On this Solemnity of the Annunciation, I can’t help but focus on Mary’s yes—to the request given to her by God through the angel Gabriel.
In 2017, I accompanied faculty from the University of Mary’s St. Gianna School of Health Sciences on a pilgrimage to Munich, Germany and Lourdes, France. Father Robert Shea, priest of the Diocese of Bismarck, shared with us in his homily at Mass at St. Walburg’s Abbey in Eichstatt, Germany (the community from where the first Benedictine Sisters to the US came) that everything we know at the University of Mary was only possible because the Benedictine Sisters in Eichstatt said yes to the invitation to come to the United States in 1852. Nothing we know at the University of Mary would have happened without those sisters saying yes.
We Sisters of Annunciation Monastery are part of a long line of courageous, faithful women who said yes to significant requests in their lives. They likely did not realize at the time how important their yes would become.
Mother Benedicta Riepp was part of the St. Walburg’s group that came to the United States and she eventually moved to St. Joseph, MN. The first sisters from St. Joseph, MN came to Bismarck in 1878 to teach the children and more followed in 1885 to provide healthcare to people. Later, 140 sisters volunteered to form Annunciation Monastery in 1947 and to begin the University of Mary in 1959.
On this feast, it is easy to think about the big “YES”es in life. However, every day we quietly say small “yes”es, not knowing where they will lead. A request to serve another or the opportunity to meet a new friend may turn out to be one of the big “yes”es we will look back on years from now as being quite significant. In the fall of 1990, I said yes to coming to the University of Mary as a freshman. Little did I know that yes would lead to my joining the Benedictine Sisters of Annunciation Monastery a few years later.
I encourage you to follow Mary’s example by being faithful to these small “yes”es each and every day. Even when you do not know what may happen after you say yes, can you respond as Mary did—with faith and trust in the Lord?
