Tags
California, Catholic school, Holy Family, Holy Family Sisters, Oakland, Religious order, Santa Clara Valley, Vocation
Sister Marie Ann Brent, SHF
“I’m going to be a Veterinarian!” I was very sure of my future when I was quite young, but age and time changed that goal many times. As a teenager I taught “Catechism” for the Holy Family Sisters in my parish of St. Andrew’s in Oakland, California. I attended Catholic School in a neighboring parish but something kept me connected with the Holy Family Sisters in my own parish. Sisters Camillus and Elizabeth visited our home frequently and I always felt close to the Sisters because of their willingness to be part of my home and family.
One of the Sisters gave me a copy of the Vocation booklet, “Gleaners along the King’s Highway.” As I read it through one picture caught my attention and that page became dog-eared over the years. It was a picture of the Sisters teaching a Released-Time Religion class in a garage somewhere in the Santa Clara Valley. I was fascinated with the “missionary” aspect of their ministry.
After I graduated from high school I worked for six months and I also began to volunteer at Saint Vincent’s Day Home in Oakland. My involvement in the Sisters’ ministries finally led me to entering Holy Family in January, 1953. My ministry over the years has reflected my fascination with that picture of catechesis in a garage!
The past 41 years I have lived out the charism and ministry of Holy Family serving throughout California, in Texas, and then in the Alaskan Bush serving as a Parish Director from Dutch Harbor in the Aleutians, to the Eskimo village of Dillingham, to the rural community of Valdez.
My years of ministry and Religious Life have been blessed and filled with many wonderful experiences and great joy in serving the “underserved” people of God.
~8/10/2011
