Stories of Our Call

Sister Joyce Detzel - Called to Community

What does it mean to be called to an international community? Sister Joyce Detzel answers this question, as one of the newest members of the Congregation of Divine Providence. Sister Joyce is an “apostolic novice,” meaning she is in the part of the formative process that gives her time to experience among the Sisters the life that she will continue to study more intensely as she becomes a Sister. Below are her observations and reflections from her experiences in her call to this community.

New members gain a breadth of experience regarding our community life, history, charism, and mission in many different ways. One way our formation program fosters this is through visits and extended stays with various CDP (Congregation of Divine Providence) communities. Time in Texas and Louisiana has been part of my apostolic novitiate. I am currently completing a two month stay with our Sisters of Divine Providence in the Mexico Region – and a pilgrimage slated for summer will take me, other Sisters, and some of our Associates back to our international roots in the Alsace Lorraine region of France.

Where ever I go, I try to enter into the regular work rhythm and prayer life of the group of Sisters with whom I am living. Sometimes the everyday life, ritual, prayer, and community living arrangements are very similar to those of the United States. At other times they vary dramatically and challenge me to think about what is the essence of 21st century religious life.

Here is a sampling of my time in Mexico thus far. I have forged friendships with the newest members of our community (our aspirants and another novice) who live in our Mexico house of formation. Stories of the Mexico Region came alive as I job shadowed and lived with our professed Sisters at the main convent in Querétaro during Holy Week. Ten days of hectic urban life with our Sisters in Mexico City has been countered with brief excursions to see our Sisters who are catechists missioned in remote areas of the Sierra Madre Mountains.

Trying to live religious life as a novice outside the United States with only rudimentary language skills is both humbling and gratifying. Today’s world often rotates around the spoken word and instant gratification. To learn to communicate and interact with others in non-verbal ways while in Mexico has taken both time and patience . . . but it has also led to poignant, creative and often funny memories that will last a lifetime!

I am grateful that our CDP community values these types of contemporary experiences. It is a gift to be able to stretch beyond my own ethnic or cultural limitations during this novitiate period. These first-hand experiences, coupled with a study of our charism and the lives of our founder Father John Martin Moye and our first Texas Sister, Mother St. Andrew Feltin, show how the face of Providence continues to be embodied in the lives of Sisters of Divine Providence . . . and they heighten my awareness of what it means to BE PROVIDENCE in our world today.