Once upon a time, there was a faith…
When I look back on my childhood memories, I remember the time of my confirmation retreat when I told the Lord “I promise to be a religious”. I was 13 years old at the time and I did not realize the significance of my words, which I soon forgot. When I got to high school, I gave up all religious practice (no more mass, no more sacraments). Only the “Note Father” prayer and a “Hail Mary” before going to bed to have a clear conscience. A busy life of friends and work left little room for the Lord.
A few years later, a proposal from the diocese of Nantes was to challenge me. My parents encouraged me to participate in the WYD in Cologne, which I accepted. During the final vigil, Pope Benedict XVI invited us to fight against the “forgetfulness of God”, the “à la carte religiosity” and the importance of the practice of the Mass. That day, I took an “evangelical slap.”
As soon as I returned to France, I went back to mass and it is there that I met the Daughters of Wisdom who were attending the same parish. These same Daughters of Wisdom I providentially found again during a trip to Peru.
“At the same time, the question of my vocation began to bother me…”
I felt the Lord calling me to religious life but I did everything to avoid hearing Him. With time, the call became more and more “pressing” until the day of October 25, 2009 when a Daughter of Wisdom invited me to participate in a day at Saint-Laurent sur Sèvre without telling me the purpose of this meeting. I discovered it while searching on the Internet: “A day on vocations”. Even though I said to myself, “No, I won’t go to this day”, there was still something that attracted me. Was it the joy so characteristic of the sisters that I met every Sunday at Mass? So I decided to participate in this spiritual time not because of the theme but to discover the secret of the joy and dynamism of the Daughters of Wisdom.
THE LORD PRECEDED ME…
During this day, two words shook me and still accompany me today: “Trust, arise, He is calling you” Mark 10,49 and “If we do not risk something for God, we do nothing great for Him” Letter 27 Saint Louis Marie Grignion de Montfort.
It was then that I remembered that divinely inspired word from 20 years earlier: “Lord, I promise to be a nun.”
God had given me an appointment in Saint-Laurent sur Sèvre to reveal his call.
That same day, during the Sunday Eucharist, I was seized by an inner fire and a Presence at my side. Immediately, joy was mixed with fear. I even tried to negotiate with the Lord. I would say to Him: “Lord, you are mistaken, call other Christine, but not me, leave me alone”, but the more I said it to Him, the more the call to religious life resonated in me. That is how I decided a few weeks later to follow Christ in the Congregation of the Daughters of Wisdom. I made my first vows there on February 2, 2014 and I made my final commitment on January 15, 2023.
DAUGHTER OF WISDOM AN ART OF LIVING THE RELIGIOUS LIFE FOLLOWING CHRIST-WISDOM…
As I review my journey, I am in awe of the Lord’s patience with me. His faithfulness and his Presence in my life are strong markers to live and walk with confidence.
This confidence that the Lord asked of me the day he revealed himself to me was transformed into boldness in my mission. From the beginning of my formation to religious life I was confronted with the challenge of intergenerational, intercultural, and sharing of goods… But this time is bearing fruit today. My mission in Haiti allowed me to look at the faces of the people that the Lord put on my path, to welcome the other in his or her difference, but also to go back to school to reorient myself professionally, to go from being a wine waiter to being a pastoral assistant, to dare to implement projects for young people and adults, to take care of the most fragile, to listen to the young person or the colleague in difficulty… All of this is a source of life!
Yes, the Lord does not call the best for His mission but He makes the best of those He calls, such is my experience in the Congregation of the Daughters of Wisdom.
Sister Christine PICHERY – Daughter of Wisdom – Community of Pontchâteau – France
