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The links above will take you to more stories of how to live a life of Providence as lived by the Sisters and Associates of Divine Providence.
Art:
The Annunciation, Luke 1:28-38
Sister Ethel Marie Corne, CDP, 1967
Stories of Our Call
Called to Community
Our life in community nourishes us and sends us out for service and for community with others. It reaches far beyond the bounds of our houses and even of the Congregation, for in community well lived we help the world to experience the goodness of Providence.
(CDP Constitution, # 29)
Sister Ramona Bezner
Late in the spring of the past year, Sister Anita Brenek called to invite me to become a member of the Agatha Lin Community. Although I had given some thought to soon making a move from Club Drive to the Our Lady of the Lake Campus, this call was a complete surprise. Many thoughts flooded my mind: I’d lived at Club Dr. almost 20 years. Was now the time for me to move? And to the Formation House? Although there were no novices living there now, there is the possibility of that soon becoming a reality. However, the more I thought about the move, the more it seemed that this invitation urged me to “move with Providence.”
In 1772 when our founder, Father Moye, was on his way to China, he wrote to his Sisters: “For this Pilgrimage there is always enough.” Enough grace, enough strength, enough health, enough support, enough of all you need to continue the journey. This sentence from Moye has inspired me from time to time during my life and so it did again. By the end of the summer I was ready to move to Agatha Lin. Although at first I found the house like a maze, soon I could get to my room without back tracking. And I joined Sisters Madonna Sangalli and Anita Brenek and began to live in community with them.
There are many graces that have come with this move, the first of which is living with two beautiful and committed CDPs: Anita and Madonna. Getting to know them better, being able to interact with those in formation, living only three minutes from my ministry – these are pluses that have come with this community change. But the greatest blessing I am experiencing at Agatha Lin is sharing faith and prayer with my Sisters. I have found that our time together in the morning is a blessed way to begin the day.
There was a strong “community” at Club Drive, different from Agatha Lin but a community that supported me for a long time. The Agatha Lin community is a bit more intimate and “present.” We cook several times during the week and share meals together. I enjoy this and am learning the indentifying culinary skill of each one of us. Since the three of us live “under the same roof” we are often together in the living room or kitchen.
Do I miss Club Drive? I do, sometimes more than others. I miss listening to NPR as I used to do while driving to work. I miss the “small” kitchen where I could just stand in the middle and reach everything I need for preparing a meal. Would I want to return to Club Drive? Not really. Once on the journey, there is no turning back. Praised be Divine Providence.
What is a Call to Community?
Our founder Bl. Fr. John Martin Moye’s ideal was that the Sisters become one in mind and heart, living a common life in the spirit of Jesus. It is amazing how this happens. Only God can create a unity in diversity and a community among individuals. Only God’s love can make ‘the many’, ‘One.’
God calls us to be one with Him. We are not alone. In Community, our Provident God is with us. This is a reality that we Sisters of Divine Providence (CDPs) seek to experience and seek to share more and more. We are called by God to be together, to be in community and to help each other live our vows of Poverty, Celibacy, an
d Obedience. We do this to be able to dedicate ourselves to the Mission of Jesus through our ministry, our life together, and our example to others.
In Koinonia* Community, CDPs live, pray and share life together, and offer young adults and women interested in learning about religious life an opportunity to experience this communal life. We often have guests come to share prayer and meals. Women who are interested in exploring religious life come for short visits to experience community life.
In a world that seems to idolize ‘independence’ and acquiring more and more to be happy, living in community, sharing our blessings, and being interdependent is counter cultural. In living our Christian values together, we show the world that God is among us, helping us, and guiding us. This is in contrast to some “reality shows” that seek to eliminate and defeat each other. In Community, we follow the call to build up each other and live out of God’s love for the world.
Life in Koinonia Community ebbs and flows between being in solitude in prayer and being actively involved in daily living and ministry. This is the 
rhythm of our lives. We experience it as a very personal call to have God at the center of our lives, to live with and support others who share our Providence spirit, and to serve the people of God in our work. A call to be in Community is a beautiful gift from God. The CDP constitution states: “We believe that when we love one another, when we challenge and encourage one another, we become witnesses and instruments of God’s renewing love.”
How do you know if you have a call to Community? If doing ‘good’ in the world is life giving and fulfilling to you and if you enjoy being around others who share your values, then, community is a call in your heart. How would you know if religious life is a way for you to live this call? Come and see.
*(Koinonia is the name of a residence of Sisters of Divine Providence located at Our Lady of the Lake Convent in San Antonio, Texas. Koinonia is a Greek word that means “fellowship”- coming together in love, faith and encouragement.)
Sister Jackie Kingsbury
How
I experience community living as part of my call to religious life: I experience
CDP community in the annual general assembly—input, discussions, prayer—in
the willingness to devote this amount of time to each other; in the swelling
of belonging during memorial service for sisters who died the past year; and
in our accepting new directions that flow from these gatherings.
I experience CDP community at Cluster Meetings, the personal faith sharing, the trust level with each other, and the genuine sense that these women care about me.
I have also experienced CDP community in the personal concern shown about my safety during two hurricanes in Florida where I live—so many called and e-mailed.
I live with a Sister of Holy Cross and share community—eucharistic liturgy, eating out, dinner, and cards each weekend.
Sister Anita Brenek
As vowed religious in our Church today, I believe our call to community that is primarily lived in our own Congregations also extends to our relationships with vowed Sisters and Brothers in other congregations. In my ministry with new members in our Congregation – women becoming Sisters of Divine Providence – I experience this broader community through the Inter-Community Novitiate of Texas. In this program, the novices (new members in their intensive year of study and incorporation into their communities) and the formation directors meet monthly for three-day workshops focusing on topics related to our religious life. We pool our resources in order to bring in special presenters to guide our study and reflection.
