Threshold Winter 2006

New Director for Sophia Center

Sister Eleanor Suther (pictured below) has recently been chosen to be the director of Sophia Center, succeeding Sister Micaela Randolph. Sister Micaela will remain on staff as director of Souljourners, and Sister Marcia Ziska has also joined the staff as associate director. Sister Eleanor entered the community in 1960. Her ministry has been in religious education, serving as an elementary teacher, a director of religious education in rural parishes in Missouri and Iowa, consultant for adult faith formation for the Archdiocese of Kansas City in Kansas and most recently as director of the Institute for Religious Studies, jointly sponsored by Benedictine College and the archdiocese. She was general editor of the multi-volume lectionary-based religious education series Seasons of Faith published in 1991. She holds a Ph.D. in religious education from the Catholic University of America.

Below, Sister Eleanor shares her initial impressions of Sophia Center and her vision for it.

As I gaze out the windows of what was first Sister Florence Feeney’s office, I remember the day when, as young sisters, we helped to move the Mount St. Scholastica College library from the second floor of the administration building to the beautiful new Feeney Memorial Library. “Wisdom hath built herself a house,” reads the inscription over the front door. Inside the front door, Sister Helen Buening’s masterpiece echoes the scripture which calls us to marvel at “the depths of the riches and the wisdom and the knowledge of God,” and reminds us that God’s wisdom is found not only in books, but also in the whole universe.

Since that day over 40 years ago, this building has served those seeking for wisdom in the library of Mount St. Scholastica College and then Benedictine College. It served young women searching for wisdom as it housed the Academy of Mount St. Scholastica. Today this beautiful building welcomes retreatants who search for wisdom not just in books but in all of God’s works and especially in their own lives.

Sophia Center had its beginning here at Feeney under the direction of Sister Irene Nowell and then Sister Joan Wingert. Moved to the second floor of the administration building when the Academy claimed the building, Sophia Center grew steadily under the capable leadership of Sister Johnette Putnam and her staff. The retreatants who came to us helped us to discover and to share the wisdom that grows out of monastic living. In responding to the search for wisdom, the Souljourners program took shape, helping to train spiritual directors whose ministry is to help people to search for God’s wisdom in their own lives.

Under the leadership of Sister Micaela Randolph and her staff, the growing Sophia ministry moved back to this beautiful space at Feeney. Drawing on the wisdom of the Catholic and Benedictine tradition, the ministry continued to grow, developing an outreach to Catholics and other Christians in the area. Recognizing a calling in the steady stream of retreatants from all denominations, the Mount St. Scholastica community in 2005 named Sophia Center as a ministry which we intend to develop.

Where will that direction take us? Where do we hear the call today?

We hear God’s call in Christians of all denominations who come to us. In sharing prayer and spiritual wisdom, we recognize an ecumenical ministry, a dialogue of love that may one day bear fruit in the unity for which Christ prayed.

We hear God’s call in those who come to learn the ancient monastic disciplines of lectio divina and centering prayer. We hear God’s call in those who seek to learn from the heritage of the Church’s wisdom, in the saints and mystics. We hear God’s call in those who come seeking to rediscover and to renew Catholic prayer traditions.

We listen for God’s call as we seek to reach out to our neighbors through the Atchison Women’s Wisdom Center, our outreach in Atchison. The Happy Hearts Learning Center and the Head Start programs, our neighbors on the lower floors of Feeney, keep us grounded in the search for wisdom, and listening to God’s call in the ordinary daily life of the surrounding Atchison community.

The quest for justice and peace, another cause dear to our hearts, calls us to search for new ways to support that ministry and especially those engaged in that ministry.

For the Sophia staff, listening to God’s call will include listening to the Spirit speaking through one another and through the retreatants who come to us. We are currently forming an advisory council who will help us in this task of discerning the call. As we search for wisdom, our task is guided as always with the same kind of love of learning and desire for God that guided our sisters who served here before us.