June 22, 2010
by Chris AlbrachtEditor’s Note: Benedictine Sister Mary Hawkins will note her 60th Jubilee on Thursday, June 24. Chris Albracht with The West Texas Catholic spent a few minutes with her on June 6 during the Founder’s Day Open House at St. Benedict’s Monastary south of Amarillo to talk about her jubilee.
The West Texas Catholic: Sister Mary, your 60th Jubilee is Thursday, June 24. Congratulations! Who do you credit 60 years of service to Christ and His People?”
Sister Mary Hawkins: I just credit it to God’s Grace and to a Call and when He called me He gave me the Grace to answer that Call.
WTC: We’re both from the same neck of the woods, aren’t we?
Sister Mary: I was born at Tulia and grew up in Hart and Nazareth.
WTC: If I’m not mistaken, you were a convert to the faith, correct?
Sister Mary: I am a convert; I was 25 when I joined the Church. I attended school in Nazareth for eight years. When I decided I wasn’t god and needed God, I went to the Catholic Church rather than another church. I have always been attracted to the Church. I always felt God’s presence in Holy Family Church in Nazareth; I felt a sense of awe that God was really there. When I realized that I needed God, it was natural and easy to seek Him in the Catholic Church. I began to regularly attend Mass in Washington, DC. It was about two years later that I became a Catholic.
WTC: It was probably a little different growing up in Nazareth in the minority with all the Catholic kids who lived there. Was the attendance in the public school then almost 100% Catholic?
Sister Mary: Yes it was and all the teachers were religious sisters. There were double grades in every room even in high school. We did not change classes but had two high school teachers. Sister Germaine and Sister Loretta were the teachers. Sister Germaine was there for many years. My family and the Sharp Family were the two non-Catholic families in the school.
Theoretically we were not supposed to attend Catechism classes. The priest came about twice a week and taught catechism for 45 minutes. We non-Catholics could go outside to play; but in winter in Castro County who wants to play outside, so I stayed in catechism class. I think he was a Benedictine priest from Switzerland or Germany with a heavy accent. I learned my catechism very well. I wanted to answer the questions but I was not supposed to be sitting there learning the catechism.
WTC: When you told your family that you had found your vocation and felt that God was calling you to be a member of a religious community, how warmly was that received in the Hawkins household?
Sister Mary: My call to the religious life was not received well at all; it was worse than a funeral. If you could ever attend your own funeral, I did. It took them about three or four years to become reconciled to my choice. Once I returned home in my habit and they realized I had not turned into an oddity, they began to feel much better about it.
One thing that convinced them I was not too high bound—they were cleaning out a surface tank which was full of mud and we were catching fish out of it. My family was up to their knees in the muck and I just pinned up my habit and put on some tennis shoes and waded in to join in the work. I think they were highly impressed.
WTC: I think all their doubts probably disappeared from that time on. Of all the ironies of growing up in Nazareth, of becoming a nun, you got to go back to the school and teach there. That had to be a weird déjà vu experience for you.
Sister Mary: Well it was. All the years I taught in Nazareth were the happiest years I had in the classroom. I taught children of people I had gone to school with, but not too many. I knew some of the people and some of the families. I felt like I was coming home; I had a soft spot in my heart for Nazareth for introducing me to the Catholic Faith in the first place. Maybe I would not have gotten there if I had not become “hooked” on the Mass or on Catholicism. Basically it was the “sense of the Sacred”, not so much the catechism itself that drew me. The old catechism approached everything so drily and intellectually; but you didn’t really get into the root of what that meant. There was something about the Church itself and the feel of the church that drew me to it.
WTC: Twenty years ago this month, the last Benedictine Sisters left Nazareth, an event I’m sure that had to break your heart. That left this community in Canyon as the last Benedictines in the Diocese of
Amarillo.
Sister Mary: We decided to make our foundation here in Canyon in 1980; we started as a Mission of Fort Smith in 1971. We had a group who wanted to live the monastic life together; not that the community did not live the monastic life. We, as they did, still had to work to support ourselves. We wanted to be together with monasticism as our main ministry. There were six of us in 1980 when we asked, because of the way things were going in the Church, to make a foundation so the Benedictine sisters would still have a presence in this diocese. We moved out here south of Canyon in 1999.
WTC: Sixty years, all over the place, doing this and doing that, comparing this monastic life to that of a larger community, how would you summarize it all?
Sister Mary: Looking ahead is in God’s Hands. We want to establish a monastery that will stay here. We can do what we feel necessary for that to happen, but if it is not God’s will, it will not work. We hope we are doing God’s will and are doing everything we can to have a permanent stable foundation here. That means new people, which we work on the most—trying to foster vocations. We have a new candidate, who was with us for a short time in the past. We have another candidate who is planning to enter within the next few years. Their plans can go awry, but we have to trust in God to prosper the work.
WTC: You have the last word.
Sister Mary: I cannot imagine myself as anything but a Benedictine monastic, which has become my identity.