Why I Became a Nun (Sr. Gianna's Vocation Story)

hi everyone happy catholic schools week you might be wondering how did you know that you were called to become a sister when did you know that you were called to be a sister what is it like to be a sister it's wonderful thank you very much in this video i would like to answer some of those questions by sharing bits and pieces of my vocation story and i pray and hope that it will also help you to learn about pray about and hopefully one day discover your vocation and what god's will and plan is for you to one day become a great saint my name is sister mary janna and today i would like to share with you my vocation story a vocation is a calling from god and every single person in the universe has one you have one i have one everyone who's anybody has a vocation once upon a time there was a beautiful baby girl who was born on the 15th of february in the year 1994. that baby girl was me and she was born to two very devout catholic parents so if i could say one thing about my parents in my early childhood it would be that they raised my older brother and me in the faith like hardcore so i was in preschool i was about four years old and my mom took my dad my older brother and me to a convent and a convent is a house where religious nuns live in community together well we came in for mass and i saw all these ladies dressed in their habits and i had never seen habits before and so automatically i was like to my mom ma why are those ladies dressed like that and my mom whispered to me they're married to jesus and i was like married to jesus oh i want to marry jesus when i grow up oh do i love jesus i want to marry jesus too and so that was the first thing that i learned about sisters and nuns and i and it resonated with me in my heart after the mass we visited the sisters and i just love them love them love them so joyful so loving so sweet and my first kindergarten teacher when i went to the school by that convent was actually also a sister and i remember she told us that too that she was married to jesus and she wore crucifix like this one so in that same year i had also met the levin of the immaculate heart of mary sisters they were missionary sisters and they came to visit my family in missouri to enthrone our house with the hearts of jesus and mary and so my family was consecrated to the two hearts in the year 2000 so the lymph sisters invited us to go to world youth day in toronto canada during the papacy of pope john paul ii and this was a gathering of all young people all over the world and they would come together and pray together it's it was so awesome and so when we went to canada we actually visited my aunt and at this time i'm about seven years old and she had this hall bookshelf and in this very tall bookcase on the highest shelf was this bright yellow book and i and i look and i wanted to read that book so i climbed this bookshelf and i got this yellow book and the name of this book was the picture book of saints it was my first time reading about the saints and i opened the book and i read it straight i sat there for maybe one hour two hours and i found myself just being so moved by their lives and the radical things they did they would care for the poor you know they left everything they had to follow jesus a lot of them were priests and nuns you know some of them were in battle some of them fought in war some of them were soldiers farmers doctors some were just children and a lot of them were martyrs and they gave their entire life to jesus they and i thought this is so exciting like they were like heroes i thought from that day one day i am going to be a saint and i want to be a sister i think and so i had those two desires growing in my heart so there was one saint that really struck me and her name was saint katherine laboure and i was so interested in her because i read that when she was eight years old she would walk for miles every day to go to daily mass and i was like i make years old i think i can do that and that's challenging that's something challenging that i want to do to become a saint and i told my mom i was like mom did you know that you can go to mass every day and she said oh yeah i go to mass every morning when you guys are sleeping and i was like no one told me that well can you take me with you and then she was like if you want to we can go every day together if you wake up early at six and we can leave the house can prepare for school and you can come with me at 6 30 ams at the convent so long story short my family started going to daily mass every morning if not in the afternoon every day and we would pray the rosary every night we prayed in the car it was beautiful so as i went through elementary school and middle school i had lots of desires i want to be an astronaut i wanted to be a vet i want to be an actress dancer singer i wanted to be all these things because i love doing lots of things there was a time i also wanted to be a soccer player but throughout all those years that thought of giving my whole life to jesus never left i knew that the way that i loved jesus was different from everything else and i always had that thought like i i'm going to be a nun i'm going to be a sister so when i was in high school i went to visitation academy it was on all girls prep school and i love going to parties i love being with my friends and this is the time that people kind of like started like dating you know having relationships but there was something in my heart that kind of like told me like i need to guard my heart and kind of like preserve myself because i knew that if i was in a relationship with somebody like i would have to give like itty bitty pieces of my heart to that person you know spending time with them i honestly had a lot of things going for me in high school i had won the national junior pga championship i owned the latest set of ex-gem callaway golf clubs i own a bmw x5 i was going to the number one catholic private school in st louis visitation academy and i had just friends that were just amazing but still i felt like there was no thing or person that could satisfy my heart until i knew that i could