Feast of Our Lady of Ransom (de Mercede)

       It’s my first blog – and it comes on the feast day celebrated by one of our Sisters for many years, Sr. Mercedes.

        When I first met her, I was an eighth grader at St. Henry, and she was a first year teacher there, barely twenty years old, maybe even nineteen. (Sisters went out early in those days to parish schools.) Very likely she was the youngest Sister of all of them at our school, and I was drawn to her, especially on the days when she had “hall duty” in the old gray frame school building. I would go in during noon recess, and ply her with questions: What’s it like to be a Sister? When did you first start to think about it? How did you know it was the right thing to do? Are you happy? Do you like it? What do you do after school? Where did you go to grade school? Where did you go to high school?

          She patiently answered all my questions, and I was hooked.I became ever more sure that I too wanted to be a Sister and teach children like she did. Truthfully though, it was all the Sisters at St. Henry who fascinated me in those days. I had Sisters as teachers since first grade; my piano teacher was a Sister. She taught me to play the organ for parish Masses and rosary devotions, and the Sisters came up in the choir loft to sing. They impressed me as good people, happy people, in love with Jesus, with God’s work. And I so wanted to be like that!

           Now, sixty-five years later, I am grateful.  But what about our eighth graders today?  What are their questions?

            Sr. Mary Carol Hellmann, OSB