Follow Me
Follow me and I will make you fishers of men. And at once they left their net and followed him.
(Mark 1:16-18)
Sr. Gaye Lynn Moorhead is an unlikely nun. I first met Gaye, a Sister of Mercy and licensed attorney, in 1987, my first year on the family court bench. In the courtroom she quickly impressed me, admittedly a rookie judge still wet behind the ears, as someone who knew a great deal more about family law and practice than I did. Her passion, then as now, was children’s rights and her specialty was serving as law guardian, the attorney who represents children in legal proceedings. It wasn’t long before I began assigning her in all my most difficult abuse, neglect and custody cases.
At the time Gaye was in private practice, sharing office space with fellow attorney, Jamesine Riley, a Sister of St. Joseph, who had opened a legal clinic on West Main Street in Rochester to serve the poor. In addition to her law work, Sr. Gaye spearheaded the founding of the Andrews Center, a home for hard to place foster children, the first of its kind run by a religious community, and found time to be a foster parent herself.
A remarkable woman of boundless energy and bulldog-like tenacity, Gaye hardly fits the stereotype of a nun. She was raised Presbyterian in a military family that moved around a lot, including three years in Japan and nine in Colorado. A self-styled “army brat,” she quit college after two years to enter Vista, the domestic Peace Corps, converting to Catholicism and entering religious life in her twenties. Sr. Gaye completed her undergraduate studies at SUNY Geneseo, then studied law at Notre Dame University where she met another atypical nun, Pat Schoelles, a Sister of St. Joseph working on her PhD. in Theology, now President of St. Bernard’s School of Ministry and Theology who finds time to volunteer at Rochester General Hospital. Good friends to the present day, when they get together, they delight in kidding each other.
Among Gaye’s other accomplishments is founding a traveling school for Hispanic migrant farm children, also the first of its kind, which accompanied them and their families from Florida up the East Coast to Western Ohio and back again during the crop picking season. In preparation for this ministry, she and the other sisters involved had to learn Spanish and how to drive a school bus. Her next assignment was providing legal services to migrants and refugees in the Diocese of El Paso near the Mexican border. And most recently she’s serving as President of the Sisters of Mercy of the Americas. Her next-to-last e-mail to me was from Chile where she had flown to help celebrate the 40th Anniversary of the Mercy Mission there. A real life flying nun – economy class, of course! Who’s gone from being a foster mother to a reverend mother! Unlikely nun indeed!
(As an aside, Sr. Gaye, an English major in College who loves movies, is a member of my homily review committee. I can always count on her to include in her insightful critiques – “it’s too long, make it shorter!”) And yes, that’s what she said about this one too, especially the part about her, which she begged me to take out altogether! Obviously, her objection was overruled!!
Like Simon, Andrew, James and John in today’s gospel, four unlikely disciples, Gaye accepted Jesus’ invitation to follow him and chose to do it as a member of a religious community.
Of the men ordained American Jesuit priests in 1987, there were these five. First, 33 year old Fr. Vince, a graduate of the University of Pittsburgh who taught and coached sports in high school and college. Second, Fr. Mike, a 26 year old who graduated from Harvard and worked with the homeless in Baltimore and, as a teacher with the Jesuit Volunteer Corps in the South Pacific. Third, Fr. Rene’ a 27 year old graduate from the University of California, a former engineer with Texas Instruments. Fourth, Fr. David, a convert to Catholicism, a 28 years old graduate from the University of Southern Alabama who spent four years in the navy and later worked as a physical therapist. And finally, there was Fr. George, a 30 year old graduate from Syracuse University who spent five years as an air traffic controller and also worked with the Jesuit Volunteer Corp in Alaska at a radio station.
These five men, chosen at random from a list of “atypical” Jesuits ordained in 1987 also accepted Jesus’ invitation to follow him and chose to do it in the context of the priesthood. One reason they were atypical is that prior to Vatican II, the route generally followed to become a priest began as an adolescent in high school. These five Jesuits, on the other hand, before entering the seminary were older with established secular careers and varied life experiences.
The Permanent Deaconate, reinstated by Vatican II, offers Catholic men, hopefully someday it will also to women, the opportunity, later in life, to follow Jesus as ordained ministers without the personal sacrifices required of the priesthood or religious communities. (Incidentally, you undoubtedly will be pleased to know that the story of my own unlikely journey to becoming a deacon, in deference to Sr. Gaye’s mantra concerning the length of my homilies, will be saved for another time.) I know several men in our own faith community who are in various stages of diaconal discernment, and at least one, Bret McLaughlin, a 2004 graduate of Holy Cross who served as a 2nd Lieutenant in the Air Force, currently doing an internship here, is discerning about becoming a priest, coincidently, a Jesuit.
The original disciples were a motley crew…just like us. There appears to be no rhyme or reason why Jesus chose them to serve. Although many were fishermen, the similarity ended there. Jesus chose twelve people of diverse backgrounds and perspectives who, at least on the surface, could not have been more different or unremarkable. Nonetheless, they were chosen to help him in his mission to spread the Good News. Maybe Jesus saw something in each of them – a look, an attitude, a gesture, a generosity of spirit or graciousness. Whatever the reason, somehow Jesus knew that this particular motley group would yield a dynamic faith and movement that would alter the course of human history.
God is continuously calling us, the likely and unlikely, the typical and the atypical, to a life of discipleship. The context within which to be a disciple -- clerical, religious or lay – is a matter of our individual choice after honest discernment. We need not be concerned about our worthiness or giftedness for discipleship because, as always, our Father knows best, even if we don’t have a clue.
We follow Jesus who teaches that who we are and what we ought to become are crucial elements in the fulfillment of God’s design for creation. The blueprints are drafted, the Kingdom is both now and yet to be and we are among today’s legions of Kingdom builders. Whatever our vocation in life – clerical, religious or lay -- and all are equally valid and essential, we are called to live in imitation of Christ. “Follow me,” is the invitation that echoes down through the ages. Do we?
Anthony J. Sciolino
Jonah 3:1-5, 10
Corinthians 7:29-31
Mark 1:14-20
3rd Sunday in Ordinary Time
January 22, 2006. (Cycle B)