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10/1/14

Sr. Faustina: Down from Pike's Peak and Up on God & Students


                                        " I just knew I wanted to do everything that
                                                            had to do with God  ."  ( Sr. Faustina Ferko )

By Robert  R. Schwarz

            She is 35 but looks years younger.  She stands five-foot-seven , has brown hair and smiling  blue-green eyes  and a cheerful disposition ,  and she prays several times during the day and evening.  She likes hamburgers without a bun ,  guitar  playing , making pottery ,  and cycling along the Lake Michigan shoreline. Et cetera, et cetera. You could call  Sr. Faustina  Ferko a kind of Catholic Renaissance  woman  but  you'd have to expand that definition to include mountain climbing. She's hiked up Pike's Peak twice and,  during one ascent when pelted with hail, rain, and snow and seeing  flashes of lightning , she thought she was going to die.
" I was praying and asking Jesus to lead my steps ," she said during our interview.  Whenever she mentioned  "Jesus" , she intoned His name as if He were  a beloved neighbor of hers whom she had known   for a long time.
            As was to be expected when Sr. Faustina Ferko was hired as the new director of youth ministry at St. James  Catholic church in Arlington Heights , Illinois, she came with  a devotion to Jesus and also to those conversion moments with students  she calls  "God  moments. "  During our hour together, she recalled one of those special  moments when a novice stationed at a Philadelphia high school : It was in a chapel there  after an " adoration "  service of prayers and singing  for freshmen .  "Everybody was getting up to leave except for a girl who remained kneeling ," Sr. Faustina said. " I asked her if she was okay , and she said ' yes , but I don't want to go. ' It was like she was saying  this is God and I don't want to leave Him . For this girl ,  it was a beautiful moment. "
   
       Sr. Faustina took a deep breath before

continuing : "That was the beginning [ of a

conversion] for that young lady , and for it to

happen at her age is so important . In that

moment they understand how much God loves

them. The younger these children can take hold

of the realization that God is real and that He

wants a relationship with them, the better. "  She related with exuberance all this to her ministry  at

St. James  by emphasizing the importance having a " good atmosphere  for the students to encounter

Christ."   Sr. Faustina has "high expectations" for the program she is developing at St. James to get

adult volunteers to teach  religious education to 9  th through 12th grade students , whether they have been  confirmed or not. "I think a lot of parents are looking for ways to better plug our teens into this parish. "
            I asked her what she would like people to say about her at her funeral . Her prompt reply: "I saw Jesus in her."
Why and How She Became a Religious Sister
How did it all begin for her ?   " The beginning seed was planted in my heart at age eight at a 2 ½ –hour charismatic Mass,"  she said. " It was very engaging. " Then I attended a seminar where I learned about gifts of the Holy Spirit. At the end, people pray over you. When they prayed over me, I felt my heart and His heart became one. At that age I didn't know what that meant.  I just knew I wanted to do everything that had to do with God .  I realized that as I  got older,  my heart was so big and full of so much love that I wanted to give it to more than just one person."
            Then came four years at Franciscan University at Steubenville, Ohio and a bachelor of arts degree in theology.  Now with a college debt to pay off,  Sr. Faustina spent the next ten years working as a youth director at various levels and  with  various jobs to help pay off that debt . She made rosaries, loaded  trucks for United Parcel Service, and answered telephones for a telemarketing agency. Today she is a sister ( and resident )  of  Holy Family of Nazareth in Des Plaines ,  an order formed in 1875 in Rome , which today has   1,300 sisters—not nuns, who are cloistered and whose vocation is primarily prayer. The order's work in its 13 countries  focuses on helping families.
            Asked if she ever had any regrets about choosing a religious rather than a family life, Sr.

Faustina  said with obvious , good-natured candor, " I don't think I can have regrets yet. I just made

my first vows June 15. "  We both laughed.  "I'm kind of still in the honeymoon stage. I'm totally

blown away by all that God has given me in the last three  months. So, I have no regrets. I always

knew I had a religious vocation in life but at the same time I  knew that if God brought some

wonderful  guy into my life I would be open to that . My mom was always saying  'I'm praying for

you to meet  a nice Catholic man ."  Again we shared a good  laugh. Then she continued : "So, last

June 15 I told my mom   'thanks for praying for me into the arms of Jesus . You couldn't get a better

guy than that .'  I wouldn't change my life decision now for anything, for I think God has given me

everything I've dreamed of ,  a great job and two great bosses  [ Fr. Matt Foley, pastor,  and JoAnne 

Mullen-Muhr , director of faith formation ] . "
Family Life
            All of Sr. Faustina's family  lives in  Erie, Pennsylvania .  Her father is  retired  from General Electric, where he did manual labor on train parts for 35 years. " He always put the family first, Sr. Faustina said. "If we needed a pair of shoes or pants, he'd buy it for us before himself.  Thanks to the sacrifices of my father,  I was able to attend Catholic schools all  my life. He'd put everything on the back burner to make sure that we got our Catholic education. "  She has two brothers:  Jamie, 41, a kitchen designer at a Lowe's store  , and Frankie, 43, an electrician for Verizon. 
And for   Recreation ?          
            With  full-time youth ministry and  rising at 5 a.m. for  prayers,  private adoration, and  meditation  , and later, saying  the Rosary followed by afternoon and evening prayers , one wonders  if there's any time—or energy—left for Sr. Faustina's  recreation. But there is. Sometimes she sees a movie like "l2 Years a Slave"   or  " Rise of the Planets of the Apes "—my grin at this title  was noticeable, causing Sr. Faustina to comment , "A Friend talked me into it. It really, though, was a decent movie. " 
            And there are books: " The Giver," which she thought fantastic,  " The Hunger Games, "  The Gospel  of Joy," by Pope Francis, and books by Henri Nouwen.  She exercises , which includes  long bike rides, like the 17-miles she pedaled last Labor Day  along Lake Michigan near Loyola University. What seems to delight her most is  "hanging" with her sisters at the Des Plaines convent, where she'll play and sing her guitar for them. "They are my community, " she said . " Spending time with them is really important. "
       With  two students at a Catholic Heart work camp at
 Detroit Lakes, Minnesota.

            She paused for a long moment to mull over a question about what makes  her sad. Finally, she said, "When something tragic happens like  the beheading of that American journalist in Iraq.  It also made me angry. It also makes me sad that a child dies from hunger every 20 seconds, and  here I am with all this food around me and I can't get it to them."
            She was suddenly reminded of the 24-hour hunger  food fast  she is planning for all the parish high school students . " It's a 24-hour lock-in ," she explained . " They will drink water and juice and then end with a 5 p.m. Mass followed by a feast of all their favorite foods their parents will bring. "  Money will be donated for each hour the students go without food and then  given to Catholic Relief Services.
         

We ended our conversation with one last question: Was there anything she  had to learn the hard

way?   What had been most challenging for her was being unable to see her parents during her

novitiate  except for two weeks each year . Another challenge came quickly to mind: "Oh, yeah," she

mused, recalling her first days as a novice  and how she was instructed to wash dirty dishes ( she still

does this ).  " Correction is difficult when you're 30 years old and somebody is telling you how to do

something you've been doing well for years . She admitted that the  real challenge was pride.

Comments are welcome
© 2014 Robert R. Schwarz


             
           

            

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