Features
Four Religious Sisters to Celebrate Jubilees
On Saturday, January 30th, the Most Reverend Michael F. Burbidge, Bishop of Raleigh, will celebrate Mass at Sacred Heart Cathedral for four Religious Sisters celebrating milestones of service in 2010.
Sister Grace Campbell, IHM - 50 Years
Sister Grace is a Sister Servant of the Immaculate Heart of Mary of Scranton, PA. She met her Congregation in first grade and wanted to be an IHM Sister from that time. Her deeply prayerful family fully supported her entry into the Congregation, even though as the youngest she might have been the one to care for them in their elder years. Sister loved teaching, especially first grade, and she served as principal for three years.
It was during these years that she began visiting the sick at the hospital next door to the convent. In time, she realized that she was called to serve the infirm and studied for her Clinical Pastoral Education certificate. After twelve years as a hospital chaplain, she became pastoral administrator at St. Elizabeth Parish in Farmville, NC. Her pastoral experience led her to study spiritual gerontology or a deepening of spirituality for people who are retired or ill. “God saves the best for last,” she claims, and she delights in the opportunity she now has to provide faith formation and encourage a deepened relationship with God for the people of St. Paul’s Parish in New Bern.
Sister Grace prays the mission/direction statement of her Congregation every morning: “To continue the redeeming mission of Jesus Christ by reaching out to all God’s people in joyful, loving, hospitable service.” Founded by Mother Theresa Maxis, a woman with both Haitian and British roots, her Congregation has a special concern for diversity and the inclusion of all people. She recounts that the IHM Sisters came to North Carolina to teach African American children during the period of Jim Crow in the South, and now the Sisters have a special concern for Spanish-speaking newcomers. Her own life is energized by her prayer, the Eucharist and love of the Blessed Mother. A favorite Scripture passage is, “I came that you may have life and have it more abundantly.” She finds her community and those whom she serves to be life giving. The future of religious life will look different, she believes, but women of warm, hospitable, selfless service will remain at the heart of the Church.
Sister Mary Jean Korejwo, SND – 50 Years
Sister Mary Jean is a member of the Sisters of Notre Dame of Chardon, Ohio. St. Julie Billiart founded the Sisters of Notre Dame, which branched out to form three Congregations. One of these was the Sisters of Notre Dame of Coesfeld, Germany. In 1874, a group of these Sisters arrived in Cleveland, Ohio to escape the Kulterkampf under the Prussian leader, Otto von Bismark. In Ohio, the Sisters opened schools guided by their vision to “proclaim the goodness of God and His provident care.”
Sister Mary Jean met these Sisters when she attended Notre Dame College of Ohio, and she was attracted by their care and concern for the young women they taught. Sister particularly recalls the Congregation’s consistent message that “God is good and not to be feared”. Sister Mary Jean began teaching high school biology and math as soon as she made first vows and continued for 37 years: 13 in the Diocese of Cleveland, 21 in the Diocese of Youngstown and three years at Cardinal Gibbons High School in Raleigh. Sister continued ministering at Cardinal Gibbons as a member of the Development Office for eight years, and now serves as an administrative assistant in business and admissions.
The great gift to Sister has been the people she has come in contact with in her ministries and communities. She believes in immersing herself in her current community, and she is buoyed in her faith and prayer by four other Sisters of Notre Dame in the Raleigh area. Her spirituality and strong ties to her Notre Dame Congregation sustain her, and she travels to Chardon four or five times each year for Congregational activities.
While Sister Mary Jean is not certain what the life of apostolic women religious will look like in the coming years, she suspects it will resemble the kind of inter-Congregational ministry and spiritual support that is seen among the Sisters of so many different Congregations in the Raleigh Diocese. She believes that personal commitment to God and openness to what God calls her to be are the ways in which she can best nourish the Catholic communities where she lives and ministers. Her lifelong motto comes from the Acts of the Apostles: “Silver and gold, I have not, but what I have I give.”
