Sister Mary Louise Mount, IWBS
By Dr. Cecelia Embry

Sister Mary Louise Mount says that if they knew how much joy was to be found in a convent, women would be lined up on the street trying to get in.

When she was growing up in a Methodist family, Mary Louise always felt her vocation was to be a good wife and mother.  Married at eighteen, she was already an accomplished cook and seamstress.  She welcomed her six children and was an attentive and dedicated mother.  But when her husband lost his health, she was obliged to enter the workforce. She became a successful saleswoman and, later, a manager for the World Book Company.

When she was widowed and her children were grown, Mary Louise began to divest herself of her possessions.  She sold the houses she owned and gave her children the things she no longer needed.  She felt that things have a way of owning the people who have them. and she wanted the freedom to nourish her spirit.  She fasted and prayed before attending an Oral Roberts' weekend seminar in Tulsa, Oklahoma, "telling God," she says in her autobiography, "I wanted with all my heart to find His kingdom ... and I would trust him for all else.... I claimed His promise in Matthew 19:29 'that everyone who gives up homes or lands or family for Him will be given a hundred times as much, and will have eternal life. . . .” I didn't dream or imagine how God would answer my prayer.

Although she had lived most of her life in and near Corpus Christi, Texas, she decided, on the invitation of a friend, to retire in Austin, Texas, where she joined a small Evangelical Protestant church.  For a while she was happy, but soon the church split into two factions, and she was no longer comfortable attending it.  She tried to find another church, visiting several denominations over the months, but soon almost a whole year had passed and she was still without a spiritual home.  Feeling anxious and depressed, she was taking a walk one Monday morning when she found herself passing St. Louis Catholic Church on Burnett Road.  She went inside and kneeling there she felt, she says, "a wonderful peace come over me. Every word the priest said in the homily seemed just for me."  She returned the next day and the next day and every day thereafter, happy to have found a church she could attend every day.  Within eight months she had received instructions in the beliefs of the Catholic faith and joined the Church.

Mary Louise was happy in her new faith; she loved being at Mass every morning and she was still involved with family, helping to take care of her grandchildren and helping her son Larry to begin his career as a dentist.  But she still felt restless and unsettled and didn't know what was wrong with her; perhaps, she thought, she was getting sick. It was then that Larry was dreadfully hurt in an accident.  He was lying in the hospital with a broken neck, the doctors unable to say whether he would live or die.  Having already lost two children, Mary Louise felt close to despair and cried out to God that she wished she could take her own life so as not to see her children suffer any more.  She felt she heard God say, "Instead of taking your life, why don't you give it?"

Mary Louise was astonished. She felt awakened by the question. She had been thinking about joining a religious order, but now she felt propelled into action.  She went to visit Sister Angelita, a nun of her acquaintance, and asked her if it would be possible for her to join an Order.  Sister assured her that it was and gave her a book listing many orders all over the country with descriptions of their ministry and qualifications for joining them. She was so eager to get on her way, she began to call the places listed.  Among the listings was that of the Incarnate Word and Blessed Sacrament in Corpus Christi.  Sister felt God urging her to call there. She did and was invited to an interview.

After visiting the Incarnate Word Convent, Mary Louise felt that this was the place that God wanted her to be.  She underwent further interviews and physical exams happily, and promptly gathered the recommendations and other papers she needed to enter the Order. Several months later she joined several others in the House of Discernment (a place near the convent) for a minimum stay of six months before being admitted as a postulant. Their purpose there was to spend time with the Sisters, to attend Mass with them, and to think about the life they were proposing to take up.  Asked to reflect on their core spiritual experiences, Mary Louise consulted her prayer journal and found the following entry:

I asked God to help me give myself to Him in such a way that His work absorbed mine until the two became one; to help me really "let go and let God" into every area of my life, to the end of gaining freedom from the pressures of the world in order to receive the pleasures of his Kingdom  In this way I could produce the fruits He expected my life to bear.  He led me to realize that if I wanted His power in my life, I needed to lay aside the things that distracted me from Him.

The final entry for January 11, 1986 in her journal reads,

"Praise you, dear Lord, You have given me peace in my committing all to you in trust. I enter the convent February first, having been in the House of Discernment since August eleventh."

Sister made her final vows in 1990. Ten years later, writing in her autobiography, she says: