Convent update

The summer season in our Pauline community is generally the time for the celebrations of vows and jubilees, as well as entrance into novitiate. This centenary summer has than the usual number of celebrations: we already marked our centenary in a solemn way with Cardinal O'Malley, and shortly after that witnessed Sr Emi Magnificat's perpetual profession of vows.

This Saturday we will celebrate our sisters' Jubilees: Sister Mary Jerome and Sister Hosea mark 25 years of vowed life; Sister Mary Agnes, 60 years, and 99-year-old Sister Mary Augusta, 75 years. The next day, the novitiate will expand to welcome three young women who have completed the two-year postulancy in St. Louis. And then on Monday, we will witness (as far as possible in this life) the completion of that journey, laying to rest Sister Mary Gabriella, who slipped away from this life while I was home visiting my family. The death notice sent to all the communities noted that Sister Mary Gabriella (who had been declining visibly all year, but was still mostly mobile) did not finish her journey here without first finishing dessert: thin as a rail, she had a prodigious sweet tooth and her local superior had brought a last, welcome treat up to her room just hours before she died.

Some years back, I asked Sister Mary Gabriella a bit of her vocation story, and a few anecdotes about her life as a Pauline, including her experience as a missionary in Pakistan.


May she rest in peace.