the older sisters is a crucial part of the fullness of the community's life. Like many of the younger sisters, Sr. Roberta Rowan, a special education program supervisor covering 17 school districts, was taught by many of the older sisters at St. Benedict's Academy, now a coeducational high school. We spoke outside the infirmary, where many sisters take turns caring for the needs of the older ones. Roberta said, "If you want to know the community's history, all you have to do is spend some time up here. These sisters truly know what a vow of conversion is all about. They are constantly turning and turning and turning, deepening that commitment. Some have been committed to conversion for 50 years. And when you see what has happened in this place in 50 years, you know that nothing can surprise them."
Three generations live together under the priory roof and spend a great deal of time listening to one another. That morning five of the older sisters had been invited to have a session with the novices as part of the entering women's spiritual formation. Sr. Josephine Zimmer looked back on her long history with the community and said to them with a smile, "I entered on Labor Day, and I've been laboring ever since."
Community is indeed work, but it is evident in Erie from the extraordinary care given to all and the inclusion of everyone in the life of the community that it is a work of love. Carolyn observed, "We make mistakes and we get up again and we go on together. And if we didn't stay together in prayer, we wouldn't be together."
PRAYER HAS BEEN an anchor through many turbulent years. Each day the sisters gather for morning and evening praise and for the celebration of the Eucharist. According to Sr. Marilyn Schauble, the community's director of liturgy, "We're very active, but somehow everything stops when it's time for prayer."
Several adjustments have been made to accommodate the variety of schedules of the sisters, who used to share a common school schedule but now leave in the mornings at various times for parishes, social service agencies, and other places of ministry. Morning prayer is at 6:45 most of the year but is moved up to 6:30 in the winter to give sisters ample time to shovel out from under snow before leaving.
Evening prayer has also undergone schedule changes, mostly for the sake of the older sisters. For years evening prayer was at 6:30—"even though it rushed the dishes," according to Sr. Kathleen Ruszkowski—to enable the older sisters to watch the Lawrence Welk Show on television at 7. Now that the show is off the air, evening prayer is observed at 7.
Marilyn prepares the community's liturgies and draws out gifts of music from the other sisters. Last year she oversaw the community's creation of its own prayer book and is now working on a new psalter. These developments grew out of the sisters' desire to incorporate their own experiences into their prayer life, as well as their deep concern for liturgical language that includes women and reflects the feminine aspects of God.
The prioress is the spiritual leader of the community, and her work is augmented by a spiritual formation team. This aspect of the community's life is given high priority.
As director of human development, Carolyn is a central member of the team. She works primarily with novices and says of her work: "In religious communities we structure a program whereby the young woman can receive not just the academic input—the theology, policies, traditions, and constitution of an order—but become aware of the spirit of the order. What is the vision and the commitment? A number of years are set aside whereby the woman can learn about the community and we about her. Then the covenant can be made. We commit our lives to God, but it's through community, through people."
Spiritual formation is ongoing in the community. The sisters take a yearly spiritual retreat and community weekends together, as well as meeting regularly in small groups for scripture study. Associate members—lay people and families who are closely related to the community—also receive spiritual nurture.
Carolyn added, "I like to celebrate, and I'm trying to impart that gift. There's been a lot of growth and healing connected with our sense of celebration." This spiritual gift of celebration is evident and abundant in the life of the sisters—from their singing to their liturgical clown troupe to their feast days and festivals. Carolyn recalled that one summer they took a vacation together—"all 100-and-some of us!"
The community both celebrates beauty and commits itself to simplicity. Freelance artist Sr. Judith Gloystein's monoprints—or "controlled surprises," as she calls these prints made with oils and kerosene—grace the halls of Mount St. Benedict, along with Sr. Carolyn Lange's photographs. The community also runs a printing press. Sr. Marlene Bertke says of Benetpress' stapling machine run by foot pedals, "This was on the ark with Noah, but it works."
The community shares a commitment to live simply and responsibly in the area of energy. The priory has a natural gas well in addition to its working windmill.
The sisters risked all their assets on the venture to dig the well. When they hit natural gas at 2,700 feet, the story made the national news. The place was teeming with reporters, while national network TV helicopters hovered overhead. Headlines from Palm Beach, Florida, to Tulsa, Oklahoma, to Los Angeles, California, read, "Sisters Get a Blessing," "Praise the Lord and Pass the Drill," "Nuns Drill Wildcat Well, and It's a Gas," and "Seek and Ye Shall Find."
ALTHOUGH IN THE monastic tradition community life takes priority, the community suffers no lack of ministry. The sisters are involved in all aspects of human need. Their life was born in courageous service to the poor and continues to overflow into ministry to all types of people, from infants to the elderly.
Sr. Judith Bohn provides temporary foster care for infants. Most come to her a few days old, children of parents who are not sure they have the emotional or financial resources to raise a child. She keeps them until the parents take them back or offer them for adoption.
