God's Call to Me
by Sister Kathleen McDonagh, IWBS

My call from God to be a Sister came very quietly and unobtrusively when I was a young child, perhaps five or six years old. The angel Gabriel did not appear to me. There were neither storms nor fireworks. There was just a quiet thought planted in my heart by God, a thought that grew and developed and gradually became a conviction, "I want to be a Sister."

At the time, the only Sisters I had met were the Sisters of the Holy Faith who taught me in school in Dublin, Ireland. Surprisingly, however, and without being able to formulate a reason, I did not want to be a Holy Faith Sister. The Sisters were wonderful persons and excellent teachers, but inexplicably, I did not want to join them. Although I did not know it, that too was part of God's plan.

When I was eight years old, I met my first Sister of the Incarnate Word and Blessed Sacrament from Corpus Christi, Texas, Sister John Baptist Lyons. She was my father's cousin and was in Ireland from Texas for her first home visit after seventeen years in the convent. She stayed in our home for about ten days, and her joy and evident happiness won my heart. I told my mother, "I want to be a Sister just like Sister Baptist!" I did not yet know where Texas was, but wherever it was, I was going there. In addition to Sister John Baptist, my father's two sisters, Sisters Margaret Mary and Anna Maria, and his niece, Sister Philomena, were also Sisters of the Incarnate Word in Texas, so there were strong family ties there. The goal of becoming a Sister of the Incarnate Word remained with me throughout my school years.

The Second World War came, and none of the Sisters could travel to Ireland. Therefore, I did not meet any other Sisters of the Incarnate Word from the time I was eight until I was sixteen. But in my junior year in high school., the message came. The war was over. Travel was possible again, and a group of Sisters was coming to visit Ireland in the summer time. The group included my aunt, Sister Anna Maria, and my cousin, Sister Philomena. My mother was not too happy at the thought of my leaving home without having finished high school, but neither did she want me to travel alone to the United States the next year. So the decision was made. My cousin, Tess Brehony, also entering the convent, and I would travel to Texas with the Sisters and we would enter Incarnate Word Convent, Corpus Christi. That worked well for me. I did my senior year at Incarnate Word Academy, Corpus Christi, while I was a postulant, and by the time graduation came, I was already a novice.

For me, the life of a Sister has been one of challenge as well as of joy and happiness. There was the challenge of adjustment in the early years – the adjustments that convent life always calls for plus adjustments from the Irish to the American way of life. But with God's grace, I made these adjustments and had a sense of belonging from the beginning. It was difficult to be so far from my close-knit family in the era when trans-Atlantic phone calls were rare, and there were no faxes or e-mail. I was not present for many important family events: the ordination of two brothers to the priesthood, the profession of two sisters as Sisters of the Holy Faith, the wedding of my third sister, the death of a beloved grandfather who had made his home with us for thirty-five years.

After having been in the United States for just six years, I was missioned to Brownsville, Texas. There the double culture of life in a border town was almost as much of a change as coming to the United States from Ireland had been in the first place. On my first evening in Brownsville, I was in Our Lady of Guadalupe Church where I would be the organist for the next six years. All the prayers and hymns were in Spanish, and I did not know one word of Spanish. Eventually I found my time at Guadalupe to be immensely enriching. I learned not only some Spanish, but also the religious traditions of the Mexican people, how to follow the Mass in Spanish, and the ordinary hymns and prayers of the people. But that first night, I wondered if I would ever be able to understand anything of the liturgy in Spanish

Challenges, yes, but the joys of religious life have also been numerous. Spiritually, the focus of the Sisters of the Incarnate Word on the Person of Jesus, the Incarnate Word, was and is very special to me. I was particularly happy to discover that the second part of the title of the Order was Blessed Sacrament since I had always had a special devotion to the Blessed Sacrament. To have time for prayer, to engage in spiritual reading, to have the support of community life and a rich ministry were all graces for me.

In religious life, I have received a superb education with masters' degrees in mathematics and theology, and additional teaching fields in music and English. In parochial and private schools, I have taught on all levels from primary grades through high school. On a diocesan level, for thirty years, I taught Scripture and theology to adults. To help adults grow in the knowledge and love of God and to see their delight as the riches of Scripture are opened up to them has been a most rewarding experience.

Among the developments that were most surprising for me was my having to pick up on my high school French (not my favorite subject at the time I was taking it) to work on the translation of the writings of our French foundress, Jeanne Chézard de Matel. This has become a 30+ years project which has led me into many fields – theological reflection, writing and teaching on Jeanne's life and the history of the Order and travel to Incarnate Word sites throughout the United States and in Mexico, France, Rome, and Kenya. In 1981, I joined in on the work on the Cause of Beatification of the foundress, a project which took me to Rome each summer from 1981 through 1986, and to which I continue to contribute from the United States. Yes, my life has been rich indeed.

In 1994, however, there occurred an event which gave me a new perspective. One beautiful spring morning, as I was coming out of Padre-Staples Mall, I tripped and fell, breaking both my wrists. One has not tasted dependence until one cannot use either hand. I had to move into our infirmary where nurses could take care of me because there seemed to be nothing I could do by myself without the use of at least one hand. Not quite nothing, however, I discovered. I could still pray. As a result, the six weeks in which my wrists were in casts became a prolonged retreat. And my "important" action-packed projects? Some kind person did the few that absolutely had to be done. The rest remained unfinished until I was able to get back to them. And if for some reason, I had never gotten back to them, they would never have been finished. And no one would have been any the wiser. Those were sobering thoughts. What is most important? Not the busy-ness of life, not our endless activity, but our relationship with the Lord. He may or may not will that I continue to work actively for Him in the years ahead. I am absolutely certain He does will for me to grow ever closer to Him in a relationship of love.