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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 January - February 2006 is Sister Dorothy Beck. "At the time I began to feel God's call in my life, I had very different plans," Sister Dorothy relates. A career woman in her twenties, Dorothy was planning to marry. "I loved my fiancé, yet as we were preparing for the wedding and our lives together, I couldn't stop wondering if God had a different plan for me." Fate stepped in, and Dorothy's intended husband fell ill. "Cancer. It was hard to believe that someone so young could be so sick. One weekend I went down to the shore with some girlfriends. We rented a house for a week every summer, and I had called my fiancé to see if he could come down and have a mini-vacation. That was when his mother told me to come back, right away." Cancer treatment then was much more limited than today, and there was little Dorothy could do other than be present to her sweetheart. And, more importantly, pray. A regular churchgoer, Dorothy had ramped up her prayer since her fiancé got sick. A friend's visit to the Handmaids intrigued Dorothy, however, and the brochure her pal showed her made something "click" within her. "I just knew that this was something I had to investigate before I took the plunge and got married." Dorothy was surprised to find herself drawn to the religious life, and pondered whether this could be the "something more" she felt herself attracted to before cancer put her plans on hold. "I had never heard of the Handmaids, or Rafaela, then just Blessed Rafaela, and I didn't know much about the spirituality the Handmaids lived by." Dorothy wasn't very well acquainted with the 16th century man from Loyola who inspired the Handmaid way of prayer, but she did know one Ignatius very well... her fiancé. She recalls the realization that she needed to be honest with Ignatius, to tell him that God was nudging her in what might be a different path. "Ig, I have something to tell you." Dorothy poured out her heart to her fiancé. Soon thereafter, Ignatius fell into a coma, and never recovered. Did he finally feel free to let go and go home to God once he realized Dorothy would be okay without him? "Perhaps," concedes Dorothy. "All I know is that from that day forward I had great peace. I waited awhile before entering. I still worked and socialized, but grace was at work in me." Fifty years later, Sister Dorothy can see God's influence guiding her throughout her life. And maybe, just maybe, the loving concern of two men in her life, both named Ignatius. Read the story of Sr. KayJoy
Cooper here.
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