Section:
vocations
Sister Maggie Gannon
Maggie Gannon had everything a woman could want. Highly educated, she had a beautiful home in Fort Washington, Pennsylvania, money, wonderful friends, a boyfriend.
“But it never felt right,” said the 41-year-old Gannon. “Now I’m driving a piece of junk. My room is the size of the closets I had at home, and my budget for one month is what my dry cleaning used to cost me every week. But the truth is that I love it. It’s so great to find your niche.”
Where is this niche? The Sisters of St. Francis of Philadelphia, which was founded by Philadelphia’s own St. John Neumann, whose feast day is January 5.
Sister Margaret “Maggie” Gannon, the principal at Our Lady of Perpetual Help School in Morton, Pennsylvania, acknowledges that becoming a nun was always in the back of her mind. Members of her eighth-grade class at St. Joseph’s in Ambler, Pennsylvania, voted that within 20 years, she would be in the convent. They were right, but it wasn’t that simple.
“When I told my mother I was going to grow up and become a nun, she wasn’t the least bit surprised,” Sister Maggie said. The Catholic faith was always a central part of the Gannon home.
“My mother had a great devotion to the Sacred Heart. We knew First Fridays were special,” she said. “We knew the importance of going to confession. In my home, if you were too sick to go to church, you were too sick to go out.”
Rather than being “holier-than-thou” in the way they practiced their faith, however, her parents were just good role models, she said: “Even though my parents died when I was younger, they did enough in those years to last a lifetime.”
It was the perfect environment to feed a growing vocation, and, for a time, the mystique of being a nun captivated her. “But once I got to high school that all went out the window,” she said.
She graduated from Upper Dublin High School, and earned bachelor’s and master’sdegrees in early childhood education at Chestnut Hill College. During those years, she lived the same kind of life as other women her age.
“I had a boyfriend, went out with my friends on Friday nights. I was living the high life,” she said. “And I liked it very much.”
While employed as a teacher at Our Lady of Good Counsel School in Southampton, Pennsylvania, she met a man and became engaged: “He was a great guy, but there was something in me that didn’t feel right. I didn’t know if I could stand up and say I wanted to do this forever.”
She talked to her parents about it, and they said the best thing to do was to call off the engagement. “It was only two months before the wedding,” she said.“The invitations were out. I already had a bridal shower. We had bought a house together.”
Shortly thereafter, tragedy struck her family. “My father died real suddenly. He had a massive heart attack. And my mother was handicapped, so I was thankful to be home because my two brothers lived in California."
One day, while waiting in line at St. Joseph Parish to arrange for Masses to be celebrated for her father, she was asked by the sister at the desk whether she had ever thought she had a vocation.
The question started a process of rethinking an old dream. She called an aunt who was a member of the Franciscan order, Sister Kathleen Gannon, who put her in touch with a vocations director.
“They have a program where you go and visit with different communities, and they introduced me to some of the sisters. So that’s how it began,” Sister Maggie said. “I would go and visit different houses, have dinner with them, pray with them. After doing that for a time, I wrote a letter asking to begin candidacy.”
During that time, she explored the charisma of the order and liked what she discovered. “What really drew me to our congregation is in our Mission Statement, where it says we’re a diversified group,” Sister Maggie said. “We have diversified gifts, and it said we were willing to take the necessary risks to be a voice for those who are poor and marginalized. I really liked that. They’re appreciating the gifts of each sister, but they’re also saying it goes beyond us. We’re an ‘us’ so we can help ‘them’.”
At one time, the Sisters of St. Francis of Philadelphia were widely known for their work in operating the Franciscan Health System, but now they also have sisters who teach, and work in parishes and with the homeless.
“We’re all over the board,” Sister Maggie said.
She entered the candidacy program in 1999, and went to live with four other sisters in South Philadelphia.
Then tragedy struck her family once again. Her mother, who was already confinedto a wheelchair because of complications from diabetes, became seriously ill on Ash Wednesday and died on Good Friday.
On the night of the funeral, when she was about to return to her family’s emptyhouse, the superior of the order, Sister Marie Lucey, called and said to her: “Tonight you will come home.”
Those simple words had a profound impact on her grieving heart. “I knew then that this is where I belonged.”
Two weeks after the funeral, she had her gall bladder removed, and became very ill. During that period, doctors discovered she had celiac disease, which is a gluten intolerance. “My cousin is Richard Gannon, the quarterback of the Oakland Raiders. His daughter has celiac disease,” Sister Maggie said.
Sister Marie Lucey allowed her to return in spite of her interrupted candidacy. She entered the novitiate and returned to school, completing a doctoral programa at Immaculata College in Immaculata, PA.
Unlike her experience when she was approaching marriage, Sister Maggie said, “I knew when I made my first vows that this was forever.”
Now she shares a home with Sister Clare D’Auria and Sister Joan Schmal, andloves it. “They’ve started watching American Idol because I like it, and they can tell you all the characters on Friends,” she said. “Every Friday night we eat buffalo wings and rent a DVD.”
After eight years in the order, she said, “I’m still excited about my life.”
“I hope other girls have the courage to do this, because it takes courage. But if it’s the right thing, you’ll ask yourself, ‘Why did I wait so long?’”
Women who think they’re being called should talk with someone they trust, orseek out a vocations director who can help them discern what God may be asking of them, she added.
“Every congregation has a website,” she said. She encourages women who feel they may have a vocation to begin exploring it."
“You have to get to the point where you’re comfortable with this, yourself. The number-one person you’ve got to connect with in this is God,” Sister Maggie said. “Once you know you and God are on the same page, then it makes it easier to go forward with discernment.”
Her final profession of vows is scheduled for August 2006. “I’m thrilled,” she said. “I had everything a person could want in the secular world, and God called me to this. And I just feel like the luckiest person in the world.”
Reprinted with permission from Catholic Standard & Times