When the group gathers, we do more than study. There is significant time for sharing our own journeys. The novices often have heart-to-heart talks about their experiences in becoming members of their respective groups. The directors likewise value consulting and supporting one another in this rewarding but sensitive ministry. By learning to trust and help one another, we have built long-lasting relationships that carry us in the inter-connected world that we live in today.
This program includes Sisters and Brothers from Laredo, the Dallas area, and San Antonio. Some years, novices join us from Corpus Christi, Victoria, and Houston. It brings together women and men with a variety of cultural backgrounds and different life experiences. We’re all aware of the opportunity we have for rich sharing and collaboration.
I personally believe this experience of community beyond our own congregations, is a special witness to our world where living with diversity has become more of a reality. In the Inter-Community Novitiate, we gather with our variety of charisms, histories, and lifestyles. Rather than competing, we’ve come to treasure our unique identities and see our congregations as complimentary to one another, giving a fuller presence and service to our Church and society.
Indeed, in today’s world with global issues impacting us in many ways, our experiences across cultures and outside our own individual formation programs helps us all move toward a more collaborative world, aware of the common good.
As a formation director with the Sisters of Divine Providence, I am grateful for the opportunity to participate in this Inter-Community program. I have attended the sessions with Sister Joyce Det
zel, who is currently a CDP novice, preparing for first profession of temporary vows. I value the broader community connections for each of us. We look forward to the continued collaboration as vowed women and men religious, ministering in our world together.
Sister Joyce Detzel
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.
Sister Isabel Ball
As a community member, my call to religious life has made all the difference.
I think I would not have been attracted to religious life in the first place
if I had to make it on my own. I have always enjoyed team play. On teams you
complement and support one another. You encourage one to do her best. You
learn from one another.
A second reason community life is attractive is the different age groups and different perspectives enjoyed. My greatest thinking pleasure has occurred in conversation with community members who have different perspectives.
Most important is the prayer growth that can be experienced in a group of people. This doesn’t always mean praying together, but it does give the option. After all, Jesus said, “Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there I am in your midst.” The discipline of prayer life is learned and in a group this is much easier.
Finally, even though it is not what attracted me, the community has been the source of many graces and opportunities for my education that I would not have otherwise experienced.
Up with community!
Sister Mary Bordelon
When
I was on my first year out on the mission, just out of novitiate, I was 25.
The three Sisters I lived with were 50, 75, and 76. Then the one who was 50
had to move in with her elderly mother. That left me with the 2 Sisters who
were more than 50 years older than I was.
While there were times when this was difficult, I found more difficulties dealing with the fact that they both worked in schools while I worked in a parish and our hours were very different. Like with most things, you just need to keep the lines of communication flowing both ways.
Sister Anita Brenek - Learning about Community Living, 1979
I
lived and worked in West, Texas, 1977-1981, teaching second grade at St. Mary’s
Catholic School there. We were five Sisters in the community that year. One
day after school, I went into the kitchen and joined another Sister, both
of us very tired from the day. As we sat at the small table, she shared with
me her hurt feelings around something I had done earlier in the day.
I was surprised and confused by what she was telling me, so I asked her more about it. I didn’t want her to be offended. As she told me in more detail about what had happened, I was startled by her version of the episode. I knew her perception was completely different from mine and told her about where I was coming from and about my intentions. I was amazed we could see it so differently. So I asked her if there were other times when she felt offended by me, whether she perceived me doing other things like that. It was an opportune time to learn more about each other, our perceptions, and our needs.
As we talked, we realized that we had very different viewpoints. But we also realized that we definitely intended no harm to each other. I had a strong sense of the pain she was indeed experiencing over all this. And that pain, neither of us wanted for each other. We knew we saw things differently, and yet we wanted good for each other. We wanted to live happily in community together.
She heard my desire for her well-being and she truly wanted the same for
me. I walked away from that episode amazed and with a new learning about community
living. This Sister and I lived together several more years after that event,
and we later visited with each other in the summer to hear how each other
was doing. We remained very different from each other in many ways, but our
co
mmonality
was a great respect for each other and our desires for good community living.
I am grateful to this Sister for her honesty with me and her willingness to
reconcile with me.
As a young Sister, this was one “call” to learn more about an important aspect of community living. Living in harmony requires more than good will for each other. It also requires the honesty to share, ask questions, and listen when there are differences. Reconciliation is a vital part of harmony and community living.
Sister Elsa E. Garcia
My
ethnic background is Mexican-American and I feel at home in my community.
I will be able to feel at home in community only if I am willing to help build
that community. To be 'of one mind and heart' is the gift, work and the witness
of community. What I love in my Sisters is that they both need me and help
me; they challenge me and support me.
My love for Christ is lived in my community…I was called by God to this group of women and when prejudice or cultural misunderstanding occurs, I struggle with my human reaction to "push back" and my Christian call to 'build up the body of Christ.'
If you belong to an ethnic or racial minority, I ask you to be open to the fullness of the Gospel message -- to build community among the diversity of God's people. You cannot escape this call whether you join a religious order or not.
Community is full of humans and among us is the One who called each of us. It is in community that I have known Christ is among us…because only God's love can transform diversity into unity without losing the uniqueness of individuals. When this happens all of us are "Home."
Sister Dale Van Gossen
In my religious
life I was often the youngest member of my community. Sometimes the older
members were those I became closest to. Their deep prayer life, wisdom, and
dedication were sources of inspiration and encouragement. Sometimes they were
the most fun, too! I don't think you have to worry about the age difference.
