They stayed, but the others who took a different path remain in their heart. This sentiment is part of the 50th anniversary celebration for Sisters of St. Joseph Mary T. Quinn, Joan Ryzewicz and Sally Marsh
SPRINGFIELD – They stayed, but they say the others who took a different path remain "in our hearts." This sentiment is part of the 50th anniversary celebration for Sisters of St. Joseph Mary T. Quinn, Joan Ryzewicz and Sally Marsh. The women religious, who entered the Springfield congregation after high school with 33 others in 1966, are the ones who remain from their entering class after five decades, though they hope some of their former members will join them on Oct. 2.
The motto of their Golden Jubilee reflects a shared vision in the words of St. Francis of Assisi, "The journey is essential to the dream," and the recognition that the Second Vatican Council, in its call to those in religious life to broaden their ministries, in this case teaching in diocesan and parish schools, prompted some congregation members to leave and fill their dream on a different path.
The evolution of the three women's lives reflects the history of many congregations of women religious, both locally and nationally. They entered at a time of the peak of vocations, and were the first to live and study at Mont Marie, the congregation's campus like motherhouse in Holyoke.
Daily routine was structured - early morning prayers in the chapel, personal discussions of the day's scripture reading and Mass, chores, and college classes on site.
No one could envision that 48 years later the complex would be sold to help ease the financial burden of such a large complex, and an aging congregation whose members had worked years in diocesan schools and parishes without compensation.
Sister of St. Joseph Sally Marsh, a North Adams native who is celebrating 50 years with the Springfield order, is recuperating from recent surgery at a Framingham facility of the Congregation of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Boston.Submitted
Marsh would be among the 30 retired Sisters of St. Joseph relocated to the Boston area after the sale of Mont Marie in 2014. The congregation is still able to use the chapel there, which is where the women will celebrate their 50 years.
Still, the three women, reflecting a general sentiment among their order, say they have no regrets in their five-decade commitment to the vowed life, despite challenges within the institutional Church and difficult personal times along the way. They were all inspired to enter by the Sisters of St. Joseph who had taught them, and envisioned themselves as teachers.
"I just loved their spirit. They were happy. They were dedicated. They laughed a lot, generally, and that really inspired me to become one of them. I originally wanted to join the Sisters of St. Anne, as I had them for piano lessons as a child, but that changed when I met the Sisters of St. Joseph, " said Marsh, a North Adams native who entered at the age of 18.
She stayed because, from the beginning, she was "excited" about the changes in the post Vatican II era of the 1960s, which eventually saw women religious in modified habits and then regular clothes, live outside convents and pursue ministries that brought them more in contact with daily life.
"I saw these changes happening in community life, and that kept me staying as well as the relationships I had in community," Marsh said.
Quinn, who grew up in Rhode Island had the Sisters of St. Joseph in high school.
"I was drawn to the spirit of the sisters. In my family there is a great commitment to public service, faithfulness and doing good and being concerned with the larger community, so that was within me, and I saw that in the sisters. One of the sisters I had said she thought I had a vocation and that I ought to consider it," she said.
Quinn added she didn't admit having a vocation to herself or her parents for awhile, but then "one thing led to another," including meeting with the mother superior of the congregation, and she "ended up at Mont Marie in Holyoke."
She said the first years were "difficult," away from family and friends.
"Ironically, the sister who encouraged me to enter the congregation left three years later," Quinn recalled.
"So, when you talk about trying to respond to a call at a very young age, and then seeing someone who was a real mentor in lots of ways, leave the community, it was a very difficult time."
She calls her decision to enter at 18, when she had been accepted into college, a bit "naive" and not "well thought out." She shared some of her misgivings early on with her father.
"He came for a visit and he said to me, 'Well, Mary, some of the things that are hardest to do are the most important and end up meaning the most.' I had never forgot that. It kept me going," Quinn said.
"I was never at the point of thinking: 'This is not for me.' The longer I lived the life, the more it felt like this was the place I belonged. Vocation is really about responding to God freely. This is what I think it is about. This life has to bring you freedom, and if it doesn't, you are in the wrong place. The lifestyle has enabled me to be of service to other people, and not have other things get in the way of that."
Ryzewicz added that, while 29 of those who entered with them would leave and one classmate would die young, she said the women bonded together, as well as with the two classes of about 120 novices ahead of them.
"We laughed together, we cried together, we prayed together. I still look back on those days and think they pulled me through," Ryzewicz said.
"Even though the others in our class went on their own journey, they will always be a part of our journey and in our hearts and some of them will be at the celebration hopefully."
The mission of the Sisters of St. Joseph, which dates back 350 years to France where members cared for the orphaned, the sick and the poor, is that "all may be one."
Sometimes, Quinn noted, this meant challenges both within as well as outside the order.
"Our class was one of the first to challenge structured life. We entered at the time of Vatican II. John XXIII was opening the windows of the Church and we were caught in the middle of that," Quinn said.
"The old structures were dying and we were one of the first groups to start asking a lot of questions, like 'Why do we need to do this?' The women who worked with us were not used to this. It was a change for them as well. They lived a very rigid structure."
Ryzewicz, a Springfield native who entered at age 17, said the impact of others leaving met that those who stayed had to "really clarify what was good for me."
