ARTICLES

Who, Me?

A San Diego Woman Answers Her Vocation

BY JAMES MCCOY

"There was a peace that came when I said 'yes' to God," Jennifer Gomez said from the motherhouse, "that, 'yes, I will be Your bride; I will become Your religious wherever that was. And there was a deeper peace when I knew where," the postulant from San Diego told a News Notes reporter, laughing. "And now that I'm here, it's the deepest peace of all."

It was the first Monday in June. In 59 days, she would become a novice with the Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist, newly founded in Ann Arbor, Michigan. It was with women religious that her vocational journey had begun; now, at age 25, with these sisters, it was a coming home.

As a sixth grader, she and all the other kids had mustered when the principal, Sister St. Fintan, strode into the classroom. The school, run by the Sisters of Nazareth, was attached to the Mission San Diego de Alcalá. Jennifer saw the sisters everyday, and she loved them. Her favorite song was the one which they and the whole school sang during the May procession in honor of the Blessed Virgin Mary:

As I kneel before you / As I bow my head in prayer / Take this day; make it yours/ And fill me with your love.

All I have I give you / Every dream and wish are yours/ Mother of Christ, mother of mine / Present them to my Lord.

That's what Jennifer wanted -- to give herself totally to God, just as Mary did. So when Sister St. Fintan urged the students to pray about their vocations, Jennifer thought about it. She wanted a total love, holding nothing back. She saw such a love between her parents. That was familiar. But to the sisters' way of life, how could God be calling her?

As soon as she could, she snuck off to her favorite spot, the Mission's Mary grotto. There amid the flowers and pomegranate trees, she prayed.

Come then, my love, my lovely one, come. For see, the winter is past, the rains are over and gone. The flowers appear on the earth.... The fig tree is forming its first figs and the blossoming vines give out their fragrance. Come then, my love, my lovely one, come. -- Canticles of Canticles.

After a time, she left Mary's Grotto with the conviction with which she started: she was to follow in her mother's footsteps and have a beautiful and fruitful married and family life.

Years passed. She was eighteen and at the Civic Theater, enraptured by San Diego Opera's production of The Italian Girl In Algiers. Beside her was the young man she'd been seeing since she was 16. She had a template in her mind of the perfect man and he, of course, fit it perfectly. She was in love. One day they would marry.

Yet some part of her was deeply unhappy. It had come to the point where she had to choose between God and this boy and she couldn't understand why. She didn't want it to end but then somehow she'd get this glimpse that she really had to break up with him. And she didn't know why.

I sleep, but my heart is awake. I hear my Beloved knocking: "Open to me, my sister, my love, my dove, my perfect one, for my head is covered with dew, my locks with the drops of the night."

"I have taken off my tunic, am I to put it on again? I have washed my feet, am I to dirty them again?"

My Beloved thrust his hand through the hole in the door; I trembled to the core of my being.

Then I arose to open to my Beloved.... I opened to my Beloved, but he had turned his back and gone.

Nestled like a mourning dove in the choir loft of the Magdalen College chapel, Jennifer cooed to the Blessed Sacrament below. The New Hampshire dawn charged the stained-glass windows with sunlight. Behind her, in cute round windows, the Holy Family was beaming in happy domestic scenes. She had broken up with her boyfriend back in San Diego. At Magdalen, she had not dated. Now it was junior year.

So I will rise and go through the City; in the streets and in the squares I will seek him whom my heart loves.... I sought but did not find him.

There had been a lot of conversations with tutors and classmates. They had talked about spiritual motherhood -- how that would be a giving up of yourself. They had said things such as, "It's not about you; it's about God." They had talked and talked, and sometimes when they talked it had nothing to do with what was sitting on her heart, and yet it seemed as though it did have something to do with it.

It had been so long since she was a little girl singing with all her heart what was still her favorite song:

All I have I give You / Every dream and wish are Yours....

Everything was simpler then....

Suddenly, all those conversations resolved themselves into a single, simple word: totally.

God was asking Jennifer to give herself totally to Him.

"Who, me?"

"Yes you."

"Then, yes ... totally!"

Scarcely had I passed them than I found him whom my heart loves. I held him fast, nor would I let him go till I had brought him into my mother's house.

Now she was with Him in the motherhouse, and the reporter on the phone was asking her why that was the deepest peace of all. "Because when you're still in that place where it's still not fully there you know you can always say 'no' and turn back," Jennifer Gomez said. "Obviously, I'm still in formation and I haven't taken any vows yet. But there's something about actually being here and living the life. I can be praying the office with my sisters; I can be there by myself meditating; I can be at recreation playing soccer: it'll hit me -- everything is a gift."

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