Deepening the Spiritual Experience
S. Donna Steffen
by Donata Glassmeyer

“My life’s work is spirituality, especially attending to God’s movement through spiritual direction. I am a seeker and choose to focus on the spiritual/pastoral dimension in my ministries to assist people in deepening their own spiritual experience,” explains Sister of Charity of Cincinnati Donna Steffen.

A native Cincinnatian and a 1981 graduate of the Jesuit School of Theology, Berkeley, Calif., S. Donna relates, “I have always had a spiritual quest, wanting to understand my own inner life, that of others, how God relates with us and our world. I have pursued this quest in various ways.”

S. Donna has served in parish ministry; she facilitates workshops nationally for the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults. “[RCIA] is a way for people coming into the Church to fall in love with God,” she explains. Sister also is a member of the ministry team trained at the Jesuit Renewal Center in Milford, Ohio, called The Center Within, an Ohio nonprofit organization that sponsors four to five spiritual retreats each year.

S. Donna was invited to be one of the authors of Foundations in Faith (Resources in Christian Living, Thomas More Press), a publication featuring resource materials for all periods and aspects of the RCIA process. She is the author of the Handbook on Prayer in this series. With her background in discernment and in the RCIA process, S. Donna also authored Discerning Disciples: Listening for God’s Voice in Christian Initiation (Liturgy Training Publications, Archdiocese of Chicago).

Integral to S. Donna’s spirituality are issues of social justice. “In 1983, I participated in a women’s study tour of Nicaragua, sponsored by Church Women United. We saw a large field with 17 coffins holding the bodies of high-school-age students, coffee bean pickers, killed by the Contras. Their loved ones stood beside the coffins with pictures of the dead. The young people were murdered because they supported the Nicaraguan government in place at that time. Contras, trained to torture and kill the opposition, were educated by the American military here in the United States at the U.S. Army School of the Americas.”

For many years, S. Donna has participated in the annual November nonviolent protest of the U.S. Army School of the Americas (now WHINSEC) at Ft. Benning, Ga., along with several thousands of other protesters.

From Findhorn in Scotland, to Havana, Cuba, to Lithuania and Peru, S. Donna’s spiritual journey, inspired by St. Ignatius of Loyola, “has made me more aware of listening to a person’s experiences and finding God alive within.” S. Donna strives “to find God in all things.” A member of the Earth Focus Committee, S. Donna resonates with the oneness of all creation.

Her work on immigration reform confirms her belief that “we are all one.” In March of 2007, Sister visited the U.S./Mexico border in an effort to better understand the plight of our sisters and brothers yearning for immigration reform. Her presentation at a Sisters of Charity educational conference “was the Congregation’s way of extending an invitation to others to learn more about the issue.” (The Catholic Telegraph, April 13, 2007).

From international focus to sacred inner revelation, S. Donna believes, “Each of us follows our own personal lead toward deep spiritual growth. In the early 1990s I visited Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, which houses a large labyrinth designed like the one in the Cathedral of Chartres, France. I was impressed by the variety of people walking the labyrinth in silence. There were professionals, high school kids, moms with children, the poor, the elderly – each person slowing down, listening to God’s spirit within. In walking meditation, such as the labyrinth, we become physically engaged; we are able to slow the hectic pace of our culture, and access a deeper consciousness.”

S. Donna proposed the idea of an outdoor labyrinth on the Sisters of Charity Motherhouse grounds and on June 2, 2002, Sisters and Associates blessed and dedicated a formal labyrinth on the edge of a wooded hillside on the Sisters of Charity campus.

With her global understanding of spirituality and the Ignatian conviction that “God acts in all things,” S. Donna brings the spiritual poetry of Rumi, a 13 th century Sufi mystic, to those appreciative of the perennial wisdom of all world religions. “Rumi came alive for me,” she said. “The reemergence of his poetry is another example of the human psyche seeking connection with the Divine.” Attendance at recent workshops attests to Rumi’s popularity in the West and to S. Donna’s appreciation of the heart’s desire for God.

Each ministry holds enjoyment and satisfaction for S. Donna and every day she remembers, “I am very blessed on my journey with God.”

 For more information on S. Donna Steffen’s workshops, click on “Spirituality Center.”

 

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