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Each month, 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 November is Sister KayJoy Cooper. Sister KayJoy has enjoyed a long relationship with the Handmaids of the Sacred Heart, beginning as a high school student in Philadelphia. "My father died when I was quite young, and my mother worked hard to make it possible for me to get an academy education. I wasn't going to go to one of the Archdiocesan High Schools, even though all my friends were. Nope, mom had heard about a wonderful school called Ancillae Domini Academy, and that was where I spent high school." Sr. KayJoy remembers wondering whether she might have a vocation. "It would have been a lot easier if one of you had said something," she teases her former teachers. "But no, I was not one of those girls that was quietly taken aside and encouraged to think about religious life." Yet even though the young Kathleen Cooper had not been invited to be a Handmaid by any of the Sisters at her high school, she felt a strong invitation nevertheless. An invitation originating in the God who had already captured her imagination and her heart. "I wanted to test my vocation," Sr. KayJoy remembers with amusement, "so on Good Friday, I decided to kneel in prayer for three hours. Three hours! I thought, okay, if I can do something *that* extreme, maybe I can be a Handmaid of the Sacred Heart." She hastens to point out that kneeling for three hours is not a skill necessary to be a Handmaid! Sister KayJoy, at the age of 17, told her mother about her process of self-discovery. Mom had been planning a different future for her only daughter: "Drexel University. That's where my mother suggested I go to college. I could study interior design at Drexel. I had to say, 'well, Mom, I think God has other plans.'" She recalls her mother's generosity of spirit. "It cannot have been easy for her to give her only child to religious life. In those days, we didn't come out for visits or the like, so in a way it was a real death for her. But she let me be my own woman, and didn't count the cost." Sister KayJoy delights in the internationality of the congregation she entered as a teenager. "It was God's providence that I entered the Handmaids," she states, with evident joy. "My family is typical, typical Scots-Irish...loving, but very emotionally cool. In fact, when I step off the plane in Scotland to see my relatives, even if it's been many years since I've seen them, this is how they greet me." She extends a hand and imitates a formal handshake. "Imagine what it was like for me to become part of the Handmaid family with its Latin warmth and affection!" Sister KayJoy has worked in a number of ministries since becoming a Handmaid, most recently in the arena of marriage and family therapy and the formation of new members. She invites young Catholics to take the possibility of a church vocation seriously: "Consecrated life is healthy for the planet! It is a gift to be savored... you owe it to yourself to at least consider the possibility that God is calling you in this way." You can reach Sister KayJoy by email: miamihandmaids@yahoo.com.
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