“This invitation to converse with God is addressed to man as soon as he comes into being. For if man exists it is because God has created him through love, and through love continues to hold him in existence. He cannot live fully according to truth unless he freely acknowledges that love and entrusts himself to his creator…this search for God demands of man every effort of intellect, a sound will …” (CCC 27, 30)
written by Sr. Maria Catherine Toon, O.P.
After not knowing how to be left me so restless and
It wouldn’t die when I left the adoration chapel and
knowing daily Mass and rosary weren’t enough;
After I’d arrive home feeling empty to a house full of stuff, full of dog hair, full of my roommate,
and it wasn’t enough;
After I’d had my fill of secretarial jobs that left me bored and listless, agitated and unchallenged,
and they weren’t enough;
After I found my dream job that was filled with books, books I could eat, with people I loved,
and that wasn’t enough;
After hoping that I could make it work anyway and work there forever,
but it wasn’t going to be enough;
After realizing how much I love studying and it was all I wanted to do, yet somehow
even that wasn’t enough;
After realizing that I had no life because I spent all of my time working, or reading for work, and
I knew He wanted more from me. But would it really make me happy?
After traveling and feeling sucked dry by my boss who wasn’t sure what enough was;
After I tried to push away the calmness I felt filled with at the thought of prayer;
After I wanted to fill myself with distraction, because that is what everyone else is doing, and
won’t that be enough?
After sitting in the soft, stiff rocking chairs out on the screened-in porch with the dog,
thinking that would take care of it,
but it still wasn’t enough;
After I had to go back into work to plan a golf tournament without knowing thing about the game,
I decided to try, to see, if it would be enough.
After visiting what I thought was the monastery and the religious order that
I thought would be enough;
After leaving the tread marks from my tires in their driveway, because
I had to get away as fast as I could,
because maybe it would be enough, but I still wasn’t sure;
After being back on the porch and sitting with “Sweet Pea” a dog the size of a small horse,
still hoping to banish the restlessness into the full flood of the sunset;
After my fourth godchild was born, and I wanted to see her walk, and what she would be like before I left;
After I met the man who could decide everything, and
he wasn’t enough;
After coming to the middle of nowhere Mecosta, and
hoping I could hide the visit I was trying not to wait for;
After driving two hours with an Australian-speaking GPS,
not sure what I would find in Ann Arbor,
not sure I would find Ann Arbor,
hoping not to live in Ann Arbor;
But would it really make me happy?
After landing on the doorway of the Motherhouse in my jeans and my chocolate sweater, with my blonde curls,
Knowing they were waiting for me,
Hoping that God wasn’t waiting there for me;
Hoping it also wouldn’t be enough and I could keep running;
After meeting them and seeing their smiles, these white brides;
After realizing they had the silence and the Eucharist, and that was the everything that would be enough;
After recognizing that I had run out of time to run and
running isn’t enough;
After Sister asked me how tall I was, and told me she had an outfit just my size;
After I thought about wearing the blue polyester thing for a year and then I would get the Dominican habit
forever;
After I went home to Texas, to my family, and told them that my life was not enough anymore;
And I couldn’t not enter the convent anymore;
That I couldn’t not read and pray, and be with other women who read and prayed and
ripped life apart to find out the truth, anymore;
They asked me why,
after I had found out that truth is a Person, my spouse, and that was the enough that I was looking for.
::Sister Maria Catherine, OP is a member of the Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist. She grew up loving books, movies, and dogs. When she isn’t teaching Speech and English Literature at St. Dominic Savio Catholic High School in Austin TX, she is reorganizing the convent library and thinking about what book to read next.::
The Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist is a Roman Catholic community of women religious based in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The community was founded in the Dominican tradition to spread the witness of religious life in accord with Pope John Paul II’s vision for a new evangelization. The Dominican Sisters came to Austin in 2009 to assist in the work of Catholic education and to establish a priory of their community in Central Texas.
To learn more about the Dominican Sisters and their plans to expand to Texas, visit www.sistersofmary.org/
