Sister Rosalyn Juenemann

BORN: Leoville, Kan.

Sister Rosalyn Juenemann serves as a eucharistic minister during a recent Mass at Sacred Heart Church in Plainville, Kan.

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As I look back on my years as a Sister of St. Joseph, the rose symbolizes best what religious life means to me.

When I started my religious life, I was just a bud well hidden but with potential I knew very little about. Through prayer, experiencing living in community and interacting with God’s people, the bud became fuller and then began to open little by little.

The major happening that began to open me was Vatican II and the challenge to look at our roots, making changes accordingly. The Spirit has been very alive calling us to the more. Renewal called for us to look at every aspect of our life.

That was a real testing time that challenged me to earnestly ask myself, “What is it that really makes me a sister?” Not my clothes, not certain kinds of prayer, not the work I do, but who am I called to be  through prayer, communion with God and service. It has to come from within in a spirit of love.  My call to do parish ministry was the means that led me deep-

er. My first years working outside the structured school system were a challenge that stretched me to risk and trust the movements of the spirit within.

Parish ministry has called me to be more fully who I am and how God wants me to serve. Each day is a new and challenging experience. I may have a plan of what I think ought to be done but the need of the neighbor some-

times changes the whole day or direction of the day.  Beneath all this the foundation of prayer is an absolute necessity, prayer always and everywhere in the midst of the active life that calls me to be what we say we are, “Contemplatives in Action.”

May God lead all of us to reach our fullness in beauty just as the rose at its fullest peak of life.