Sister Mary Kate Mensch takes final vows with the Sisters of Saints Cyril and Methodius
Sometimes, God will open your eyes to His calling for you by directing your sight toward what you long for.
That’s what He did for Sister Mary Kate Mensch, who took her final vows on September 6 with the Sisters of Saints Cyril and Methodius at their Basilica in Danville.
“I noticed as I had gone through life, there was still a longing for something,” says Sister Mary Kate, who experienced about a decade of life after college before entering the order in 2016.
“September 6 was a magnificently beautiful day, just having my friends and family in the community and just so many people that were celebrating,” she added about a day that felt like a wedding.
“I specifically remember during the ‘Glory to God,’ this flooding of peace just took over. It was like, ‘This is it. I’m not worried about this commitment. This commitment is something that feels like it’s going to complete me, having that complete love with God.’”
Her faith journey began at Queen of the Most Holy Rosary Parish in Elysburg, a town of slightly more than 2,000 people in Northumberland County, then continued at Our Lady of Lourdes Regional School in Coal Township.
“I had that inkling that religion was always something that was really important to me. Being young, you don’t pay attention to those things sometimes. I know I wanted to grow up and have a music teaching career,” she said.
But a teacher at Lourdes who was a member of the Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary (IHM) saw something more within Sister Mary Kate.
“Sister Marita Regina noticed my vocation in me,” she said. “She prayed for my vocation since the day she met me, prayed that I would be able to see that.”
It took her a while for her eyes to gaze upon what God intended for her, after graduating from Bloomsburg University.
“I was working in Harrisburg at the post office,” she said.
“I remember being at the window selling stamps and packages, and I just remember thinking, ‘There’s got to be more to life than this. I know I have a good job. I know I have good insurance. But there’s got to be something more. Something’s missing.’ There was that God-shaped hole in my heart that was missing.”
Sister Mary Kate looked into the IHM Sisters, but said something “didn’t connect” with her. She didn’t have far to look for an order to discern, as the Sisters of Saints Cyril and Methodius were just 10 miles away from her hometown.
“When I had met our Sisters and started seriously looking at them, I remember sitting in the back of our Basilica one day and just looking at the tabernacle and saying, ‘Jesus, if this is where you really want me, you need to help me through this,’” she said.
Jesus answered.
“I just felt at home. There was a sense of home at our Motherhouse. I just felt like I fit so well into everything. The Sisters were so open and so welcoming.”
Sister Mary Kate said her second of her nine years before final vows truly confirmed that God put her in the right place.
“I remember during my novitiate, my canonical year, really having that time to develop that deep, intimate, personal relationship with God, and get to know where God’s really working in my heart, and knowing that I feel just fulfilled,” she said.
“The best I can describe it is like just being poured out, drowned in love,” she said.
That love is being poured out to God’s people with an order focusing on education, health care and ecumenical outreach.
“A couple of our Sisters work with interfaith religion. A Sister here who is a spiritual director works with a lot of the Protestant ministers, and they come together and have prayer services, and really having that connection with our Protestant brothers and sisters,” said Sister Mary Kate, whose own family has an ecumenical background.
“My father is Protestant. He’s Methodist. Coming into the order and finding out that our Sisters absolutely love ecumenism really made me feel at home here, because I felt like all of my family would be able to come here and be accepted.”
Sister Mary Kate’s ministry calls her to the residents and patients at Maria Joseph Continuing Care Community in Danville, which offers continuing care, memory care, personal home care and short-term rehabilitation.
“To be able to talk to our residents, see how they’re doing, support them and say, ‘I’m praying for you,’ I can see the joy that life brings them.”
It’s not like Sister Mary Kate won’t be able to fulfill a music-related calling. She’s adding the guitar alongside her arsenal of wind instruments and hopes to use it in music therapy for those she ministers to.
It proves that maybe Sister Mary Kate was sort of on the right path, but God knew it involved more than her dream.
“Listen to your heart. Had I listened to my heart and not pushed off the idea of religious life, I think I wouldn’t have been as confused going through parts of life,” she says about her pathway.
“I know that God always places us where we belong at the right time.”
(Jay Sorgi is a freelance reporter for The Catholic Witness. Profession photos courtesy of Sister Mary Kate Mensch; Elysburg photo by Chris Heisey, The Catholic Witness.)
By Jay Sorgi, The Catholic Witness
