St Paul writes in his letter to the Ephesians that the Lord calls people to be pastors, prophets, evangelists, apostles and teachers.  I know from my own experience as a Carmelite, I certainly did not choose to be a teacher, it was a ministry chosen for me, a ministry I was reluctant to embrace.  So how did this vocation of teacher come to me anyway? 

          In the early 90’s, I was a chemistry graduate student spending hours and hours in a lab working on developing new ruthenium catalysts.  While the research was interesting and challenging, I felt a certain “something” missing in my life ( a common experience among people discerning a religious vocation, I am told…). The prospect of spending years feeling trapped in a lab motivated me to explore some other possibilities for my life.

       In the same city as my university was a parish staffed by the Carmelites, St. Joseph’s.  Besides being a remarkably beautiful church, I always felt a deep sense of peace and reverence in St. Joseph’s.  And the more I went there for mass, the deeper this feeling became.  I realize now that these feelings were God’s way of drawing me into discovering His will for me as a Carmelite.  Eventually, I knew that this attraction towards a religious vocation could not be ignored any longer and I would need to confront it somehow.  I contacted the vocation director for the Carmelites at the time, Fr Michael Kissane (now my provincial ) and he helped me in my discernment process. With some prayer, but with more agonizing, I made the decision to completely step away from the world of chemistry, a world I had spent 9 years in, to do something completely different and enter the Carmelite formation program.

            In those years of initial religious formation, I felt I was always being stretched in new directions, and not always willingly.  Having to learn how to live and pray in community, taking up studies again, but now in philosophy and theology, and learning what it means to really pray and live a life of faith were all major hurdles, but in all the struggles, I always felt that I was moving in the direction God had wanted me to. No longer was the question, “What do I want to do ?”, but “What does God want me to do ?”.  Immersing myself in Carmelite history and spirituality, I gradually began to see myself as a member and beneficiary of this venerable religious community.  The saints of Carmel became my elder brothers and sisters who continue to teach me with their wisdom and intercede for my intentions.

      At the end of my initial formation, I was faced with question of what kind of ministry would I be best suited for.  I had discerned that , unlike many of my Carmelite peers, I was not called to ordained ministry.  As much as I knew that I was called to Carmel, I also knew that going from “brother” to “father” was a change that didn’t feel right.  So while I supported and rejoiced in my brothers’ ordinations, I knew that path was not mine.  But what kind of work is left for a brother then? 

            At the end of my seminary studies, I thought that I would like to work in a parish. I had been involved in some parish ministries while studying in Washington: religious education, visiting the elderly,  and working at a food pantry, and found the work rewarding and worthwhile.  I suggested this to my Provincial,  and his response was “How do you feel about high school teaching ?”.  His question, I quickly learned, was not an invitation to further discussion about my future ministry options but a gentle way of stating that I had better start getting lesson plans together.  

            My first assignment was teaching sophomore religion at a Catholic high school in Goshen, NY.   Never having taught high school before, I made all the classic new teacher mistakes, but  I found myself gradually enjoying the daily routine of classes, meeting with students, and conversing with faculty.  Not long after I started to feel settled in Goshen, I was asked to move to our high school community in Boca Raton, Florida.  It was here that I genuinely began to understand teaching as a vocation.   I was blessed to have as a mentor teacher , a lay woman who had been teaching for over 20 years, someone who could authentically fuse faith within the ministry of education  She was truly a gift from God for me as she, more than any education course I took, taught me how to be a teacher.

 I had been asked to teach chemistry, a subject I felt far more comfortable teaching teenagers than religion: their automatic suspicion and dismissal of the Catholic faith was wearisome at times.  As I re-immersed myself back into the world of chemistry, I remembered something that my spiritual director in Washington once said: “God never wastes any of our experiences”.   I began to understand that those years of studying chemistry were part of God’s plan all along.

            I was also blessed in Boca Raton to have a rewarding community life: brothers who prayed, lived, ate , taught, shared, and laughed together. We supported each other in the struggles that came along, as well as rejoicing in doing something we loved.

            Yet, being the mendicants that we are, I was asked to move again after five years, and this time to the Bronx, and it is here that am now, world’s apart from the sunny, affluent world of south Florida. I now teach at Cardinal Hayes High School, not far from Yankee Stadium.  And as I look out my classroom window, gazing at commuter trains and apartment houses, I am confident that again that God has brought me here. While trying to balance the Carmelite ideals of prayer, ministry, and community as a  teacher are challenging, I couldn’t imagine anything more worthwhile.