Monastic Profession of Sister Suzanne Fitzmaurice

Sister Suzanne Fitzmaurice, who made her monastic profession on June 27, at Mount St. Scholastica in Atchison, Kansas, sees her decision as a simple one. "I had all the things that the world says are signs that you've made it, but there was a deep part of me that wasn't being filled." She had everything she needed materially, a satisfying job, good relationships and the possibility of marriage.

Since the age of seventeen, she had been involved in faith ministry, participating in youth retreats and church activities, and eventually finding a career as a youth minister herself. While working at a parish in Clear Lake, Texas, she found herself thinking about giving more of herself. After a time of trying to avoid such thoughts, she eventually decided to visit some communities. "I didn't think that Benedictine life was for me," she admits, "but my uncle who was a Benedictine in Illinois, made me promise to at least look at one monastery."

A visit to Atchison changed everything. "It wasn't what I thought I was looking for, but it turned out to be everything I couldn't name. The first time I prayed in the chapel, I was not just full but overflowing with a sense of all I could be." After further prayer and more visits, she came to the community in 1997. The monastic profession this summer is the final step in the long process of deciding that this is the place and the people that will be hers for the rest of her life.

The ceremony was attended by many loved ones, including students and teachers from Notre Dame de Sion High School in Kansas City, Missouri, where she currently teaches. She frequently brings the young women from there for weekend retreats at the Mount. She believes that she can show them important values to take back into their own world. "Our monastic life demonstrates balance and reverence in a world which keeps telling teenagers that excess is the norm. I try to give them an appreciation for silence in all the noise, to pray and get to know God. The girls see that I, and the other sisters they meet are happy and they see our love."

She is optimistic about the future of her community and of religious life. She thinks that it is an important witness, not of running away from the world, but of showing another way of living in it. "If this lifestyle were to die, it wouldn't be because kids don't appreciate it or aren't spiritual, but because they just haven't been exposed to it. That's why I want to bring them here to see a new way of life." Sister Suzanne herself shows them by her joy and enthusiasm that her monastic commitment has changed everything for her and that now she knows what she really needed in life.

More pictures from the Profession

Read the Reflection given by Sister Anne Shepard, OSB, at the Vigil of the Profession