Sister Mary

I was born in Saigon in 1963. I am the sixth of eight children. Growing up in Vietnam, my whole family went to church every morning, no matter what the weather was like. We walked from our home to the church—about 20 to 30 minutes. We also had the tradition of praying together as a family. Because my father instilled the idea of religious life and priesthood in us, I wished to enter religious life by the time I was in high school. Of course, it is one thing to want to enter religious life, and another thing for God to call. I prayed that God would call me.

I was 12 years old during the fall of Saigon. Vietnam became a Communist country and religion was not practiced freely. We were living through tough times. We prayed every day, and held on to faith. The environment we lived in became part of who we were. When I expressed that I wanted to enter religious life, a priest friend of my father’s wanted to help me enter. He took me to another family and asked them for help because I could not enter the religious community legally. At night, I would stay with the family in the village, and then during the day I would join the Sisters for activities. There were other young women who did the same. We would leave in the morning before dawn, and wait until dark to walk from the convent to the families in the village who agreed to help us. We had to be very careful not to be found out by the government, and were instructed to not tell people where we were going. If the government found out, we, the Sisters, and the families who were helping us could have been imprisoned. We knew that it was risky for us to enter religious life. However, I managed to enter a religious community during that time, and became a novice. Afterwards, I became very sick. The Sisters saw that as a sign that I did not have a vocation. They sent me home. That did not sit well with me, so I met with three more religious communities. When they interviewed me and I told them that I had entered another community that sent me home when I got sick, one of the superiors told me, “Go home, get married and be settled. Do not continue to another religious community because you don’t have a vocation.” I went home, and my parents said there was nothing more I could do.

When I look back on that, I see it was a time that God was preparing for me to come to the USA, by pulling me out of the convent when I got sick, and eventually bringing me here with my family. As we left for the USA and said goodbye to our relatives, one of them, a priest said to me, “Who knows? Maybe if you go to the U.S., you might become a religious Sister. Just because the communities here didn’t accept you, who knows what might happen in the U.S.” I laughed at him, and said, “You are just saying that to try to encourage me.” But he was right! Maybe God used his voice to prevent me from extinguishing that flame to enter religious life.

Some time after arriving in the USA, my uncle arranged for me to meet with the Sisters of Christian Charity. They invited me to a live-in weekend at the Motherhouse in New Jersey, and at the end of the weekend they asked if anyone had interest in entering. I prayed and then decided to send a letter to request to enter. I liked them because of their name, the Sisters of Christian Charity. When I was in high school, I knew that if I entered a community, I would want to do something to help the poor and care for the sick. The Sisters of Christian Charity care for the poor and the blind, and help the sick in their hospitals. Eventually I became a nurse, and currently I minister in inpatient behavioral health at Penn State Health Holy Spirit Medical Center in Camp Hill.

At one point in his life, my father was a seminarian. He always prayed that at least one of his children would enter religious life or become a priest. When I entered, he felt that God had answered his prayers.