Judith proudly introduced me to two-month-old John Benedict and said, "This is number 12." John was born on a special feast day of the community, and Judith says, "They're all special, but he's especially special." As we talked, Roberta entertained John by making an unusual array of faces, while other sisters took turns holding him. Judith joked, "As you can see, he suffers from a lack of love here."
Judith says it is very difficult to let the children go, but "it's good for the house to have new life here."
The shouts and laughter of other little ones can be heard in the basement of the priory, where children pile pillows into an old bathtub and take turns playing in it. The bathtub has brass legs, a flowered bottom, and a brass lion's head for a spigot. It was the gift of a wealthy woman to Joan, who assured the woman she would find good use for it.
Erie is located in a "fruit belt"; warm air off Lake Erie from April to November makes an ideal climate for growing grapes and apples. During those months the area is inundated with migrant families who harvest the fruit. In 1980 Mount St. Benedict opened its basement to a Migrant Head Start program for children ages 3 to 5. After two years the Benedictine Sisters were asked by the sponsoring government agency to take over the program.
The Benedictine Sisters still teach at St. Mary's and St. Benedict's Academies, as well as several "mission schools" within a 100-mile radius. They help run St. Benedict's Children's House, a day-care center.
Not far from the academies and the day-care center, which are located downtown in the complex that housed the old convent, is Emmaus soup kitchen and food pantry. Last year Emmaus served 40,000 meals and gave out 50,000 food bags. I asked Sr. Mary Miller, who staffs Emmaus, what she gets out of the work, She replied, "An aching back, tired feet, gray hair, dish-pan hands, and a sense of ministry."
Located on Mount St. Benedict's property is Benetwood Apartments, a housing complex for low- and middle-income elderly and handicapped residents. Sr. Mary Philip Kiehlmeier, the facility's manager, says the apartment complex seeks to create "a home within a home." Residents are free to lead independent lives but are also encouraged to participate in the atmosphere of relationship and caring.
IN AUGUST 1971 Sr. Mary Lou Kownacki felt a burning need to address issues of justice and peace. With Juli Loesch, now of Prolifers for Survival, she presented a proposal for a peace center. Borrowing from Benedict's motto, the Pax Center opened at Mount St. Benedict in August 1972 and then eventually moved downtown into the old convent.
Pax Center has been a house of hospitality for women as well as a resource center for peace education. Many of Pax Center's activities have been new for religious sisters as well as for Erie. Mary Lou remembered a demonstration in which they paraded with their faces painted white and carried caskets—"kind of a different image for a sister," she said.
The work of Pax Center brought the entire community into greater awareness of the nuclear arms race. Under Joan's strong guidance as prioress, in August 1979, during the community's annual retreat, the Benedictine Sisters of Erie did something unprecedented in religious life. They chose to make a "corporate commitment" to nuclear disarmament—a decision made after five days of prayer and discussion.
Sr. Mary Ellen Plumb, one of the sisters who lives at Pax Center, recalled that as sisters began branching out into new ministries at the time of renewal, "We needed something in common as a community in terms of our ministry. We also believed that we had to make a statement beyond ourselves—that as a religious community we had a kind of power just because we were several voices in one place, and if we spoke together we could really make a difference."
Every year each of the sisters pledges to keep the commitment. Older sisters pray regularly for peace; teachers and parish workers educate for peace; nurses study the medical effects of radiation. As a corporate body, the community gives 100 dollars a month plus 10 percent of its money from fund raising to a peace organization. It also holds a monthly "Holy Hour for Peace" during evening prayer.
In 1980 Benedictinism celebrated its 1,500th birthday. In July of that year, members of the Erie community participated in a week of protest against nuclear weapons at the Pentagon. Benedictine tradition has it that if you plant Benedictine medals, something good will happen. Mary Lou recalled, "A Pentagon guard told us it was silly to plant medals because they don't grow."
Just as they finished their planting, a big storm came up. "It was very localized—nobody else reported it," Mary Lou recalls. "Things just started flying around. St. Scholastica was sending down her blessings."
Four months later Benedictines for Peace was formed, with Mary Lou as its national coordinator. The founding was a decision in celebration of Benedictinism's sesquimillennium, the purpose being "to reclaim our model of peace." Benedictines for Peace now has more than 2,000 members. Mary Lou was also recently named national coordinator of Pax Christi USA, the U.S. branch of the international Catholic peace movement.
THREE YEARS AGO the community re-examined its corporate commitment to nuclear disarmament and decided to keep it, adding specific focus on the connection between sexism and militarism. Mary Ellen said of that choice, "We began to ask ourselves if, as a women's community, we shouldn't be doing something to confront sexism. We realized that as long as there is sexism, there's going to be militarism. As long as one group of people proclaim themselves superior to another, they're going to have weapons to defend that position."
