SrVirginieFish

To listen to NPR's Tell Me More December 26, 2008 radio interview with

Sr. Virginie and Sr. Marcia by clicking the NPR logo below.

Time to Make a Decision

By Sister Mary Virginie Fish, OSP

Somewhere along my 10th grade year in high school, I, a convert to Catholicism, began to think seriously of a life career. From the time I was five years old (after a tonsillectomy and impressed with my nurse) to sixteen I’d never wavered from the desire to be a nurse, marry a doctor and have four kids.

But now this thing about service—total commitment kept coming into my head. (Was it the result of a retreat prayer that I’d adopted?):

OTHERS—Lord, let me live from day to day in such as self forgetful way

That even when I kneel to pray, my prayer shall be for others.

Others, Lord, yes others, let this my motto be;

Help me to live for others that I may live for thee.

The constant nagging thought Be a NUN! kept intruding on my prayers, studies, social life…until finally, always desiring to do the will of God (even though I didn’t understand exactly what that meant), I capitulated. “O.K., God, I’ll try. And so I did.

The congregation of nuns who taught me did not accept women of color. The Oblate Sisters of Providence, the first congregation of women religious of color in the world, agreed to take a chance on me. I applied and was accepted. My high school motto has been lived out in living a life for God through living a life of others. To God be all the glory!