  Sister Maureen
Fowler
Fresh out of high school, Maureen Fowler came to Edmonton in 1975 to "try
on" religious life. It fit. "I feel in this lifestyle I'm
most fully who God calls me to be," says Sr. Fowler, a Sister
of Charity of the Immaculate Conception. After 15 years of experiencing
the "the dying and rising of Jesus" in her own life after
having her share of doubts, Sister Fowler is still trying it on. "I
consider myself a new member and I'm always just beginning to discover
what it means to respond to the call to follow Jesus," she says.
As a 16-year-old, she heard the call at a week-long retreat led by
Jean Vanier during spring break at Notre Dame High School in Vancouver.
The students slept at the school and the crowd increased over the
six days as more and more students flocked to take part in the retreat. "It
was a real moment of conversion for me and of discovering a whole
new relationship with God. It was a whole lot more personal and real
than I had experienced before. "After the retreat,
she and others began meeting twice a month to pray and deepen their
relationship with God, "It became a real community of faith."
To be sure, Sister Maureen's relationship with Jesus had been born
long before that retreat. She had been raised in a family where
religion was important and in Grade 8 she had been called by her
parish to
teach catechism to Grade 1 students. But after the Vanier retreat
she began to take seriously the idea of entering religious life.
Only by trying on that life did she discover it was the real thing. "As
I have lived this, I've been led to what I believe is a deeper experience
of seeing the world from the point of view of the Gospel." It
was in community life Sister Maureen began to experience her own
poverty and her need for further conversion.
"Community is not a place to escape into. Community is a place
of challenge," she says.
" One needs to have a very strong sense of oneself and of the experience
of God in one's life."
And she has found her vow of celibacy to be no barrier to intimacy
with other people."When I came to community, it never occurred
to me that living in religious life would preclude intimate relationships
with other people."I didn't want to come to something that was
dead and less than human." Intimate relationships are key
to loving ever more inclusively, she says.
With time, her process of conversion led her to see the world through
the eyes of the poor - "to live values that don't make sense
to the world." As formation director of her order, Sister Maureen
lived in Edmonton's inner city. "I'm learning from the poor,
especially women, what the life and death and resurrection of Jesus
is really about. "She described the reactions of the elderly
women in an inner city craft program when that program had its
funding cut.
"They reminded me of the disciples after Jesus had been crucified. "They
were just shocked, discouraged and angry." Like the disciples,
they felt their experience had been too good to be true, she recalled. "But
what I saw them do with their anger was to rally and speak out
about the injustice of their situation and ask questions. " One
woman, in particular, has worked hard to establish a new program. "It
was right around Easter. It was the most powerful example of Easter
I've had for a long time", says Sister Fowler. " It's pushed
and empowered me to do lots of things I would never have done before."
Western Catholic Reporter
used with permission
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