There was no telegram, no heavenly choir, no lighting flash across the sky with my name on it. I did not play “nun” as a child, have a mystical experience at my first communion, nor pore over Butler’s Lives of the Saints. School dances, dating and college parties probably occupied more of my time as a young person than anything particularly religious” (Notwithstanding the Halloween party I hosted at my college apartment that featured a Mary Magdalene “before and after” duo in costume!) The only religious woman I had met through High School was a rather grumpy confirmation teacher. Needless to say I was not impressed.
I knew my parents to be people of faith, and as a family were more or less regular churchgoers. Mom lived her devotional life quietly and simply. Dad enjoyed reading history and philosophy and was always willing to enter into a spirited debate as I began to question and wrestle with “Truth” (admittedly in the presumptuous and arrogant way peculiar to a family’s first college student). Living my faith was more important to me at some times than others – going through successive phases of religiosity, indifference, curiosity, skepticism, involvement.
It was during college, as I became more involved in campus ministry and Mass attendance, that I was asked twice if I had ever considered religious life. My response to Sr. Mary when she posed the question was a polite if direct “no way.” My response to my friend Terri was probably less polite, more direct, and not exactly quotable! Yet, through all this time, God was indeed doing what God does best – tending to the seeds of love that God plants in the heart of every believer. That is, after all, what a “vocation” is – the growth of the divine according to God’s plan for each person as a co-worker in the building of the Reign. So despite my original resistance and avoidance, I found myself more and more attracted to God’s plan for me.
This was a plan that was not revealed instantly, but for me very gradually. I joined a volunteer program at a summer camp, and found great joy as well as challenge in serving children from Appalachia. The community experience of living, working and praying with other volunteers opened my heart and my mind to the possibility of a life-long commitment to service in Jesus’ name. I was afforded the opportunity to consider a number of lay mission programs, but the draw toward a more permanent commitment continued to pull me. I continued to test this inclination by participating in faith based service, parish life, and stayed in communication with several religious congregations.
Finally, after several years of reflecting, praying, dialoging (and not a small amount of “hemming and hawing”) I asked to enter the formation program of the Canossian Daughters of Charity in 1991. The Sisters received me as a temporary professed member in 1994, and allowed me to make final vows in 1999. I have been blessed over and over in ways that only God could have imagined for me – in ministry, in formation, in community. The challenges and difficulties have been as real as they are in the living of any vocation – and real too has been God’s presence in those. Thanks to everyone here at St. Brendan Parish for being part of the continuing unfolding of my vocation story!
Sr. Sharon Brannen, FdCC
