Blessed are the poor in spirit

by Sister Brenda Cousins, CSC

Sister Brenda Cousins, CSC

"What made you decide to become a sister?"

Periodically someone will ask me that question.  The people who ask seem to expect a response about some dramatic event that led me to religious life.  There was none.

The more I think about the decision to enter religious life, the more I realize that the call I experienced was a lifelong process of Jesus acting in my life through people and events which shaped my response.

My earliest memory of thinking about becoming a sister was when I was in the fifth grade.  Some Maryknoll missionaries visited our school and showed us a film about China.  I was so touched by the film that I decided that I would grow up, be a Maryknoll missionary and convert Mao Tse-tung (Communist ruler at the time).  As fate would have it, he died before I could get there!

I am sure that the Lord was very present in that particular incident; however, I really believe that he has spoken to me most consistently, lovingly and faithfully through my family.

I grew up the oldest of 15 children. My parents reared us during the 1950s, '60s, '70s and '80s.  These were times when families experienced tremendous social, economic and political pressures, which had a dynamic impact on living the Christian life.  People always wondered how my parents did it.  I know from experience it was through their very deep and practical faith.

I think their faith is best expressed in the Beatitudes.  In an age when most were being taught "more is better," I was taught the generosity of unconditional love.
	Sister Brenda (right) with her mother in August 2002

My parents modeled for us their faith in human relationships, as well as their detachment from material things.  I can remember having just enough beds for everyone in the house, and yet one Christmas my parents opened our home to two teenagers with a baby who had been thrown out of their parents' home.  They stayed with us for six months  There was no thought that this generosity be limited by some kind of reimbursement.  One of the teenagers "paid us back" with her friendship; we've never heard from the other.  "Blessed are the poor in Spirit; for theirs is the kingdom of God."

In an age that seeks security in money, technology and comfort, I was taught to risk in faith.  Raising 15 children is risky enough, but my parents went beyond the challenge.  When the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s was at its most volatile stages, my parents took a public stand for it in our parish and civic communities.  They were active in organizing local fair-housing marches, integrating local Little League baseball teams, and coordinating food and clothing distribution for the poor in our community.  They risked family, friendship and their very lives.  I was shocked when I read one of the threatening letters they had received.  But isn't that the way of Jesus?  "Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for justice; for they shall be satisfied."

In an age where society pressures us to numb pain and to deny or hide it, I was taught through the birth, life and death of my retarded sister, Shannon, to embrace pain with compassion and hope.  Together with my family I began to learn about Christian suffering.  "Blessed are the sorrowful; they shall be comforted."

In an age where individualism for its own sake is of paramount importance and where commitment to others is haphazard at best, I experienced fidelity.  The faithfulness of the family life I experienced in the ordinary daily occurrence of being together at the supper table was my source of strength.  These ordinary events enabled me to experience the extraordinary in the faithfulness to God, family and friends during my father's open-heart surgery.  "Blessed are the pure of heart; for they shall see God."

I was taught by the Sisters of the Holy Cross at St. Mary's Academy in Alexandria, Virginia.  I was very impressed with Sister Rachel Callahan, especially when she and a couple of the other sisters marched with us for civil rights and organized food and clothing drives for the poor.  I remember one Saturday morning in 1968 when Sister Rachel called our house to say that the people of riot-torn Washington were in need of baby food.  I found myself with a couple of sisters and my father driving to Washington, D.C., with all the baby food we could manage to buy.  We took it to a convent where food was being distributed.

I kept in touch with Sister Rachel during my college years and visited her wherever she was living.  Little by little I began to see in the Sisters of the Holy Cross the same values I had experienced in my parents.  Their deep practical faith, unconditional love, and sense of hope enabled them to take the risk to be compassionate and faithful to each other and those they served.  I began to feel a strong attraction for their lifestyle, yet I decided to continue my search elsewhere.

After college I became a lay volunteer for the diocese of Kansas City, Missouri.  During those two years, I taught the children of the "working poor" and lived in community with other lay volunteers.  I began to intensify my search for the best way to live out my commitment to Christianity.  I wasn't quite sure what I was looking for, but I found myself going back to Holy Cross.  I was offered the opportunity to teach as a lay volunteer at St. Cecilia's Academy, an inner-city high school owned and staffed by the Sisters of the Holy Cross.

It was during that time when I lived with the sisters that I began to experience what I was searching for – a deep rootedness in prayer.  The more time I spent with the sisters, the more at home I became with them; we shared the same values I had experienced growing up.  I also came to love this very human community of women struggling with one another to live out a Christian vocation as Sisters of the Holy Cross.  The struggle to live faithfully, hopefully and lovingly their communal and apostolic lives was nourished daily by personal and communal prayer.  It was during that year that I finally accepted the Lord's invitation to commit myself radically to the Christian life by living a vowed life in community.

I have had the opportunity to teach in the high school that I attended, teach in Catequesis familiar (family catechesis) in Peru, and be a pastoral associate in a small mission/parish in central Utah.  I've also had the opportunity to visit or minister temporarily in Bangladesh and Uganda.

No matter where I go or in what ministry I am involved, I have been so aware that as Sisters of the Holy Cross, our patroness is Mary at the foot of the Cross.  I remember this when I think of the time in Peru when the International Monetary Fund devalued the currency overnight and the people around us literally had no money to buy food.  It broke our hearts to hear the children in our neighborhood going to bed hungry at night crying, "Mami, pan, por favor, un pan!" (Mom, please, a piece of bread).  All that I had learned from our Congregation about economic injustice became real at that time.

I am aware of standing at the foot of the cross again as I remember a night in Ephraim, Utah, when the police asked me to come to the trailer park where many of our parishioners lived because one parishioner had killed another.  The victim's wife had given birth just eight days before, and had three other children as well.  The alleged murderer was a family friend who was drunk.  I stayed the whole night with the family while the husband's body lay outside their trailer until the next morning when the Salt Lake coroner came to take the body.  What a painful time for our little parish!  Being present to the perpetrator and his family and the victim's family was an experience of "embracing others in their suffering" (one of the Core Values espoused by the Sisters of the Holy Cross) that I'll never forget.

Because of my opportunities to minister with the poor, marginalized and the oppressed, I have learned to celebrate.  In the midst of tremendous suffering, I found that people can really party.  In Peru and Ephraim, Utah, I enjoyed some of the best experiences that deepened the celebrations of Baptism, First Communion, Confirmation, Quincieneras and weddings.

Our Core Value on compassion states: "Compassion compels us to stand with and embrace others in their suffering, that together we may experience God's liberating and healing presence."  Like Mary, who was at the wedding feast of Cana, we, Sisters of the Holy Cross, know how to celebrate life.  Because we embrace others in their suffering, we can embrace them in joy.

As I look to the future, I realize that as a Sister of the Holy Cross I am being called to witness to those values which are countercultural.  No matter where I am called to serve, my true vocation in Holy Cross is the response of our compassionate mother.  Her "fiat" yes to become the mother of the Messiah led her to continual faithfulness to the son no matter what his need; whether it was at the wedding feast, or at the foot of the Cross, or with his companions at prayer waiting for his spirit at Pentecost.  Basically, I see my vocation as a sister as being detached from my very life that I may continually be able to say "yes" to whatever the Lord calls me to do.