‘All He wants is for you to come to Him’ to enter ‘an incredible adventure,’ the sisters reflect
By Jay Sorgi
for the Register
Their backgrounds and journeys couldn’t be any more different than they already are, spanning nearly 9,000 miles from Steubenville, Ohio to Las Vegas and Ho Chi Minh City.
Yet these three sisters, professing final vows in three different religious orders in the Catholic Diocese of Lincoln, each share a deep, integrative, lifelong devotion to Christ, a longing that could only be solved by God, and as one of them put it, “attraction of my heart for religious life.”
Their stories remind all of the infinite ways God can reach His people, speak to their hearts and call them to deeper, lifelong communion with Him in the unique, individual journeys of lives together in Christ.
Sister Maria Thérèse Vi, CMRM
The Congregation of the Missionary Sisters of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Queen of Mercy
Final vows professed June 20
She felt the calling to be a teacher. But after 12 years leading the classroom, she felt something missing, a deep struggle of mental health that spurred her toward her true calling.
“I got depression. I got stressful, very stressful at the time,” Sister Maria Thérèse said about the struggles she endured in her late 20s while living in Vietnam. “God showed me something missing in my heart.”
She said she returned to her hometown, and three days with her mom led her to encounter Christ’s mother and a time of spiritual healing that saved her life.
“We cannot do anything, but with God’s help we can do anything,” she said. “Don’t believe we can do everything by ourselves. Just depend on God, and ask Mother Mary.”
A greater calling to encounter Christ in the Eucharist helped her start to pray about religious life, and she was led to the Congregation of the Missionary Sisters of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Queen of Mercy, whose motherhouse is based in Hóc Môn, a suburban district of Ho Chi Minh City.
The order, traditionally including women from Vietnam, centers its mission to extend the mercy shared through the Blessed Mother. Its apostolates include child care, education, health care, pastoral care and social work.
Sister Maria Thérèse stayed at the Hóc Môn motherhouse for a year of discernment in parts of 2016 and 2017, and was led by the order to come to Lincoln, where she has spent the last nine years in immersive formation. The order’s local motherhouse is in southeast Lincoln, near St. Michael Church and School.
“The sisters get familiar with the work and the culture here,” she said. “Everything was very new to me, but I can accept it. I can visit Jesus in the Eucharist when I finish my duties.”
She said her formation called her to be little, to embody the order’s charism to be childlike, wherein God, through the Blessed Mother, can offer protection and day-by-day improvement of life.
That 10-year ramp-up led to June 20, a day where her new life in Christ launched, as her earthly mother traveled to Lincoln and her Heavenly mother saw her give her whole life to her Son.
She will now focus her life in a different type of classroom setting, one which has led to a vocation of child care and duties within her convent.
“If you follow God,” she said simply, “God will provide.”
Sister Gabriel Perry, M.S.
The Marian Sisters of the Diocese of Lincoln
Final Profession of Vows Saturday, Aug. 1, 2 p.m. at the Cathedral of the Risen Christ in Lincoln
God is still unveiling the reasons why Sister Gabriel is living her new life with the Marian Sisters, carrying that new first name. It sounds like the continually-unveiled truth the Blessed Mother received over her life as mother of the Savior.
Sister Gabriel gets to live the mission of someone whose life gives messages of hope and of consolation, and of strength, the very messages the Virgin Mary received from the angel with the same name.
“At the moment at the Annunciation, God the Father would have directed the Archangel Gabriel to go down to Mary to tell her that the Holy Spirit will come upon you and conceive a son, Jesus,” she said. “Being bestowed that name is very, very cool and very humbling.”
She said she feels especially humbled as someone who didn’t grow up Catholic, someone surrounded in suburban Las Vegas by members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, someone who was initially “scared” by Christianity.
But 2012 opened her door to the Catholic faith while attending the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, supporting the faiths of her roommate and her then-boyfriend. In 2014, she entered the Rite of Christian Initiation to fully join the faith. Four years later, she joined the Marian Sisters, a diocesan order focused on serving local needs. She works with St. Gianna Women’s Home which serves women and children fleeing abusive situations.
Just like the Virgin Mary experienced the literal new life of Christ inside her, this new Marian Sister is experiencing her own symbolic yet real version in wedding her very life to God.
“The word ‘new’ life is very, very applicable and very much a phrase that has been on my heart and in my prayer over the last few months,” she said, adding that she believes we’re never qualified for whatever vocation we’re called to, but we should simply respond to Him.
“Who am I that the Lord should pick me to be His own? Leading up to my final vows has been just a confirmation and a solidifying (that) He did pick me, and He wants me as I am, with my flaws and with my virtues and vices and everything, strengths and weaknesses. He chose me and gave me the grace to respond, to say yes.”
And she added, “All He wants is for you to come to Him.”
Sister Mary Chiara Middendorf, CK
The School Sisters of Christ the King
Profession of Perpetual Vows: Sunday, Aug. 2, 2 p.m. at the Cathedral of the Risen Christ
Quincy, Illinois; Steubenville, Akron and Parma, Ohio; and Columbus, Nebraska don’t necessarily convey adventure like Las Vegas or Vietnam. But for Sister Mary Chiara, those locales have given her a journey that, in her words, has gently shown her that Christ is the king of her life.
“It’s kind of unreal like how much Jesus has planted seeds and allowed them to flourish throughout the years, and then particularly through these past eight years of formation,” she said.
Now, she steps into a life with Lincoln’s own School Sisters of Christ the King as she professes final vows Aug. 2.
“It’s also really, clearly Jesus’ next step,” said the young woman molded by St. Isidore Church in Columbus, as well as the Regnum Christi movement in Ohio.
“The reality that Jesus is King was so naturally planted in my heart: ‘I brought your family there for you, and to help you know that I am your King.’ From there, it was just this really natural openness that He created in my heart for our charism of living joyful fidelity to Christ the King.”
An encounter at Franciscan University in Steubenville as a high schooler cemented that charism inside her. She saw Christ in the Blessed Sacrament being processed and her fellow young people feeling that joy, but she struggled to feel it and felt angry at God that the feeling wasn’t coming to her.
“My eyes were closed, and when I opened them, Father was inches in front of me with Jesus. I looked at Jesus and could feel Him looking back at me. I felt overwhelmed by His love for me, that He loves me personally,” she said.
“I asked him, ‘Lord, how can I respond? I can never respond fully, but how can I respond fully?’ I heard him say with my heart, ‘Give Me yourself.’ It seemed like his desire in that request met my desire.”
Sister Mary Chiara overcame further encounters of fear of entering religious life during high school and college, but Christ confirmed through countless moments of peace that He wants her to commit to Him, 100 percent, through the religious life.
“He wants me particularly to be with Him at every moment of every day, whether it’s the Good Friday moments or the Resurrection moments,” she said.
She said she truly believes that each stop on her journey, and every stop on each person’s own path, can become a place of finding Christ and His grace, a spot that molds us to the will of a Savior who is both King and Brother.
“Each of the places he brings us shapes our hearts, so that we can be more like him and belong more and more to him,” she said.
“When we say yes to Jesus, it is an incredible adventure.”
