‘All the desires of my heart’: Vocation to religious life fostered at St. Mary in Hagerstown

Sister Isabelle Maina of the Third Order Regular of St. Francis of Penance, who professed her first vows June 21 at the Our Lady of Sorrows Monastery in Toronto, Ohio, says she began to feel the stirrings of her vocation as a youngster at St. Mary Catholic School in Hagerstown.

She participated in Madeline Bender’s prayer group after school with about 200 others, praying the rosary.

Sister Isabelle, 26, remembers a specific afternoon when she was in second grade. Her mother, Ethna, picked her up, and before they left, Bender walked up.

“Our Lady has a finger on your daughter, and she has a special vocation,” the woman, who Sister Isabelle describes as a “church grandma,” said.

“As second-grade Isabelle, of course I was like, ‘la la la la – I have no idea what she’s talking about,’” Sister Isabelle recalled. “But it did mean a lot. … I didn’t know what the word ‘vocation’ meant, but I think I was starting to understand what it felt like to be ‘set apart.’”

She said that there were other adults at St. Mary – including Pamela Ward, who still teaches there, and Father Collin Poston, who was assigned to St. Mary Parish as his first pastorship and currently serves as pastor at St. Anthony Shrine in Emmitsburg and Our Lady of Mount Carmel in Thurmont – that nurtured her love for prayer and the Mass.

“I have beautiful memories of gazing upon the crucifix (at St. Mary),” Sister Isabelle said.

The road was not perfectly straight and smooth. She described a Mount2000 retreat she took as a high school freshman; a priest processed around a packed gymnasium at Mount St. Mary’s University in Emmitsburg with the Eucharist in a monstrance.

“He stopped dead in front of me,” Sister Isabelle said. “I knew religious life was something for me to consider, but I didn’t think it would be enough for me.”

She had similar bouts with ambivalence as a student at Florida State University in Tallahassee.

“I definitely put my faith on the back burner for a while,” she said. “I was running away from my love for Jesus and filling it with love for my friends.”

She also had worldly ambitions; Sister Isabelle is a trained opera singer.

She pushed forward in her life, aware that she was straddling diverging paths.

“I never could be pulled away from my Catholic faith,” she said. “I went to Mass on Sunday, but I went to a party on Friday.”

Regarding the latter, she said, “I knew that’s not who I was; I was forcing it.”

The reason, she added, was that “I didn’t believe that God was enough.  I didn’t think he could satisfy my heart, especially as a woman.”

A vivacious and ambitious young woman at that, she resorted to an age-old strategy to extricate herself from her conundrum.

“Jesus,” she prayed during her sophomore year, “if you want me to be your bride someday, then you have to pursue me. Just like any other man.”

One way or another, the ultimatum worked.

“That summer I fell head-over-heels in love with him,” Sister Isabelle said, “not as a distant God, but as a man.”

Sister Isabelle described an early discernment retreat – her first, and not with the Third Order Regular but with the Apostles of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, who were serving in the Diocese of Pensacola-Tallahassee, Fla.

“I was for the first time surrounded by nuns,” Sister Isabelle recalled. It was in a small chapel, with a tiny tabernacle. I heard the Lord speak to my heart.”

“Open your horizons”: the words were characteristically simple and sincere but also – as delivered to a young woman who still feared closing herself off, to some extent, from the world – a little parodic.

She knew what he meant.

Sister Isabelle said she began asking about the religious life “as a friend.” The Third Order Regular Sisters had a strong presence in Tallahassee, and one thing led to another.

“Now that I’ve lived the religious life for three years, and going on a fourth, I can say with confidence that (Jesus) has fulfilled all the desires of my heart, and I am just the luckiest girl in the world,” Sister Isabelle said.

Her profession of first vows marked the end of her novitiate period with the Third Order Regular. After making first vows, sisters renew those vows for four to five years before making their perpetual vows of poverty, chastity and obedience.

“As a sister, I’m not giving up my motherhood,” Sister Isabelle explained, noting that the Third Order Regular is a “contemplative active” community, with lots of prayer. “All the souls of the world are my children. Some I’ll meet in this life. Others are across the world and I’ll meet them in heaven.”

Sister Isabelle is looking forward to her first assignment, which will see her moving to Austria to serve as music coordinator of the study abroad program at Franciscan University of Steubenville (Ohio).

“I get to do so much music!” she said. “I don’t get to sing on the stage at the Met, and I don’t get to wear a fancy dress, but I get to sing for the Lord.”

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