Sister Helen Prejean, CSJ, is a Sister of Saint Joseph and has worked tirelessly against the death penalty. She wrote Dead Man Walking which became a film directed by Tim Robbins and starring Susan Sarandon. Because the book and film provoked much discussion and debate about the death penalty, Tim Robbins and Sister Helen began offering the stage play for college and university students as a way “to further widen the circle of public discourse on the death penalty”. Their project is called The Dead Man Walking School Theatre Project.

Here are some selections from a blog post by Rose Mohan, a BFA student at Naropa University, who is learning the role of Sister Helen Prejean:

I thought I was going to have to tone down my feistiness in order to be able to play a nun. Turns out, I have to find new heights of grit in order to be able to do justice to the character of Sister Prejean in Dead Man Walking. In almost every scene, Prejean manages to slice through what she perceives to be someone else’s delusions. She really holds her own with those hard-shelled prison men. I’m still working on getting there; sanely. One day after rehearsal I was so fired up that I had to walk out of the building jumping and punching the air.
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I have learned so much in this process already. I grew up mildly Christian and when I go to church it still leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth. I don’t want some old white guy telling me what to do, as if he understands faith better than I do. A lot of the messages are beautiful but there is no way anyone can convince me that the church provides the only way to God.

Sister Prejean is so refreshing to me because she is not afraid to openly question her faith, to form her own relationship to God outside of the church, to trust her own sense of what is right. It takes a lot of strength to hold one’s faith and be able to question at the same time. But if we are not willing to question, how can we learn?

I also really appreciate her humanness. My acting teacher expressed that she is a gritty, tenacious woman first and a nun second. Throughout the play we see that Prejean makes mistakes, feels afraid, experiences loneliness, questions the authority of the church and her own involvement in prison work and expresses dislike for someone she is trying to help. She is just an ordinary person who has made a commitment that has changed the orientation of her life. I am taking some cues from Prejean — how to not back down, how to be curious, how to continue when you don’t know.

(Do I have to be a nun? post from the Naropa BFA Performance News blog)

It is very cool to see how learning about Sister Helen and playing her can be such a transformative experience. I also like how Rose describes what I would call a “vocation” to performance. It strikes me as being very similar to the calling of wanting to give one’s life to something more, something that is bigger than us like “truth” and “goodness” and “beauty” … and God.

I am beginning to understand why people devote their lives to performance. It is like following an elusive and beckoning beast to try to convey something that means something, something that makes sense of all the somethings that happen to a person. We keep trying to hit something that is the ultimate truth, but of course, that is impossible, and yet it also doesn’t feel far away. It is like truth is already there just watching you try to make a model of it and you can always feel how close you come. I hope that we will capture some part of truth in what we are making.

For more information about Naropa University’s performance of Dead Man Walking as well as other actors’ thoughts, check out Tim Robbins play coming to Naropa in the Boulder Reporter (March 26, 2010).

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Join A Nun’s Life Community for prayer today via a live podcast at http://aNunsLife.org/LIVE at 6 p.m. Central Time (check your time zone)

Happy NUNDAY! Nundays are Monday blog posts that feature photos of real Catholic sisters and nuns. Today we have a lovely tribute from Shannon Spicciati about her nun, Sister Joan Sobala, SSJ.

Last summer I had the opportunity to re-connect with a very special nun, Joan Sobala, SSJ. Her community is Sisters of St. Joseph of Rochester, NY.

I met Sister Joan when I was a student at the Eastman School of Music, and attending St. Mary’s parish in downtown Rochester. She was the pastoral associate of the parish at that time. She came into my life at a fragile time for me, spiritually speaking. I had grown dissatisfied with my Catholic faith, and was ready to search for something different. I knew faith was important in my life, but I hadn’t felt connected to the parish my family attended. But, several girls from my dorm hall were going to Mass the first week I spent in Rochester, so I went along.

It was an entirely new experience for me – wonderful music, a community that immediately embraced us newcomers, and a woman (Sister Joan) giving the scriptural reflection! I felt as though she was speaking directly to me, and with such wisdom. I became involved at St. Mary’s in music, and it really was my home away from home during the 4 years I spent in Rochester.

Sister Joan and Helen Halligan (the music minister at St. Mary’s) traveled to Hillsboro, OR, when my husband and I got married in 1995, and both took part in our wedding. This past summer of 2009 was the first time I had seen Sister Joan since our wedding, and it was wonderful to get together in person. She will always be my example of “living faith”.

The photo attached shows L-R, Sister Joan, Helen Halligan, Shannon and her husband Alan at Highland Park, Rochester, NY.

To see all the photos of Catholic sisters and nuns and links to their stories, visit the A Nun’s Life Facebook photo album. If you’ve got a photo and story (how you know Sister) of a real Catholic sister or nun, check out the details on submitting your photo for consideration.

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Join the A Nun’s Life community for prayer at 6 p.m. Central Time (your time zone).

Sister Marguerite Dynski is a Catholic nun, cancer survivor, paraplegic, and doctor. She belongs to the Sisters of Saint Joseph in Rochester, New York. Her story is described a bit in an interview the ABC TV channel 13 in Rochester.

The interview comes shortly after Marguerite’s participation in the Making Strides Against Breast Cancer walk. There are many such walks, runs, fund-raisers and other events this month as October is National Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

Check out the video of Sister Marguerite by clicking on the photo to the right (the link takes you to the channel 13 website where you can see the video). Even though it’s a short segment, I felt such a light and peace coming from this Sister. Next time I’m home to visit my family in Rochester (my home town), I’ll have to look up Sister Marguerite and see if she’ll do an interview for us here at A Nun’s Life!

Found this article about Sister Mary MacKillop on Zenit.org

Sister Mary MacKillop Featured on Coin
1st of Inspirational Australians Series

SYDNEY, Australia, JULY 9, 2008 (Zenit.org) – Australia is honoring Blessed Mary MacKillop, who will likely be the country’s first saint, by featuring her on a collector’s coin.

Senator Nick Sherry, minister for Superannuation and Corporate Law, launched the Sister Mary MacKillop coin Tuesday.

The $1 uncirculated coin is the first of the Royal Australian Mint’s series featuring inspirational Australians, which commemorates unique Australians who have made an extraordinary contribution to the nation.

“As the Australian people’s saint, and someone who could be called Australia’s saint in waiting, Mary MacKillop is a fitting choice for the first coin in the Inspirational Australian series,” said Sherry.

He explained that Royal Australian Mint coin designer Vladimir Gottwald depicted MacKillop as “guiding future generations.”

“Mary was an exceptional Australian woman who stands as an example of great courage, trust and compassion, and as our first saint, she will forever inspire our nation,” said the senator.

Mary MacKillop was born in Victoria in 1842.

She founded the Order of the Sisters of St Joseph, the first religious order to be founded by an Australian.

Under the sister’s guidance, the order established schools and charitable institutions across Australia and was devoted to the care of orphans, neglected children, the homeless, sick and aged. She died in 1909.

Pope John Paul II beatified Sister Mary MacKillop in 1995.

To order the coin go to the Royal Australian Mint.