Sister Eileen Spanier- 25th Jubilee

Written on: April 19, 2015

Sister Eileen Spanier had a long journey before she entered the Grey Nuns of the Sacred Heart.  She had traveled from her home town of Reading, PA to Jackson Heights, NY, to California.  She had met the Grey Nuns while teaching in Jackson Heights and stayed in touch during her other journeys.  Upon returning to the East Coast, she began her formal contact with the Grey Nuns in 1989.  She continued her career in education as a teacher at Holy Child School in Philadelphia and Principal at St. Thomas Aquinas School in Brooklyn, NY.  The congregation asked Eileen to serve as Vocation Director and for six years, she walked with women discerning God’s call for them.  Her traveling shoes then brought her to North Carolina where she works with college-age students as Campus Minister at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and operates the Catholic Campus Ministry House.  

I am passionate about working with people who are discerning God’s plan for them in their lives. My strongest pull is to minister to those who feel called to the Consecrated Life.  We have an awesome heritage as Grey Nuns and I have the privilege and the responsibility to daily conform my life to the spirit and charism of our foundress, St. Marguerite.  Throughout these past 25 years, I have felt the encouraging “presence” of my Sisters – through cards, notes and the wonders of social media. This is what sustains me and challenges me each day to live out my call to religious life as a Grey Nun of the Sacred Heart.

This Jubilee is an opportunity to share my joy, happiness and gratitude with my Sisters, family and friends who have made significant contributions to my life. It is a special grace to be able to celebrate my Silver Jubilee during 2015, proclaimed by Pope Francis as the “Year of Consecrated Life”.  May I be a sign of true joy, an instrument of God’s hand to “wake up the world.” I pray to spend this year growing in fidelity to the “aims” of this special year: to look to the past with gratitude, to live the present with passion and to embrace the future with hope! 

This entry was posted in Our 2015 Jubilarians and tagged: 25th Jubilee, California, Campus Minister at the University of North Carolina Charlotte, Holy Child School Philadelphia, Jackson Heights NY, Reading PA, Sister Eileen Spanier, St. Thomas Aquinas School Brooklyn NY