In Peace, Sister M Guadalupe (updated with new photo)

The strawberries were the worst.

That's what she told me that evening when I went to the massage chair in the infirmary living room in hope of some relief from a backache. Sister Mary Guadalupe was there in her wheelchair, watching Lidia Bastianich on TV.  A ripe strawberry from the dessert prep filled the screen and Sister Guadalupe sighed, remembering.

For the second time in a matter of weeks (and the third time since November), the Lord has visited our community somewhat unexpectedly to lead a sister away from this valley of tears. For Sister Guadalupe, many of those tears were shed in the strawberry fields of south Texas.

Image byjogiland24 from Pixabay.com

She had been born in the San Antonio region into a migrant worker family, and they traveled with the crops. But the strawberries were the worst. "We would finally finish the field, and it was so hot, the ones we passed over in the morning were ripe and we had to do it all over again!" she told me that evening. (With Spanish as her first language, she never lost her charming accent, though she spoke English and Italian fluently.)

I first met Sister Guadalupe when I was a new postulant, and she was the head mechanic in the publishing house bindery. With her quick, firm steps, and wearing that red plaid apron over her habit, she could fix anything (and the missing part of finger only went to prove that she wasn't afraid of trying to fix anything). She spent years in our bookstore communities, too, of course. I remember her especially as being in San Francisco—now moved to Menlo Park—and Charleston. In carrying out our media mission, it was a special joy for Sr Mary Guadalupe to bring our books to the families in migrant camps. (Truth to tell, when you listen to the sisters who did the migrant camp visits, it sounds like the most apostolically satisfying of all the forms of our mission.)

When age and health and, I'm sure, the wear and tear of migrant life in her own youth caught up with her, it was necessary for her to come to Boston where we have the nursing staff and facilities that make it possible for our sisters to carry on, as we say, "in life and in the apostolate," uniting prayer, action and suffering in one offering to the Lord.

Instead of fixing bindery equipment, Sister Guadalupe made rosaries. And when her fingers could no longer grip the pliers with enough force to close the wire securely, we got her a...machine! She was back in her element, but this time in the senior sisters' workshop rather than the book bindery.

One of my happiest recent memories of Sister Mary Guadalupe is from her 60th Jubilee. We celebrate jubilees in grand style, but for this one we went all out. As many sisters as could keep a secret were in on it: We were cutting back the flower budget and hiring a mariachi band to come in after Communion to play a traditional song.

The whole jubilee Mass went ahead as usual, with songs and preaching and the jubilarians renewing their vows in a group. And then a prayerful silence after the Communion hymn (while the musicians tip-toed up the side aisle and positioned themselves right in front of Sister Mary Guadalupe!). ...  Sister Guadalupe's reaction was priceless.

Last night she complained of feeling particularly weak, and pulled the cord on the infirmary alarm to signal for the nurse's assistance. As soon as the nurse had helped her to bed, Sister Mary Guadalupe breathed forth her soul in perfect peace. (It was a tender gift from the Heavenly Father; she would have hated to have been fussed over through a lingering debilitation.)

Please join us as we pray for our three recently departed sisters: Sister Mary Domenica, Sister Mary Bernadette, and Sister Mary Guadalupe, and also for five of our Pauline brothers in the US who have died in these same past months: Father Jeffrey, Brother Paschal, Brother Kevin, Brother Lawrence, and Brother Robert (the last three in New York, all presumably with the coronavirus). May they rest in peace, and may they join the ranks of the Pauline apostles in heaven who intercede for all users and producers of media!