If we risk nothing for God, we will accomplish nothing significant for Him.
This affirmation has helped me stay on the paths of the Lord. Since my adolescence, the time when I got to know the Daughters of Wisdom present in Cerro de Pasco – Peru, where I was born, until today as a Sister of perpetual vows. This phrase continues to resonate in my heart every time I embark on a new service.
My vocational journey began with an invitation to participate in a health promotion group serving malnourished mothers and their children, a program led by the Daughters of Wisdom in Pasco. I encountered Montfort through the Legion of Mary, and also through the sisters. It was in our meetings that I discovered this very significant phrase that has accompanied me in the missions and services I have carried out in the parish and neighboring villages.
The missions I shared with the sisters led me to taste more and more of the life of Jesus, in His closeness to vulnerable individuals. I got to know Montfort and Marie-Louise who dedicated their lives to serving the poorest of their time. For this reason, I decided to become a Daughter of Wisdom, to bring God’s Love everywhere. This is how I began a path of formation as an aspirant, experiencing communal life, a life of prayer, and mission in Pasco. At the age of nineteen, I was accepted to enter the novitiate. Three months later, my father passed away, and I had to return to my family’s home to support my mother and brothers through this painful time for our family. A year and a half later, I was determined to return to the Congregation. However, God had prepared another important mission for me. My mother’s death placed my brothers under my responsibility and care. Therefore, my desire to become a nun had to wait.
Ten years went by. During this time, Montfort and Marie-Louise kept me engaged in my work as a teacher, a missionary in villages, and a leader of youth groups in my parish in the Montfortian manner. Thanks to the internet, I was able to reconnect with the Daughters of Wisdom through Sister Victoria Retuerto Chauca; through her, I found each sister I had known and with whom I had shared life. This filled me with so much joy that I asked the Lord, ‘What do you want me to do for you?’
Vocational guidance was offered to me to discern what God had planned for me. After nearly two years of guidance, I began the pre-novitiate stage in 2012. Once again, I heard the word ‘Wisdom,’ but in a different way. I began to understand it in its feminine aspect, ‘Wisdom,’ to savor it through my lived experiences, to deepen my knowledge of the person of Jesus, and to speak of Her as the one who comes to renew and transform everything internally.
In 2015, I made my first vows. My first mission community was Our Lady of the Amazon in Tingo María, where I worked as a religious education teacher. Through education, I sought to make the Wisdom present in creation known and to raise awareness of the care and protection of the Common Home. With the students, I managed to bring some joy to the children in the villages of the region during Christmas. With the help of teachers, we conducted a solidarity campaign for young victims of sexual abuse. The face of Wisdom reflected in the successes of life she found in adolescents who gave of themselves to help those who were facing greater difficulties than them. Their generosity to share pleasant moments with children and other adolescents like themselves. These early years of temporary vows were very influential in my life as a religious. The passion for education went beyond the confines of the classroom to contemplate God in the most beautiful experiences of life: love for one’s neighbor.
Wisdom accompanied me throughout the years of initial formation; with Her, I experienced the most beautiful stages of mission and the communities where I was sent, even though challenges were not lacking to help me grow on the path of consecrated life as a Daughter of Wisdom.
I made my perpetual vows on March 25, 2023, the Feast of the Incarnation. Today, I have returned to the community of Tingo Maria. I support the educational work of the Congregation. I teach the little ones the simplicity of life, attentively listen to the children, and work in communion with teachers and parents for the integral formation of the children in our educational institution. And, following the example of the founders and through the hand of our mother, the Virgin Mary, we live out the charism of the Congregation: To Reveal the Eternal and Incarnate Wisdom.
“If we risk nothing for God, we will accomplish nothing significant for Him.”
Thank you!
Sister Katty Castillo Janampa Entity María Luisa
