Sr. Genevieve

As secretary to a lawyer who was the vice president of a large machinery manufacturing company, I enjoyed my work, yet felt something else was calling me. I happened to meet a woman, Josephine, who was also searching. When she mentioned that her spiritual director, Father Vincent Campbell, was a keen vocation counselor, I asked him to be mine. He was confessor to the Dominican nuns in the south Bronx. I went to see them and learned that so many entered that monastery after consulting Father, that they called them ‘the Vincentians’! But Josephine became a Carmelite, and one of my office co-workers was advised to marry.

It was the custom of the monastery to suggest that an aspirant, on the day she chose to enter, be accompanied by a priest who, after seeing her through the enclosure door, would celebrate Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament for the community. As it happened, a deranged man shot and wounded Father Vincent while he was in the confessional a few days before he was to escort me to the monastery! I had chosen as my entrance day Tuesday, Feb. 2nd, the Feast of the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple. I phoned my parish priest who said that Tuesdays were his free days which he spent with another priest and that they would drive me to the Bronx.

Forty years later, when I came to this ‘Elmira monastery for a retreat, I found it a much more prayerful milieu. Having been maintenance supervisor for many years in the Bronx, I wanted a change so I transferred here. Since then others have followed.