Meet the Sisters

S. Annette Muckerheide

S. Annette Muckerheide retires this year after 34 years in the Department of Biology at the College of Mount St. Joseph. Photo by Don Denney, courtesy of the College of Mount St. Joseph.

What do you enjoy most about being a Sister of Charity?
Most of all, my Sisters – this wonderful, supportive group of spiritual, diverse women with whom I can share life and love, pain and heartache, joy and sadness, trust and concern. When you need a hand, they are there for you; and they are people with wise advice.

What is the best thing about Community life?
The best part is in knowing that I always have the support, the help and the opportunities to serve. I have been given many gifts. I know that there’s always an opportunity, always a way in which I can use these gifts, through the Community, to make this world a better place and to help other people. The Community has given me so much encouragement and taught me so much about how to work and live with all kinds of people, about how to grow spiritually and emotionally, and how to use the gifts I have for others for the global community. Had I been anything other than a Sister of Charity I don’t know what would have become of me. That is my call, and I am very grateful for it.

What do you do for fun?
I love to be outdoors. I enjoy hiking, bicycling and gardening. I also like to draw outdoors, mostly images from nature – a blade of glass, a leaf or a flower. I enjoy music. Several times a week, S. Joan Wessendarp and I go to the back room of our house and make music for an hour or so.

What is your favorite way to connect with God?
When are we not connected with God? Silence is so important. I like to get up early in the morning for prayer. There is a quote from Thomas Klise, it’s about listening prayer, and it’s always resonated with me: “The listener [puts herself] away from the pleas and suggestions of the normal self [and] opens [her] spirit to the Loving One … the YOU who is wholly other and yet wholly wedded to the true self.” But I can connect in many other ways, too – in other people, in nature, in music.

How do we become connected?
It is important to slow down and allow for silence. And then to move out of the silence into an awareness of the presence of God in all that is, even in the midst of busyness and activity.

What would people be surprised to learn about you?
I was a premature baby; I think eight or nine weeks early. I weighed 4 pounds. They kept me in the hospital for six weeks, and said to my mother: “Take her home; we can’t do any more. She probably won’t make it, and certainly won’t amount to anything.” God had other plans.

 

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