Last Vows as a Novice

 Today I retold this story.

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Today our daughter Sister Maria Perpétua, O. Praem. celebrates the sixth anniversary of her entrance into religious life. She renews her vows, leaving behind the Novitiate and becoming a Junior Professed sister. 

It brings to mind a moment when my heart gave a leap! 

Recently I found a 1998 homemade card with a note that my ‘mamãe’ wrote after I announced to her that we were expecting a new baby—our sixth.

My mother’s homemade cards were made from old holy cards—she had a score of them! In her note, her prayerful words asked God that this child would live for His glory alone, and that she would bring blessings and joy to both her parents and her siblings. Above the prayer she attached a gorgeous German holy card image of the Nativity of Mary, with the letters M-A-R-I-A...  

This sixth child, our tiniest baby, we named after the Blessed Virgin herself, as the card spelled, and she grew up from a young age with a heart turned to all that is high and good. She has indeed brought immeasurable joy and countless blessings to her parents and siblings in so many ways. 

Reading my mother’s prophetic words gave my heart a jump!

And to think she entered religious life on this date, the Feast of the Nativity of Mary—just so that note, forgotten in the family album for over two decades, would come to fruition. Not only that, but the spelling of that beautiful name on the card, given to her in Baptism, is also her name in religious life, a rare occurrence. 

The power of a grandmother’s prayer. And to think my mother already had, by then, more than twenty grandchildren.

So much of God’s loving action in our lives go unnoticed. What if I have never kept that card? Or if I hadn’t thought of leafing through those album pages to digitize them?