We gather as a faith community today to celebrate the life of Sister Grace. We extend our sympathy to Sister Grace’s siblings – Agnes, Rita, and Henry – along with many nieces and nephews who are with us today. I also welcome friends of our community. We sisters thank all of you for your prayers and support for us.
In our monastic library, we have many, many books. The life of a Benedictine is a lifetime of learning. Sister Grace was a reader who loved to learn. I even think my first encounters with Sister Grace were when she worked in the University of Mary library. For most of the time I knew her, Sister Grace’s eyesight was impaired from macular degeneration and a detached retina. Thanks to the technology known as “Talking Books” supplied by the North Dakota State Library, Sister Grace was able to continue reading books throughout the later years of her life. Asking her about her latest read was always a way to involve Sister Grace in table conversation during a meal.
Our library is divided into sections by topic. I believe Sister Grace’s life is similar to our library with its various sections that she would peruse, trying to find her next encounter. The Benedictine part of her library covered nearly 69 years from her arrival at Benet Hall as an aspirant in 1957. She lived on missions in Bismarck, Mandan and Dickinson before moving back to the monastery. She enjoyed her travels throughout the United States with Sisters Claire and Glenna. At the time of her 60th jubilee in 2019, Sister Grace’s advice to the sisters was to “live one day at a time and put your faith and trust in God’s hands.”
Sister Grace’s personal library had a large section for family. She was the fourth of eight children. She was particularly close to her brother Al, who was a year older. Sister Grace kept in touch with family – and you kept in touch with her looking at the numerous photos of siblings and nieces and nephews’ families she kept over the years in her photo albums.
Within our library, we have a small section of children’s books. In Sister Grace’s life, spending time with children is a much larger section. She taught in local elementary schools for over 22 years but only became a teacher and not a nurse because the monastic community had a great need for teachers after she made her first profession. She moved on to other careers, like pastoral care and volunteering at the university and St. Vincent’s Care Center, but there was always a warm spot in her heart for children. She had numerous children pen pals over the years, typically her grandnieces and nephews or children of monastery employees. She loved to create themed scrapbooks for them and had a file of pictures and other clippings from magazines that she kept for this work. Even with her limited eyesight, she managed to carefully paste and tape the images into a scrapbook for her young friends.
One of the children’s books in our library came to mind while I was reflecting on Sister Grace’s life. The book is titled, If you’re not from the prairie… by David Bouchard. Spending much of her childhood on the family farm outside of Regent, North Dakota, Sister Grace knew the prairie. She was proud to be a farmer’s daughter and enjoyed sharing stories from her time with her siblings on the farm. I want to share a bit of the book with you in closing:
If you’re not from the prairie, you can’t know my soul, you don’t know
our blizzards, you’ve not fought our cold. You can’t know my mind,
nor ever my heart, unless deep within you, there’s somehow a
part…
A part of these things that I’ve said that I know, the wind, sky and
earth, the storms and the snow. Best say you have – and then
we’ll be one, for we will have shared that same blazing sun.
Sister Grace lived a full and faithful life in our Benedictine community for nearly 67 years. Thank you, Sister Grace, for sharing your life with all of us. We are grateful for the gift you have been to us. We will miss your presence among us. May you now share in the glory of God with the saints in heaven.
~ Sister Nicole Kunze, Prioress
March 3, 2026
