In a few weeks I’ll celebrate twenty-five years of consecrated life. A jubilee is a time for remembering, giving thanks and rekindling the inner flame of love. Memories bring me back to Boston, where I spent my college years and where my vocation took shape. To be honest, when I arrived on campus as a freshman I already knew the Little Sisters of the Poor and felt a strong—but reluctant—attraction to their way of life; but the next four years were decisive in my vocation journey.

As soon as we pulled up in front of my dorm on moving-in day, I noticed the bright red door of the brownstone across the street. A sign read, “The Catholic Center at Boston University.” I was psyched—interiorly, at least. I didn’t know if it would be cool to be perceived as religious by my peers, so in the beginning I was fairly discreet about practicing my faith. The first semester I attended the 10:00 p.m. candlelight Mass every Sunday because I felt more or less anonymous in the quiet darkness of Marsh Chapel. But before long I was attending the packed 6:00 p.m. folk Mass, and then daily Mass. Eventually I became a Eucharistic minister. From these experiences I came to love the Church. I also grew more comfortable publicly witnessing to my faith.

Even though I was busy at school, I found time to get off campus. The young superior at the Little Sisters’ home in Somerville knew just how to draw me in, and so many weekends found me boarding the Green Line by 6:00 a.m. on my way to working a shift as a nursing assistant in their home in Somerville. It wasn’t really a matter of making money, but of being drawn by God to the elderly.

At the same time, my occupational therapy studies required numerous clinical and volunteer experiences. Stints in Beth Israel Hospital and a nearby mental health center, a rehab facility in Brighton, a senior center in the North End and a soup kitchen in Harvard Square exposed me to a world with which I had had only limited contact before college—the world of suffering. I learned the significance of a phrase my grandfather had passed on to my mother, “There but for the grace of God go I.” Yes, it was only by the grace of God that I was blessed with youth, health and many gifts. But what was I to do with all these blessings?

I can still remember exactly where I was when I heard the answer to this question. I was walking home from class after doing really well on a test for which I had barely studied. As I stood on the corner waiting for the light to change, I suddenly realized that my life was not my own—that the gifts and abilities I enjoyed had been given to me by God so that I could put them at the service of others.

“It’s not about you,” God seemed to whisper. “It’s about them.” “Them” meant the poor to whom God wished to send me. I had often fought temptations of self-absorption and pride, but standing there on Comm Ave, I knew that my life was no longer mine. Later, during my religious formation, I was struck by a phrase that permeated the work of Blessed John Paul II: “Man cannot fully find himself except through a sincere gift of himself.” That’s what I realized that day, and what has always been at the heart of my joy as a Little Sister.

God has a plan for each of us. Whatever that plan is, he is asking us to become a gift for him and for others. This call to be gift may be lived out in marriage, the single life, priesthood or consecrated life. For me it is lived in the service of the elderly poor.

I haven’t been back to Boston since long before the Big Dig, but I hope to visit during my jubilee year. I’d like to see Faneuil Hall and ride the swan boats again; but most of all I’d like to wander past the red door on Bay State Road, say a prayer in Marsh Chapel and rekindle the sense of wonder at God’s call to be gift.

- Sister Constance Carolyn, l.s.p.