Co-operating with God
Sister Mary Rafqa Boulos, RSM
“I began to have a deeper awareness of learning to be open to what He had planned as I grew in relationship with Him and came to realize my call to Religious life more firmly and with much joy! ”
“Qa-dee-shat a-lo-ho, qa-dee-shat ha-yel-to-no, Qa-dee-shat lo-mo-yoo-to. It-ra-ham ‘a-lain.” Ask a Maronite Catholic, and they would tell you the above reference is the Syriac prayer chanted at Mass that you have memorized as a toddler. It is engrained in you, as I can say my faith was for me thanks to my Lebanese parents. I was born and raised in Ohio to my immigrant parents, hence both my Maronite Catholic faith and Lebanese culture played a large role in my formation growing up. As involved and active as I was in my parish, I never considered the idea of a vocation to Religious Life until I was a teenager. I remember attending a youth retreat and there was a discussion about Religious Life and I walked away from it thinking “Well I guess it could be a possibility that God is calling me to become a Sister..” and the moment that thought came into my mind, I immediately said “No, I don’t think so, I want to get married and have a family.” But that thought resonated interiorly and throughout the following years of high school, would remain in the back of my mind and gain enough momentum to re-surface strongly as I started college.
I realized I couldn’t ignore this interior stirring any longer. God was pursuing me and through prayer and the Sacraments (or Mysteries as they are called in the East). I began to have a deeper awareness of learning to be open to what He had planned as I grew in relationship with Him and came to realize my call to Religious life more firmly and with much joy! When I met our Community towards the end of my fourth year of medical school, I realized I had found where God was calling me to love and serve Him. By His grace and Providence, I withdrew from all the future plans of residency, graduated from medical school and entered the Religious Sisters of Mercy less than 2 months later. With much gratitude for the prayers and time of basic formation in our Institute, I professed Perpetual Vows in August 2020. It has certainly been a beautiful adventure of Faith with our Lord.
“Thy will be done”
St. Thomas Aquinas teaches “God operates in us that He may co-operate with us”. This ties into my ring motto, which is “Thy Will be done”. This phrase from the Our Father has been one I have reflected on frequently since I first felt called to Religious Life and also happens to be a phrase my patroness, St. Rafqa, was known to repeat. Throughout the growth in formation, I came to understand that our co-operating with God was really uniting our Will to His and I have come to see this beautiful prayer as both a joyful reminder of how we co-operate with God by uniting our will to His and also a reminder of the gift in the challenge of continual lifelong conversion as we strive to unite our Will to His and to allow Him to transform us and unite Himself to us.