Harvard commencement speaker discusses decision to enter convent

August 26, 2010

Mary Anne Marks, one of three student commencement speakers at Harvard University this spring, discussed her decision to enter religious life in an interview with National Review. Marks, who delivered her commencement address in Latin, is one of 21 women who will become postulants of the Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist this fall.

Asked “when did you start talking to people casually, publicly, about your vocational call?”, Marks recounted:

In eighth grade, after I had committed myself entirely to God during a trip to Lourdes the previous summer. Until then, I had lived a double life, drawn on the one hand to immerse myself in the beauty of my faith, on the other to imitate the less than edifying dress, speech, and behavior of my classmates. Kneeling before the tabernacle in the lower church at Lourdes, I was filled with an understanding of God as Love and a yearning to love Him at all times in everything I did, no matter what anyone else thought. Freed from the need to conform to others’ standards and willing to make Love the ruling principle of my life, I could speak unashamedly and sincerely of my desire to become a sister.

 

---

For all current news, visit our News home page.

---

 
Further information:

• God and Woman at Harvard: A 2010 summa cum laude heads to a convent (National Review)
• Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist