Sr. Mary Ellen Wagner, Vocation Formation Team
Early interest in religious life
Growing up in Cambridge, Ohio, with three sisters and a brother, Sr. Mary Ellen attended parochial schools and a Catholic women’s college. She feels the influence of the sisters who taught her played a part in her attraction to religious life since fourth grade.
Her parents, Carl and Gladys, were fully supportive if a little surprised when in 1949, at the end of her college sophomore year she decided to join a religious teaching order. For decades she had taught school, primarily Home Economics, until she found herself drawn to chaplaincy.
The unpredictable hours of a chaplain, however, ran counter to her order’s precise schedule of community life. She began to question which was more important, her communal life or her ministry. So she searched for another order where she could perform the important work of chaplaincy and found the forward-looking, innovative Sisters of Bon Secours.
An epiphany
A health magazine’s ad for the Congregation of Bon Secours put her choice in perspective. Dressed in simple street clothes, a Bon Secours Sister was pictured with the caption, “Our uniform requires a minimum of care; our ministry requires maximum care.” Sr. Mary Ellen had never heard of the order, but she was intrigued and wrote to us. After learning more about the sisters’ work and spirituality, she found she was strongly drawn to the charism and began the transfer procedure. With freedom to give total care to those in need without constraint, she had found the place she was meant to be.
In Sr. Mary Ellen’s chaplaincy, she has tended to many cancer patients. She feels privileged to have been with the sick at their most trying times, personifying God’s love for them. Yet she admits it’s hard not to always be in control of a situation and often having to let go. Balancing community life with the demands of her ministry has been her greatest challenge.
“You don’t look like you carry the weight of the world on your shoulders.” With this simple statement an elderly Baltimore patient had unknowingly reassured Sr. Mary Ellen the habit she wore for years as a sister with another order wasn’t necessary in her new life and ministry as a Sister of Bon Secours. And she never forgot how the older gentleman’s comment helped her begin her new ministry without relying on what she wore to express who she was.
Still active as a team player
Sr. Mary Ellen retired three years ago from chaplaincy but shares her talents and enthusiasm as a member of the Vocation Formation team. She shows her commitment to the team in a very personal way.
The Vocation Formation team is responsible for finding a place for candidates to live and helping them discern what their personal ministry would be as a Sister of Bon Secours. Sr. Mary Ellen is inspired by the early sisters’ work, and feels their outreach is more needed than ever in today’s world.
She believes the Vocation team must be out there welcoming generous women who want to be with the sick and the dying, and those most in need which is the Sisters of Bon Secours’ special charism.
The embrace of her sisters
“Though we are spread out, there is such solid community support among us,” she opines, including a treasured monthly conference call to discuss a book we are all reading. Our choice of books, she points out, are mostly spiritual in nature, and the sisters look forward each month to sharing our opinions about what we’ve read. This is a form of faith sharing as well.
Sr. Mary Ellen also appreciates how leadership is shared and decisions are made together, not abruptly handed down by an authority figure. If you want to live a life of Christian commitment, take care of the poor or be with the sick and the dying, she enthusiastically suggests you consider the Sisters of Bon Secours, who provide that rich spiritual environment, living and working alongside others with the same burning desire.
