Sr. Mary Grace scheduled to speak at Catholic Women’s Conference in March

She was still Jessica Langrell – not yet Sr. Mary Grace – when she walked into PJ Gallagher’s Irish Pub in Sydney, Australia in summer 2008, but before she left that establishment, the seed had been planted.

World Youth Day was in full swing in her hometown, and a gracious promise from her family meant their business was the default dinner haunt for more than four dozen consecrated women religious based in the United States.

“They offered them free food at the pub every night they were in Sydney, so the first time I encountered the Sisters of Life was in a pub,” she said.

Sr. Mary Grace is among those slated to addresses the inaugural Catholic Women’s Conference by the Catholic Diocese of Wichita, which is scheduled for March 8 at Church of the Magdalen in Wichita. Although she has traveled to the area only once before to attend a benefit for A Better Choice crisis pregnancy center, Sr. Mary Grace says that visit left a deep impression.

“I was so moved by the faith in the parishes, particularly the love for and devotion to the Eucharist, that I came back raving about the faith, beauty and life we experienced in Kansas,” she said. “There was a fire and a love for the Lord that I haven’t seen anywhere else in my travels throughout the United States. I have been aching to return, so when the bishop asked us to come, we were eager to see if God would open the doors. And he did.”

Fork in the Road
When 18-year-old Jessica first encountered the throng of sisters in PJ Gallagher’s that evening in 2008, she turned a skeptical eye toward their vibrant and effervescent delight. “Honestly, I just didn’t think it was real,” Sr. Mary Grace said. “I thought their joy was fake. ‘Surely,’ I thought, ‘that kind of joy and freedom is not possible.’”

According to Sr. Mary Grace, she and her two brothers had grown up in a devoutly Catholic family where Mass attendance on Sundays and holy days was never in doubt. She had attended Catholic schools and was at that time attending Australia’s University of Notre Dame, where she dutifully continued to pray daily and attend Sunday Mass.

Despite her suspicion that the sisters pretended to be happy to attract vocations, Sr. Mary Grace recounted, they made an impression. She never exchanged a word with them that week, but their irrepressible glow prompted her to attend one of the order’s WYD events.

“The sisters were talking about their encounters with my people on our soil and sharing great stories of people coming back to the faith and being open to God,” she said. “I was deeply moved and started weeping. I don’t remember anything specific about what they said, but I know I thought, ‘I want what they have.’”

Thereafter, young Jessica sought to cultivate a deeper spiritual life grounded more in relationship with, than obligation to, Our Lord, Sr. Mary Grace said. She visited the campus chapel daily, where her prayers became intimate conversations in which she silently bared her soul, which included her hopes for the future, she said. Consecrated life was not on the menu of possibilities.

“I had big dreams to represent my country in the Olympics; I wanted to live by the beach; I wanted a big family,” she said. “Religious life honestly had not even been an option when I was growing up.”

That disregard faded at roughly the same rate at which her relationship with Christ deepened. By age 21, she was in contact with the Sisters of Life as a discerning witness, pursuing spiritual direction under a vocations guide who helped her explore how God was calling her.

At the same time, she was on the verge of achieving one of her life’s loftier goals. Rugby sevens had been named an Olympic sport, and her tryout for the Australian National Team went well. She learned exactly how well while waiting at an airport gate to depart for a Sisters of Life vocation discernment retreat.

“I was about to board the plane when I got a phone call from someone with the Australian Rugby Committee and learned they were really interested,” Sr. Mary Grace said. “They asked, ‘Can you consider putting off the next couple of years for the possibility of traveling with the team?’”

She was at a fork in the road.

“I thought God was teasing me,” Sr. Mary Grace said. “My lifelong dream to be an Olympic athlete was possible. It was like the biggest sides of my heart had been put before me.”

Nevertheless, she boarded the plane. Although she said the retreat proved anything but mystical, inspired, or tranquil, that was almost beside the point.

