Summer 2008

Jubilian a Rare Gem

“I don’t know why everyone is making such a fuss. It’s just another day.” No matter how much Sister Jeanne Marie Blacet tried to play it down, February 10 was hardly just another day. At the community Eucharist that morning, she renewed the monastic profession that she had made 75 years earlier.

Diamond jubilarians are as rare as diamonds, and as precious. Sister Jeanne Marie was educated by Benedictine sisters at the Cathedral School in St. Joseph, Mo., and came to the Mount after high school. After entering the monastery, she was educated as a teacher and would go on to educate and mentor other teachers for decades. She served as supervisor of the schools staffed by Mount St. Scholastica and then became superintendent of schools for the Archdiocese of Kansas City in Kansas.

She has been a mentor in many ways to other sisters as well. She has served in many community capacities, including as director of scholastics and of novices at a time in her life when most people would be enjoying retirement.

It is evident, however, that Sister Jeanne Marie’s enjoyment would never come from a retirement of sitting still. She continues to participate in community life, to do cross-stitching and to spread her energy and joy throughout the monastery.

“For seventy five years,” says Sister Anne Shepard, “Sister Jean Marie has not only been a professed member of this community, she has been a model religious for many of us. Her faithfulness, her wit, her sometime theatrical style, her administrative skills, her gracious acceptance of change and her genuine love for youth are all characteristics of this young-at-heart Benedictine.”

An article about S. Jeanne Marie from the St. Joseph News Press, "A Monastic Milestone"