The community's confrontation of sexism is something far from abstract for women who are part of a church dominated by a male hierarchy. Part of the renewal process was the formulation of new constitutions in the religious orders. In the new constitution of the Benedictine Sisters is the simple statement that authority lies within the community. Mary Margaret said, with her usual calm, "That concept of authority hasn't been received too well by Rome."
At this writing Joan is in Rome representing the Benedictine Federations in North America, of which she is president, and the Federation of St. Scholastica, comprised of 22 Benedictine priories including Mount St. Benedict, of which she is chair. Part of the journey includes a review of the new constitution. Rome has already requested revisions, and the final outcome of the process is as yet unknown.
In contrast to Mary Margaret's calm, Joan becomes highly animated when talking on the subject: "In the Roman church, the question is, 'Who defines and decides the doctrines, dogma, and discipline of the church?' Only a cleric can have jurisdiction and authority in the Roman Catholic church, so all the definitions are coming from male clerics. What's really being said institutionally and structurally is: women must have God mediated to them. So if there's no man around who's properly deputed, we don't get God, do we?
"I'm finding it harder and harder to see why God bothered creating us if he meant to leave us out. If women don't have all the rights in the church, do we have all the responsibility? Can women sin? Which of the sins can't a woman commit? There must be some, because there are some graces women don't get. It just doesn't wash."
Joan, who spends one-third of her time speaking and traveling, exudes hope and vision as she looks toward the future and sees mighty changes for women in the church. Her own courage and determination have enabled many other women, at Mount St. Benedict and far beyond, to discover their own potential and their own futures. And this awakening in women is whipping up a storm in the church, as women religious, like their foremother Scholastica, appeal to a higher authority.
Joan continued: "I believe that within the next decade the women's movement is going to have a very serious effect on religious life because women are not going to come to an institution in which they must automatically accept inferiority, submission, incompleteness, and second-classism. It's getting clearer that you can't get by with sexism, racism, and militarism. It's getting harder and harder to do an end run around a nun—she'll grab you by the ankle every time.
"We made plenty of mistakes at the beginning of renewal. There had been too much restriction, too much dependence, too much suppression for too long a time. My genuine, deepest, sincerest hope is that the fruits of the last 10 years—and there have been many—are so apparent that it will put to rest the isolated fears. If there is an attempt to make proscriptions that would put us back 15 years, I can tell you right now, we're not going to go.
"This [equality for women] will work out in the church in the long haul. There's no doubt about that. It's of the Spirit, it's right."
THE BENEDICTINE SISTERS of Erie are growing while many other religious communities are shrinking. Its members attribute this to their strong sense of community, identity as women, and commitment to peace. They "stand for something," as Mary Lou put it.
They have a vision for the future rooted in a long past. The marks of their history are everywhere. Their priory's "Heritage Room" holds relics from the past: the old convent's doorbell, an inkwell and pen used to sign vows in 1930, the flat iron the sisters used to press their habits, the prioress' dinner bell, a sister's mandolin, a sewing box from 1856.
The relics have their place only because they retain the memory of people and of the community. But the legacy of those who have gone before is most clear in the faith they have passed on through generations, in the sisters who hold what is best of the tradition even as they break the structures wide open.
On the day I arrived in Erie, Sr. Theophane Seigle was buried. The community grieved even as it celebrated her resurrection in Christ, Carolyn reflected, "It's very painful to love; but community calls us to be lovers." And Joan added, recalling Theophane and the others who have gone, "These sisters raised us."
Joan continued, "We've been together for so long; we have such a memory. When we come to Mass in the community, you'll hear us pray for the sister who died that day. What you probably don't know is that she died on this day in 1862, or 1878, or 1910. And that's the living history, the living memory of the community."
Upon seeing the wind blow through the wheat in Glinodo's fields, Sr. Theophane wrote in 1956 in Wind in the Wheat:
The wind is in the wheat again,
A century of blowing;
And wheat goes out into the wind
For another century's sowing.
She lived a vision of community borne up by the Spirit that she hoped would enter its second century and bear great fruit. Her vision continues.
Joan reflected: "Religious life will survive. It's wholesome, it's right, it's possible, it's a sign, it's a sacrament. And people have been called to religious life through all the ages. Whether communities such as ours—who bore the past on our backs and built the church by our fingernails—whether we will have the resources to be able to do what needs to be done now, whether or not we will have the clarity of image so that people can know what we're doing now and why; that is the question."
That clarity of image certainly resides in the sisters in Erie. It is a strength that will carry the community into the future and through many storms. And it will last as long as sisters come, as did Sr. Annella Fitzgerald 54 years ago who says of that time now from her wheelchair, "I just wanted to love God."
Joyce Hollyday was an associate editor of Sojourners magazine when this article appeared.
Got something to say about what you're reading? We value your feedback!