SOLT sister serves up hospitality at Domus Trinitatis

By RENEE WEBB
Content and Design Coordinator

When Sister Jean Marie of Corpus Christi, SOLT, first visited sisters from her religious community in Iowa it was before the Domus Trinitatis Retreat Center in rural Carroll had been built.

It was in 2014 and she recalled how a small community of Society of Our Lady of the Most Holy Trinity (SOLT) Sisters were living in Willey and making plans for the retreat center on land donated to them.

“I just fell in love with the little church. It is amazing, so beautiful. I liked the little town with the Pepsi machine – there was nothing else around,” she remembered of her first time in the diocese. “It was nice to be able to run out with some change and get a Pepsi.”

While her time in Iowa 10 years ago was for a visit, Sister Jean Marie is now officially part of the SOLT community living in the Diocese of Sioux City, serving at Domus Trinitatis. She came back to Iowa nearly a year ago for a sabbatical before heading off to an assignment in Corpus Christi. In the interim she took some time off when relatives had passed away. Sister Jean Marie had loved the mission so much at Domus Trinitatis that she asked to stay in Iowa. After her superiors discerned her request, they reassigned her.

“It is so beautiful here, I absolutely love it,” she said.

Since March the SOLT sister has settled into her work at Domus Trinitatis, which is mainly focused on the realm of hospitality and being present to those attending retreats.

“I help set-up for retreats, take care of the meals, prepare the retreat center and the hermitages,” explained the 69-year-old sister. “I also recently started to bring Communion to the homebound through the parish.”

She joined Sister Anne Marie Walsh who is the local superior of the SOLT community and Sister Marie Hesed Champagne, who continues to lead development of Domus Trinitatis.

“I just love the people. The people are so wholesome,” said Sister Jean Marie of Iowans. “I enjoy it here and love visiting the elderly. It is such a pleasure and an honor to bring the Lord to them.”

As a result of her upbringing and life experiences, she has learned the importance of the faithful being very patient and exceptionally kind to those who do not understand the faith.

A native of Maine, Sister Jean Marie explained she was not raised in a religious household. Her parents were divorced and eventually she was sent to a boarding school. Her sisters had gone to a boarding school the year before and she noticed how much they had changed – in a very positive way.

“They were so different that I wanted to go a Catholic boarding school and get whatever they received,” she recalled. “Within a year I was catechized, baptized and confirmed.”

With a true zeal for the new-found faith, upon returning to her predominantly Jewish neighborhood she realized they didn’t talk or know about Jesus or Mary.

She had recalled at the boarding school they had said in an emergency you can baptize. The 12-year-old thought this was an emergency so she baptized children in the neighborhood.

“It didn’t go over well. We actually had to leave the neighborhood,” said Sister Jean Marie. “From that time, I was forbidden by my mother to never speak the name of Jesus or Mary again. I had experienced the love of God and then I was taken out of the church.”

For many years she was apart from the faith but Jesus kept calling her and she came back to the church as an adult.When she was 45 years old she began to discern a call to religious life. Once she knew she was being called, it took her a while to discern which community was a good fit. But God was at work again having placed a SOLT priest in her life. She had told the priest she was looking for a contemplative, active order and he mentioned that was what the SOLT community was.

In 2005 she entered the community of SOLT sisters in Corpus Christi, Texas as an aspirant. As a postulant she spent a year in New Mexico and for her first year as a novitiate, she served in Washington and then spent six months in Italy where the sisters had a formation house before returning to New Mexico. She made her initial vows in 2009 and final vows in 2014. From there, she was a cook for SOLT priests in Corpus Christi and prior to coming to Iowa served in North Dakota.

While much of her ministry has been working in hospitality in one form or another, she explained she “received as a gift” from God about 20 years by way of a hobby of sorts that has brought out her creative side while being very prayerful and aligning with her spirituality. She restores, repairs and repaints statues.

Through the years she has restored various statues mainly in areas where she is assigned. Not long after making her final vows she even was able to repair a four-and-a-half-foot statue of St. Joseph that had fallen off the wall at a poor parish that had no way of replacing it. This particular job included repairing the head of St. Joseph, which only one-third remained.

“I love it,” said Sister Jean Marie. “Since I have been here there are people who know I do that and bring me their statues. I just totally refurbished a bust of Jesus. He was a solid gold color and I gave him coloring as a human. He is very beautiful.”

When it comes to color selection for the various parts of a statue, the sister said the hues and shades to blend the paint just come to her – inspired and inspiring work that is coupled with her ministry of hospitality at Domus Trinitatis, which means Home of the Trinity.

Find more information about Domus Trinitatis at homeofthetrinity.com.