The Vocation of Sr. Anne Marya

I grew up in a Catholic farm family and attended Catholic grade school, even though it meant walking several miles to school each day. Until I was 14 we lived less that a mile from the motherhouse of the Franciscan Sisters of St. Joseph, where my younger sister would enter. We would often attend Sunday Mass there and Midnight Mass at Christmas. Sometimes we would see their postulants and novices –30 or 40 of them- taking recreation by walking along our country road. Occasionally some of the Sisters would visit us and have a snack with my mother. My older brother Joseph would use newspapers to dress me as a Sister, much to their amusement.

At 14, I was stricken with polio and it was thought I would never walk again. My consolation was a large picture Jesus in His Agony in the Garden hanging near my bed. Contemplating it made me want to unite my sufferings with His in the three months I spent in bed. Through a kind of miracle, I was able to walk again and return to school.

As I was to begin my junior year of high school, my mother broke her leg and I had to stay home and care for her and our home. Once she had recovered, I sought employment and would walk several miles to work and home. By leaving home early, I was able to attend Mass and receive Communion every day, and would stop at Church for a visit to the Blessed Sacrament before returning home. I would ask Jesus to show me if He wished me to marry by letting me meet my future husband at Church, and I did meet a fine young man who also came to daily Mass and whom I dated briefly. Once, in my visit to the Blessed Sacrament, I felt Jesus was saying to me: “I have been waiting for you to come to Me” and I felt this was a call to religious life.

I entered the Carmel of Loretto, PA as a lay Sister, who cooked and did more of the manual labor in the community and did not pray the Latin Breviary. Then, in 1961 I was one of the sisters who came to Latrobe to begin a new Carmel here.