I believe that every person's vocation is given to them as they are conceived.  This vocation is known to God, in His mind so to speak, just as the person is in His mind.  This vocation whether to the priesthood, religious life or married life is part of who the individual is; it directs them in their journey back to God the Father.  The vocation is God's unique way of helping us identify with Christ and come to union with Him, so that we will be taken up with Christ in the love of the Trinity.

My mother was baptized a Catholic when she was 9 months pregnant with me.  I always liked to think I had an extra dose of the Holy Spirit but priests tell me it isn't so!

While I believe I had my vocation in my mothers womb, I was no childhood saint!  As an Air Force "brat" I grew up in a family that roamed the world.  It was a rich experience of learning other cultures and demanded that I learn to be flexible.  As a very shy person, it would have been extremely difficult for me, had my parents not been so loving and supportive.  We were uprooted not uncommonly, finding our way through new schools, friends, classes and activities.  This presented great challenges.  The travel however more than compensated.  My memories of magnificent structures and unique ways are a treasure even now.  More importantly I believe I had a broadening awareness of the differences of peoples and needed to have acceptance of others beyond my own way of thinking.

College years brought me to thinking about an area of study that could be applied to helping people.  I took up pre-medicine and eventually worked as a medical technologist and microbiologist.  I spent two years working as a lay volunteer for a poor parish in Boston.  I worked at the nearby University Hospital and donated my salary to the upkeep of the school of the parish.  It was an idealistic endeavor, one that made my father quite unsettled, as I was voluntarily penniless in a poor high crime area.  Nevertheless this difficult environment nurtured a poverty of spirit and a growing desire to serve the Church.  Then came my realization that I did not want to spend the rest of my life behind a microscope and the thought of nursing began.  My own mother, her two sisters and their mother were nurses so this was perhaps in my genes.  Yet the thought of leaving my volunteer work and association with the Church left me uneasy.  I believe it was a clear experience of the fear of God.  I did not want to offend God leaving what I was called to do for Him.  A close friend seeing the sign posts of a vocation, said to me, "As long as you want to be a nurse, why dont you be a holy nurse?"  I said, "what do you mean?" And she said, "I mean a nun."  I said, "I don't want to be a nun!" (In those days I did not know the difference between a nun and a sister!)  That was the end of the discussion, so I thought, and yet I could not sleep that night.  I tossed and turned (frustrating for a usually good sleeper) with a sense that yes, this is what I HAD to do.  Enter a convent!   I cannot describe the clarity of this inner knowledge.  It is only something that one experiences when God directs and you listen.  I have always been grateful to God for the clarity of this experience, particularly when I was Novice Mistress and Vocation Director.  Then I spoke to many young women who struggled, not knowing for sure if this is what God was asking of them.  I think that the complexities of the culture and the distractions that it presents are one of the greatest deterrents to the discernment of a vocation. 

While I describe the events above as a sudden experience, my spiritual foundation was provided by a faith-filled family and so I was able to grasp what was happening.  My parents had taught and lived the faith.  The Rosary was said every evening, on our knees.  Mom or Dad would simply look over at us if we slouched, and we knew to straighten up!  Our travels in Europe were centered on the cathedrals and shrines, although not exclusively.  I recall my first trip to Rome, around the age of 11.  I had a reassuring sense that I was home when I entered the St. Peter's Square.  I began to attend Mass nearly every day when I was in College.

With the assistance of my friend, I wrote to six different communities, all with some nursing apostolic ministry.  In the late seventies the stability of many religious communities was not a certainty.  The Lord guided me through rough waters that I didn't even surmise at the time.  Four of the six communities were automatically discarded by the presentation of superficial or questionable spirituality.  Even in my ignorance of religious life, the Lord gave me His gifts to see these communities would not be good choices.  The apostolate of the 5^th community did not attract me and so I was left with one community!  The handwritten letter from the novice Mistress was impressive.  I knew again that this was where the Lord was calling me.  Even without a visit to the Motherhouse, I sensed this was the answer.  A visit was required of course and this I made.  I found the visiting time quite difficult, wanting to leave, while knowing I would return.  It was a good experience for me, one that is repeated many times in life, doing what you don't want to do but knowing it is God's will.  Never have I questioned His will, that this is my vocation.  Many events in my life in this community have been times of great joy, other times of great suffering and tension, but the stability of the vocation has anchored me.  The knowledge of the vocation gives one a certainty that you could never leave without knowing that you were turning away from God and His loving plan for you.

Our website www.hawthorne-dominicans.org will give you plenty of information about the community I entered.  Many people cannot understand the capability of being around the dying on a day-to-day basis.  This is part of the vocational charism; the individual is given not only the strength but the joy to be around this great event.  One of our Sisters so beautifully phrased it: "It is a special gift to be around a person who sees your face at one moment and then the face of God in the next!"  Think of the graces that are flowing from the divine to the human at such moments!