fully belong to jesus by doing his will and answering my vocation and i was very open to marriage i was i thought i could be happy if if i was married to a man and if i had children maybe four or five who knows six children but i thought that could never be enough for me i thought i wanted to love more i have an expansive heart i just wanted to love a lot of people a lot of kids and i felt like that would have been through spiritual motherhood in religious life so i actually wanted to try out religious life and enter the convent right after i graduated from high school and i told my parents this from the time i was 15 all the way until my senior year and you know when you tell your parents something like that like i think i want to be a nun it's really cute when you're little but when you get older and you're finally near that point like going to college getting a job your parents kind of like change and they're kind of like okay are you sure you know what you're doing my parents would be like you a sister you can't be a sister you you can't even clean your room ouch so when the time came closer to high school graduation a lot of my friends and friends parents and teachers they were asking me so what are you gonna do after this and i would share with them honestly i think i want to enter the convent and try out religious life and become a sister and it didn't always end well honestly it was very shocking to people they were like oh and i was like i asked my parents oh mom dad when can i try out religious life and and see my vocation if i'm called to be a sister and they said well why don't you go to college first get your degree experience the real world go to medical school finish and then you can discern and i said oh that's that's gonna take a couple years that's that's a while i don't know if i can wait that long so i went to st louis university and i double majored in biochemistry and biology i was a pre-med student with a golf scholarship and i once again was trying really hard to get good grades trying to please my parents please my professors and i was trying to be happy honestly be happy where i was and where i thought maybe this direction was going but i couldn't stop thinking about becoming a sister my heart was so restless i just felt like there was more out there for me and i kind of started feeling this emptiness and so one day there was this sister named sister joseph andrew and she visited my college and she wanted to meet young girls who were discerning religious life and so i met with a sister and she told me i don't know why you're sad and confused because it seems like you know what god wants you to do it seems like you you know god's will for you and i said wait a minute sister how do i know that this is god's will to become a sister how do i know it's not just my imagination and my own thinking and if this is something i've wanted since i was little but how do i really know it's for me and she said why would god put all these thoughts in a young woman's mind if he didn't want her to be his bride it's god who's putting these desires and thoughts in your heart and in your mind the call comes from him it's not coming from you it's coming from the outside that just cleared so many thoughts in my mind it answered so many questions and i walked out feeling like sold like oh my goodness i think i have to answer this call i think god's been tugging at my heart all this time and this is the time that i have to answer it if it's not now i i don't know when sister joseph andrew asked me where do you see yourself becoming a saint and i could only think of the sisterhood i could only think of religious life so she invited me to visit her convent in michigan and so i went there and in one of my adoration hours i spent the whole hour there just looking at jesus and i was begging him lord please tell me what you want i just want to do your will i don't want to be deceived and i don't want to deceive myself please just make it clear to me and at the very end of the hour i heard these words spoken to me i heard christ saying to me be crucified with me and when i heard those words i just cried and cried because the call was so strong and so clear to me at that moment it was like jesus was saying to me follow me you're gonna feel the weight of the cross it's not going to feel like it fits but it's authentic and it will entail sacrifice pain suffering confusion misunderstanding but in all of it i'm going to fulfill your heart and i just want you for myself that was like all in those words be crucified with me and so i knew what i had to do and when i went home from that trip my parents it was like they had this 180 like conversion and they were supportive of me and they were like really open to allowing me to enter so that very year on the feast of the immaculate heart of mary i entered the community of the sisters of the leaven of the immaculate heart of mary on june 14 2014 which was the feast of the immaculate heart of mary and my parents were there at the mass my brother was there who was supportive of me the entire time my whole life of me discerning religious life and we took this picture together you'll see that at the back there's a double rainbow and that that was like a god-given just blessing sign that this is where i want you to be so i've been a limb sister for seven years now i took my first vows last year on september 12th and although i'm a temporary professed my intention is perpetual and my intention is that i persevere in my vocation long story short i fell in love with jesus and i could not get over him i can tell you that there's nothing more exciting more fulfilling and more adventurous than the life i'm living now as a lymph sister thank you for listening to my story may god bless you and the blessed mother always keep you if god is calling you to priesthood or religious life he will pursue you he will win your heart over but it's up to you to give that ultimate yes to god [Music] you

Channel: LIHM Sisters

Views: 33,407

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Id: Y9CR1hbPCrg

Length: 13min 49sec (829 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 04 2021