Thank You, Sister.

Paul D Ferris
Waterville, Maine

There is a street in the city of New Orleans Louisiana where I lived for the past three years called Nuns Street. It is right next to Religious Street.  There is another larger street which runs through the heart of the famous French Quarter called Ursuline Street.  Ursuline Street ends near the Mississippi. The convent on Ursuline Street is the oldest standing building on the Gulf Coast.
 
On August 7, 1727, twelve Ursuline nuns arrived in New Orleans from France.  Their first mission was to teach girls, care for the sick, and run an orphanage.  In keeping with the rule established from the beginning by their founder, Angela Merici, these nuns called, Mothers, were  flexible and adapted their apostolate to the conditions and needs at hand. The Ursulines of New Orleans are credited with raising the literacy rate of the city which, in the eighteenth century was pitifully low.  In the 1770’s an Ursuline, Sister Xavier, studied and wrote on the value of herbs. She is credited with being the first pharmacist in Louisiana and the first woman pharmacist in the U.S.A.  Xavier College in New Orleans is named after her and features an outstanding school of pharmacy.
 
I begin with this example of Catholic Religious from nearly three centuries ago because, this example illustrates the flexibility and adaptability of one of many women Religious Orders in their missionary contribution to the spread of the Gospel in the United States of America. Their living legacy has endured not just on street signs and history books but in my own life and the life of my community. Angela Merici started her community to teach literacy to young women.  Fortunately for me her followers adapted this educational ministry to include young boys as well.
 
I attended St. Joseph Maronite School in Waterville, Maine from 1950 to 1958. The school was staffed by Ursuline nuns. For nine years from age four to twelve I was taught exclusively by these Catholic Sisters.  The school was small with only fifty to sixty students, but included grades kindergarten to eighth. These eight grades were combined in only two class rooms so maximum flexibility was required.
 
The teaching methods employed by the Ursulines were varied according to subject taught but often memorization was the standard.  We memorized the Baltimore Catechism; during Lent I memorized the passion story from the Gospel of St. Matthew.  The civics book was put to memory.  We memorized Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.  Mercifully, I no longer can recite chapter and verse of all that I memorized but I know that deep in my consciousness there remains the faith and values that were not only taught but also witnessed to by these great religious women who really earned the title Mother.
 
No matter how many children were in the school from one family, the cost was fifty cents. My own small family graduated four students from St. Joseph. One family graduated nine.
 
The number of leaders in the United States government who were taught and formed by Catholic Sisters has been documented and is well known. From my own small Lebanese community of less then 200 families, St. Joseph Maronite boasts graduates such a Senator George Mitchell and United States Senate Majority leader, peace envoy to  Northern Ireland, and present peace envoy to the Middle East. Recently a classmate Joseph Jabar was appointed judge to the Maine Supreme Court.  If asked, I am sure both would say the foundation for their success was laid by the faith and values instilled in them by the Ursulines at St. Joseph Maronite School. In addition to these prominent graduates, there have been many others who served in business, government, education, and the legal profession.
 
I could fill a book with memories of the nine years I attended St. Joseph Maronite and my experience with the Ursuline Mothers who staffed the school.  Mother Delarosa stands out because she was my teacher for four years from fifth to eighth grade. She exuded kindness, patience, spiritual depth, intelligence, humor, discipline and humility.  Her motto was Serviam, I shall serve, the motto of the Ursulines. I only learned her birth name four decades later in my fifties, when I visited her grave site.  On her grave stone is written her birth name. Thank you Irene.
 
In addition to the Ursuline Sisters, there is another religious order in my small town of Waterville Maine called the Servants of the Blessed Sacrament.  These cloistered sisters primary mission was and still is prayer and contemplation.  The convent in Waterville is only one of two in the United States, the other being in New Mexico.  Everyday, decade after decade, these sisters spend time before the Blessed Sacrament in adoration. Their prayer life is complemented with an active ministry to the poor. I frequently attend their liturgies open to the public whenever I am home in Waterville.
 
Although I have always been gratefully aware of the importance of women religious in my life, after leaving St Joseph in 1958, for the most part, they receded from my life and consciousness.  During the seventies I served as a Director of Religious Education on Fort Meade in Maryland.  I was able to hire Benedictine nuns to teach vacation summer school CCD.  When I left Ft. Meade in 1977, I was replaced by a Catholic Sister.  I also have friends who were former nuns.  They have always impressed me as women of faith and dedication to whatever new calling they chose.  Some were married with children.  Others remain single devout Christian women.
 
In the spring of 1996, I was shocked to read in the newspaper that two  Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament in Waterville were murdered after an evening liturgy by an insane man who thought he was seeing the devil.

Around the same time, I read in the National Catholic Reporter, about Sister Dianna Ortiz, OSU, who was holding a twenty-one hour a day silent vigil in Lafayette Park in Washington DC.  Her vigil was supported by Sister Alice Zachmann, SSND, executive director of the Guatemala Human Rights Commission/USA.  Sister Dianna was a missionary from New Mexico to Guatemala where she experienced horrible torture.  She has written a book, The Blindfold’s Eyes, describing her torture and the effect of her torture on herself, family, and religious community. It is not an easy story to read but I recommend it.
Standing by Sister Dianna OSU and helping Sister Alice, SSND, I began to see nuns in a different light than I did as a child.  I began to see them in powerful new ministries.  Witnesses to the same deep faith and virtue as Religious women I observed as I child, they did not disappear into convents or cloisters.  They were working and living with all of us, challenging in peaceful ways, unjust institutions.  Sister Dianna later founded a group called Torture Abolition Support and Survivors Coalition International (TASSC).  One can learn more about this important work by viewing the web site at TASSC.ORG.
Sister Joan Chittister, OSB is another Catholic Sister who has played an important part in my adult life. She is an author of over thirty books; she is in demand as a speaker in countries throughout the world.  She is active in United Nations work.  I cannot believe she takes the time to respond to my emails but she says it is an important part of her work.  I once jokingly accused her of being more than one person. She is a remarkable woman religious who stills seems to live the life of a monastic and an active ministry.
In summary I can say that both in my childhood and adult life I have been blessed by my association with Catholic Sisters.  Our Catholic Faith centered on the Holy Trinity is not something that one reflects on and figures out by oneself.  It is the gift of communities of believers, not the least of which are the communities of yesterday and today’s religious women of the United States.  They epitomize Jesus’ teaching in Matthew Chapter 13, v 31-32: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard see that a person took and sowed in a field. It is the smallest of seeds, yet when full grown; it is the largest of plants. It becomes a large bush, and the birds of the sky come and dwell in its branches.”  Blessed are the millions of Catholics in the United States who have dwelt and continue to dwell in the shade of our women religious.