“It was a very difficult visit,” Sr. Mary Grace said. “I struggled. I didn’t hear God in prayer, but at one moment during Eucharistic adoration, God literally gave me the grace to tell Him what I really wanted.”

Those desires surprised even her.

“I said, ‘God, I want to love you like these sisters. I want to serve you like these sisters. I want to belong to you like they belong to you,’” Sr. Mary Grace said. “I received a grace of freedom. God wasn’t pressuring me. He wasn’t forcing me. He was literally showing me what my heart was made for.”

She returned home, promptly resigned from her job at her collegiate alma mater, and called the rugby committee to say she was no longer interested. “These were hard steps, but I had been shown what would truly make me happy: giving my whole life to Jesus.”

Six months later, Jessica Langrell was a postulant with the Sisters for Life.

Conduits for Grace
In the 13 years since she entered the community, Sr. Mary Grace said, she has joined in its mission of accompanying women in crisis pregnancies as well as helping those with abortion in their pasts to find forgiveness, healing, and hope. Those experiences, she says, have helped the native Aussie better appreciate the transcendent commonalities among people everywhere.

“It is overwhelmingly beautiful to realize how alike the human heart is around the world,” she said. “We look a little different, speak with different accents, and may have completely different life experiences, but at the end of the day, every single man and woman is aching for the love of Jesus Christ.”

And when she and her fellow sisters walk alongside women in the midst of critical, tragic, and trying situations, that accompaniment can help them recognize the unseen companion who is always with them, Sr. Mary Grace said.

“When people are hurt and disappointed in love and relationships, they know we were not made for that,” she said. “We were made to be fully alive and to know that God is with us and for us. There is meaning in our life’s difficulties and suffering, which are not the end of the story, but with God, they can be a new start.”

In the years since joining the order, Sr. Mary Grace acknowledged, she has heard others echo her own youthful attraction to the sisters’ joy. “We tell them that is a taste of Jesus,” she said. “If somebody experiences joy in our presence, that means – thanks be to God – God has used our witness and entered someone’s heart to tell them ‘I have this for you too.’”

That witness extends beyond the primary Sisters of Life mission field, she said, and includes venues such as the conference at which she will speak in March.

Sr. Mary Grace said that such trips usually entail traveling in groups of two or three sisters, where their unmistakable religious garb opens the door to all sorts of impromptu exchanges.

“Most are en route to events. We are in a plane, at a gas station or on the street,” she said. “People know they can speak to a religious sister about deep matters right away, and they do.”

Not that everyone immediately assumes a woman in a habit is the genuine article, she said.

“I was out to dinner with my family on a visit to Sydney when I entered the ladies’ room and saw three women standing at the sink sipping martinis and taking selfies; their conversation died immediately,” Sr. Mary Grace said. “As I am leaving, one woman leans over and says, ‘I have to ask which party you are headed to next.’ I said, ‘Oh no, I’m the real thing; I’m a nun.’”

The group was astonished, Sr. Mary Grace said, but one member of the trio looked right at her.

“She said, ‘Sister, we’re all looking for meaning, but none of us have found it,’” Sr. Mary Grace said. “I just talked with them about the Jesus I know and how he resonates in their hearts. I told them, ‘He came for sinners and wants a relationship with all of us.’”

And Servant of God Fr. Emil Kapaun is among the chief examples she takes for how to live as a conduit for God’s grace in all circumstances, she said, especially ever since she prayed before his remains a couple of years ago in Wichita’s Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception.

“Fr. Kapaun has been a huge influence in my life. I remember when I met him, his presence in the cathedral was so powerful,” she said. “To this day, I constantly ask for his intercession because he lived a culture of life in the terrible circumstances of a prisoner-of-war camp, and it transformed the men around him. I thought, ‘There is something of Fr. Kapaun’s spirit in the soil of Kansas.’ That creates a culture of life: one person at a time believing in their goodness and capacity to share God’s love. It transforms everyone around them.”

To learn about the Sisters of Life, visit www.sistersoflife.org.