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Periodically, a new vocation story will be published here, recounting the
adventures of one of the Handmaids of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Our featured
Handmaid for Summer 2006 is Sister Margarita Martin.
Sister Margarita smiles in recognition and affirmation when she hears young women expressing fear, frustration, or doubt about their attraction to religious life. "I remember very well my own struggles with the Lord!" As a young woman in Spain, Sister Margarita really dug in her heels so that God would stop calling her to religious life. "I thought that I would have a big, happy family, with twelve children. My family would be centered around the Lord. But be a nun? No way!" Young Margarita had been exposed to Ignatian spirituality through the influence of a Jesuit cousin. Little did she imagine that she would follow in his footsteps in learning and living the spirituality of that great Spanish saint, Ignatius of Loyola. As God began to tug on her heart, she looked for a "way out" of her call to religious life. She chuckles. "I chose as a spiritual director a priest who advised couples preparing to marry. I thought, 'this one won't try and make me into a nun!'" But to her surprise, the more deeply she discerned, the more attracted she felt toward religious life. "Finally, I realized that to be called was not a horrible thing. It was a privilege, one I was crazy to turn down." Margarita's search wasn't yet over, however. Religious life, fine, but where? She knew herself well enough to narrow the possibilities. "It had to have the Blessed Sacrament. I was very attracted to Jesus in the Eucharist. But my life couldn't be cloistered... I wanted to be out in the world working for my Jesus. And not just working, but working in the missions." Only one group of nuns fit Margarita. The Handmaids of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. The only problem? "My friend went to the Handmaid school, and she didn't always like them... so I didn't like them, either!" Plus, the "creepy" black habit was a real turn-off. "Oh, Jesus," Margarita complained to her Lord, "not just a nun, but a Handmaid?" She laughs at her resistance to the habit, looking down at her comfortable knit shirt and jeans. "Luckily, I knew that the habit was just a peripheral thing. So I went for it!" Many other surprises were waiting for Sr. Margarita once she entered the convent. Her mission field was not the one she expected, but it was one she said "yes" to, with hope and joy tinged with a little puzzlement. "Not just a nun, not just a Handmaid, but to the United States?" Looking back on her life as a Handmaid, what does she advise women who are looking into their own vocation? "God will give you joy in your calling! Wrestle with the Lord, struggle, ask questions, but be assured that God's plan for you will bring you abiding joy." Read the story
of Sr. Dorothy Beck here.
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