When I was a freshman and sophomore at Austin High School in Austin Texas, the bus I rode to school used to travel past the Holy Spirit Adoration Sisters convent, at the corner of Exposition Boulevard and Westover Road. It was the early Eighties and I was a lukewarm Presbyterian at the time. Those sisters were mysterious to me. They never came outside. (At least that's what I was told.) One time I asked a Catholic friend about the sisters and she told me that they had their groceries delivered from the Tom Thumb store not too far down the street. I also learned from another Catholic friend, that I could submit a prayer request and ask them to pray for me. I never got up the courage to walk in their door though. I regretted that for a long time because the convent isn't there anymore. It closed my senior year. I didn't know exactly why, but the sisters were aging, the property in Tarrytown (west Austin) was extremely valuable, and condos seemed to be the best use for the land back in 1983. Gradually, those sisters slipped into the haze of my memory. However recently, that foggy memory has been resurrected.
During the summer of 2010, my friend Carmen and I traveled to a Catholic theology conference in Corpus Christi, Texas. We sought advice on where to attend Mass Saturday night after the conference. The locals suggested we go see “the Pink Sisters.” I didn’t know what they were talking about, and I really didn’t care. One mass is as good as another. But Carmen and I got directions to the chapel on Shoreline Drive where the “Pink Sisters” attended mass. During the liturgy, as I sat in that chapel, with it’s 1950’s/1960’s inspired architecture, something seemed oddly familiar. I could think of no earthly reason why this deep Pepto-Bismol pink and gold worship space would seem at all familiar to me, so I ignored the feeling.
The sisters, wearing their bright pink habits had worshipped with us, taking their places at kneelers in front of us, but not facing us. Their backs had been toward us for the whole mass. Finally, just before we were dismissed, the presiding priest explained that this positioning was part of the sisters’ charism. They were set apart, so they could pray for all of us. Further, we were invited to step into the entryway of their convent and leave our prayer intentions with them.
At that moment a connection was created in my brain. Could it be that these sisters were part of the same community as the ones I’d (almost) known in my neighborhood back in Austin thirty years before? I asked the priest if he knew whether the sisters ever had a convent in Austin, and he verified that they had. He remarked that anyone he’d ever known from Austin who visited the chapel always had fond memories of and positive comments about the sisters and their convent in Austin. I had grieved the loss of those sisters without even knowing who they were for sure, until that moment.
It soothes my brain to know who they are, even though I never was courageous enough to enter their convent back when they were in Austin. Just to know they still exist in Corpus Christi, praying for all of us, whether we know it or not, is a great encouragement to me. Only the Holy Spirit knows if their prayers in some way were part of the reason I eventually became Catholic, although, I like to believe this is so. God Bless the Holy Spirit Sisters of Perpetual Adoration.
