The road to religious life

Sister Rejane  
This Random Nun Clip is brought to you by A Nun's Life Ministry.

Sister Maxine  
We're on a Motherhouse Road Trip at the US province of the Sisters of the Holy Family of Nazareth in Des Plaines, Illinois. Joining us are Sister Michele Fisher and Sister Michael Marie Franzak. Here at A Nun's Life, we're often asked about vocations, whether it's a vocation to religious life, or to married life or to parenthood, all these vocations that God calls us to. And we get a lot of questions about how one might discern a vocation. And so we would like to turn to you two and maybe we can start with you first, Sister, and tell us a little bit about how you discerned your vocation, first of all, to religious life, and then to education.

Sister Michael Marie  
I can't help but think back to my story when I talk about discerning my religious vocation, because my grandmother was very influential in our lives. Her spirituality was very simple, yet it was strong. And we spent a lot of time with my grandmother. I think it was from her that that I learned to be very service-minded, to look out for the other person and make time for other people and just be available. And service is a very important part in religious life, in our life as Christians. And then of course, my family. I have two brothers and a sister and my brothers and my sister and my mom and dad, we were inseparable as we were growing up, we did everything together. And even now with mom and dad in heaven, my brothers and my sister and I are very close. And we spend a lot of time together just enjoying the holidays, reminiscing, never a time goes by when we get together and we don't talk about all the good people in our lives who were influential, our family members. I know that it was from my family that the whole idea of community and caring about each other and taking care of each other, in good times, and not so good times. So we really were brought up to love one another. And then I had the wonderful fortune of attending one of our fine schools, that was staffed by the Sisters of the Holy Family of Nazareth in inner city Chicago. And it was when I was in third grade that Sister Brasilia, my third-grade teacher, asked us to prepare a presentation on what we want it to be when we grew up. I was in third grade, so I really wasn't sure. But there was something about the sisters that always excited me and made me want to find out more. And in my particular parish school, we had about 2400 students in the school. So there were sisters, there were no lay teachers at that time. So there had to be at least 50, 50-plus sisters living --

Sister Maxine  
Well, with 2400 students --

Sister Michael Marie  
Yeah, at least that many. So they would come into church two by two, two by two, two by two, will this line ever end! It was just a really exciting time for me, to know them, to be with them, to be able to pray with them, to be challenged by them. And well, when I put that presentation together, that I wanted to be a sister, my third grade teacher never let me forget that but neither did my brothers. They started teasing me and, you know, all the other things that go along with that. But it was from that time on that I really started to get serious about being with them, wanting to be like them, wanting to live like them, doing what they were doing. And that's probably why I became a teacher, because when it was time for us to be educated in religious life, we were given two opportunities, either nursing or education. And I knew that nursing wasn't going to be too good for me. So I said, I better do the teaching part. And in all of those years, I always went back to how I felt when I was a student and how the sisters made us feel comfortable and how they were always present and supportive and encouraging through my grade school years.

Sister Maxine  
So that personal contact was really crucial. And watching how the sisters were with you and with one another was a powerful influence, it sounds like.

Sister Michael Marie  
So I would say, to discern religious life, we need to be with people who do what you're interested in and to see how you can fit in with that particular lifestyle.

Sister Maxine  
Sister Michele, can you tell us a little bit about your vocation story, your journey here to religious life and this congregation?

Sister Michele  
Well, I have to say it starts at the very beginning. And looking back on it now, I can see God's hand from the very start. I was adopted when I was a week old. So my birth parents weren't able to take care of me. But my adoptive parents welcomed me to their family. And the parish priest used to come and visit us. They'd visit mom and dad to make sure they were doing a good job. And so Father Jones would bring the church ladies to our house over and over again. And when it came time for me to go to school, he said to my parents, "You better get her into Catholic school." So Father Jones made sure that I got into Catholic school by the time I was in third grade. And it was there that I met the Sisters of St. Joseph of Philadelphia. They staffed the school, and it didn't take long for me to get to know them. And they invited us to come help in the classroom, eventually to clean the convent. My mother still to this day probably would say you never cleaned your room, but you would clean anything and everything in the convent for the sisters. But as an only child, this was my first experience of sisters, and their joy and their happiness of being together -- whether they were teaching or working or playing -- was very attractive to me. So probably from the time I was in third grade, this religious life -- even though I couldn't necessarily identify it -- was very much a part of me. And I desired it and so I spent time with the sisters, probably more than they would have liked. [laughter] I was always knocking at their door. But then they started to knock at mine and invite me to do things. I got my first paycheck for teaching first grade when I was a freshman in high school.

Sister Maxine  
Oh nice.

Sister Michele  
So a lot of good adventures in school. I went to a diocesan high school in Pottsville, Pennsylvania. Yay Pottsville.

Sister Maxine  
I do know Pottsville. I think we might have been in Pottsville at one time.

Sister Michele  
Oh, great place. Nativity BVM. And it was there I met one Sister of the Holy Family. She was my Spanish teacher freshman year. She was the only Nazareth Sister on the faculty. And she was reassigned after freshman year and all of us loved her. She was young and fun and loved the kids. And we were a little sad when she was reassigned to Philadelphia. But we kept in touch. And she wrote to me the entire time I was in high school. When I went to college at Chestnut Hill in Philadelphia, she said, "Oh, I live close by. Maybe I'll come see you." And so she began to visit. And I didn't know it, but she was the vocation director. [laughter] So little by little, she was introducing me to Nazareth. And I very willingly went, and a good way through college, they invited me to become a non-resident affiliate, which meant that I was a regular college student. So Thursday night, frat party, Friday night, convent. [laughter]

Sister Maxine  
It all works together.

Sister Michele  
It all works together.

Sister Maxine  
God can do that.

Sister Michele  
And so I did that for two years. And upon graduating, the sisters invited me to work with them at a school in Puerto Rico. So I moved from Philadelphia to Puerto Rico, lived with the sisters and one thing just fell into place. And here I am, 25 years later. But I have to say another influence in my early life was being a Girl Scout. I used to go to summer camp, and spent many years there. After being a kid at camp, I was also a counselor. And it was there that I learned to see God in everything, and especially to see God in myself. I didn't have a lot of self-confidence as a kid, believe it or not, I was shy once. But that camp experience and the scouting experience really turned me on to something that was going on inside. And so we have to pay attention to those ordinary things that we do, because that's where God is. And the thing that sold me about the Nazareth Sisters is that three of them actually came to visit me one day at Girl Scout camp. And the day they came, they were wearing these beautiful white summer habits. They no sooner pulled into the campgrounds when the skies opened up, and we had a downpour. And so we dressed them up in giant sized garbage bags and took them around camp. And I thought, you know, any community that's willing to do that for me, I think I can live with them. So that was a selling point.

Sister Maxine  
Oh, that's a great story, too.

Sister Rejane  
To hear full episodes of A Nun's Life podcasts, visit the podcast page at anunslife.org/podcasts.

This transcript has been lightly edited for readability.