Testimonies - Sr. Thérèse Meunier, CSJ

I will share with you how the call from God looked like and felt like for me. It will come in a different way for each person.

After attending the bilingual Teacher's College in Ottawa, I started teaching in an elementary school in Toronto. I found it difficult during my first year, especially trying to control the students. But as time went on, it became easier. In the school, there were many families who could not provide adequately for their children. Some came to school without breakfast while others did not have sufficient clothing to keep them warm during the winter. I felt sorry for them and wished I could do something.

I started to feel an unease inside me, an unsettledness about what I was doing. I felt that there was more that I was being called to. I had a desire to reach out to the poor that I taught, to give of myself to make the world a better place, to follow Jesus more closely. It was like a voice inside me, like a thought that kept coming back to me over and over again. There seemed to be a longing for something else in my life.

Maybe you can think of times when you had a desire, a longing for something in your life. The longing stays there until you either decide that you no longer want it or you get what you have been longing for.

This was a bit how I experienced the call or the invitation from Jesus to live more fully the Gospel message in my life. I did not know how I could reach out to others on my own. I wondered if there were other people who had similar desires. I started to think of joining a Religious Community where all were striving to live their life for others. One of the communities that I knew was the Sisters of St. Joseph in Toronto, since I took music lessons from them.

So then what? I decided to talk about what I was feeling inside with a close friend as well as with the priest that I knew in our parish, and a Sister of St. Joseph who taught me. They listened to me and encouraged me to pay attention to what was going on inside me, to pursue this longing. They helped me to see that this could be a call from God. After prayer I made the decision to enter the Community of the Sisters of St. Joseph that I belong to today. This was my call from God, my life choice, and my vocation as a Christian. Over the years, my relationship with God who called me into life, into this way of life, began to deepen. This would help to affirm for me that this is truly where I was being called.

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