Sister Helene Therese Mc Groarty, IHM – 50 Years
Sister Helene Therese is a member of the Sister Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary of Philadelphia. She explained the spirit of her Congregation with the words from the mission statement that the Sisters live a life of “creative hope, fidelity and imitation of Mary; they radiate joyful service and Gospel values through evangelization, catechesis, and teaching.”
In her sophomore year in high school, Sister yearned to serve in the missions. After considering several missionary communities, she joined the IHM Sisters, who had been her teachers and models for religious life. Her family was a bit surprised but offered no resistance to Sister’s life choice.
Over 30 years of her ministry have been spent in Latin America as a teacher. She taught religion in high school and in summers went into the jungle to do pastoral work and teach catechetics. She collaborated with the local Jesuit community by teaching in two Fe y Alegria (Faith and Joy) schools for the very poor, beginning one school year in a shack made of straw. (She loved it!) At one point Sister returned to the U.S. to support her aging father. During this time, she ministered in Shenandoah with the Spanish-speaking community before returning to Chile.
While she was teaching in Chile she learned that Bishop Burbidge was searching for Sisters with Spanish language skills. Sister talked with Monsignor O’Connor, Pastor of St. Michael’s in Cary, about the needs of the Spanish-speaking community of St. Michael’s and returned to the U.S. to serve there. Sister works with others on the parish team to provide faith formation, retreats, RCIA, hospice and family visiting to the Spanish-speaking parishioners. On two evenings a week, Sister and a co-worker go to the trailer parks, where many of these parishioners live, to say the Rosary with them and to encourage them. They hold Bible classes for these parishioners, and during the summer, they offer faith formation for the children.
She claims that the people she serves and those she serves with have sustained her and made her a better person. She is grateful for all the spiritual benefits she has received through her beloved IHM community. She says that she is full of hope and at peace about the future of religious life because “God has brought us this far and will continue to lead us.”
Sister Mary Margaret Filan, IHM - 40 Years
Sister Mary Margaret Filan is a member of the Sister Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary of Philadelphia. This community was founded in 1845 in Michigan by Fr. Louis Florent Gillet, a Redemptorist priest, with the teachings of St. Alphonsus Liguori as the spiritual root of the Congregation. The Sisters were invited in 1859 to come to Philadelphia by St. John Neumann, Bishop of Philadelphia and also a Redemptorist priest. There they established schools for education in the Gospel, from primary years through higher education at Immaculata College. Raised by loving Catholic parents, Sister received her family’s blessing to enter the Congregation and her happiness in the novitiate convinced them she was doing God’s Will.
Sister Mary Margaret was taught by the IHM Sisters and became interested in the missions when she heard talks about them. A few years after her profession, she went to Latin America where she spent over 20 years ministering in Chile and Peru. Sister taught music and religion in San Antonio de Mujeres in Callao, Peru, and supported the liturgies at her parish church with her music. Returning to the U.S. for a period, Sister ministered as a Director of Religious Education in a Levittown, Pa. parish with a large contingent of Spanish speakers. After returning to Villa Maria in Chile, she learned that Bishop Burbidge was looking for Spanish-speaking Sisters to minister in North Carolina. Missioned to St. Bernadette’s in Fuquay Varina, Sister is the director of religious education to the Spanish-speaking parishioners, children and adults, in a catechetical program that includes 1000 children and celebrates forty baptisms a month. Sister serves in parish outreach services to families and nursing homes; she helps prepare young women for their quinceanera ceremonies and arranges the altar server schedule for the Masses in Spanish.
Sister is sustained by her prayer and community, her love for Our Blessed Mother, the Rosary and the Eucharist. These, she believes, will be the bedrock of any future form of religious life. She considers Sisters as Daughters of the Church and she treasures her years in community, calling it a “jewel, to be able to transmit the gift of faith.”