"I had also entered because of the spirit of the Sisters of St. Joseph I had at Cathedral High School. They were amazing women. I always wanted to be a teacher and I thought this was a great way to be a teacher. It was not a profound spiritual awakening that I had," she said.
"My father thought I was going through a fad, and everyone I knew was telling me to wait until after college. But, when you are 17, and graduating, you have a strong mind of your own."
Ryzewicz said she evaluated her decision to stay partly on whether she was happy going out to teach each morning.
"Could I wake up in the morning and go into school and teach? Was the whole system working for me?," Ryzewicz said.
"It seemed both the Church and our community were on the move. The doors of the Church were opening up, but our community was changing very rapidly. I saw these changes as allowing me to become more myself."
Quinn, who has a background in counseling as well as a master's of divinity degree, added that changes that brought women religious more in contact with the laity allowed the laity "to get to know us as people, as women who were like they were, trying to respond to the call of the Gospel."
The dreams of all three have shifted from teaching over the years. For the past four years, Quinn has been program coordinator for the Out of County Reentry Services at the Western Massachusetts Regional Women's Correctional Center, in Chicopee, and at the Western Mass Correctional Addiction Center in Holyoke.
The about-to-be-released inmates do not always know she is a women religious, and that is fine with Quinn, who has served as president of her congregation.
"I work there as Mary Quinn. People find out, of course, that I am a nun, but what I have learned is that our charism of uniting neighbor with neighbor, as a Sister of St. Joseph, is really what enables me to do that, " Quinn said.
"Sometimes people ask me if I am a sister, but it can't be a barrier. For some people, if you are a nun, it raises all sorts of wonderful images. For other people, it is: "Forget it. I have nothing to say to you. So, if we meet as Joan and Mary, then we enter from a different place."
Ryzewicz, currently director of resident programs at Providence Place Retirement Community in Holyoke, taught early on in Easthampton and Milford. She was asked to start on an different path after a few years, serving as a consultant for the Springfield Diocese's Office of Religious Education and the Office of Pastoral Ministry.
She felt a calling for parish work, something others noted too.
"Going from parish to parish doing adult education, or teacher training or instructing parents on the new Confession, all of that, led me at to parish ministry," Ryzewicz said.
She was considered for a Berkshire County parish when dioceses elsewhere in the country were beginning to appoint women religious as pastoral associates to lead parishes and ease the ongoing shortage of priests in the late 1980s.
The position (pdf) was never created in this diocese, but Ryzewicz did serve for 20 years as pastoral minster at St. Jerome Parish in Holyoke.
"You are with people every day in this position, not only at Mass. You are with them at vulnerable moments of their lives. I particularly remember the elderly, the sick and funerals. People are just so open to needing anyone," said Ryzewicz, adding she was thankful to be able to minister in this capacity.
"They needed the church to be there in some way. The same with married couples, or with Baptism or young, fresh couples coming in. People are looking for a church that can be with them, that can share their ups and downs, can share their life. Their ordinary days."
Similarly Marsh, who has a master's degree in music, taught for a number of years in Catholic schools in Springfield and Pittsfield, as well as at Elms College, in Chicopee, and then did music ministry at the parish level, and became involved with writing songs and children's books. She is currently recovering from surgery at a facility of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Boston in Framingham, where she sings at the daily Mass.
"As we came into our own as a congregation of who we were as women and our gifts to the Church, there were years of struggle with our role in the Church and determining what kinds of ministries were open to us and what wasn't open to us, and that continues to this day," said Quinn who was president of her congregation at the start of what was formally known as the Apostolic Visitation of Institutes of Women Religious in the United States of America.
Concluded under Pope Francis, who has widely praised women religious for their ministries out in the community, the examination of women religious orders in the United States post Vatican II was initiated, in 2008, by theologically conservative Pope Benedict XVI, and drew much criticism from lay members of the Church who saw it as unjust.
Quinn said her congregation elected to participate only in the early phases of the review, which concluded in 2014, and she met with Mother Mary Clare Millea, a Connecticut-born member of the Apostles of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and a Vatican representative.
A second Vatican investigation into the Leadership Conference of Women Religious was ended by Francis last year.
All three women feel their congregation's members have been able to minister in service to others to the best of their abilities because they have responded to the mandate of Vatican II to evaluate the needs of those in the communities in which they live.
"The 50 year journey for me is not the number of years, it is not the tasks or the ministry, it is all the relationships we have had from beginning until now and it is the relationships in the classroom, among ourselves, in the parish, in my ministry today," Ryzewicz said.
Marsh calls the last 50 years "a rich time with ups and downs, with so many wonderful people, and with a community that has been so good to me and to one another.
Quinn called the 50 years a "great blessing" and a time "to pause." She is among the legal professionals who will be recognized for their service this year at the diocese's annual Red Mass, something held in many dioceses in the name of lawyer and scholar St. Thomas More, who became a martyr after refusing to recognize Henry VIII as head of the Church of England.
Prior to her present job, she worked worked for several years as the coordinator for restorative justice programs in the Hampden County Sheriff's Department.
"What God has done in my life and enabled me to do, the group of women I'm with, all the people in my life who have enriched me and help me be about the work of the Gospel. I am very grateful," Quinn said.
She added the ways lay people are partnering with the Sisters of St. Joseph to live its mission of service that she said "doesn't belong to us, but the world," gives her hope.
"The charism is going to continue because it is needed," Quinn said.