Viriditas2: Soul Greening
Interviewed by Sister Malia Dominica Wong, OP
Hawaii Catholic Herald
“I didn’t plan it this way,” I tell people when they ask how I found my path. “But looking back, it feels like Providence was guiding each step.”
I grew up in a family that valued hard work and stability. As Japanese immigrants, my parents raised us with a good, solid capital foundation. After graduating from McKinley High School, I completed my studies in teaching. Then, I felt drawn elsewhere, which led me to the East Coast.
Before that journey, however, I had promised to visit my older sister in Idaho. It was there that I was converted and baptized. Eventually, my mother, two of my sisters and myself became Catholics. The rest of the family remained outside the church.
On the East Coast, I encountered a religious community rooted in the traditional teachings of the Catholic faith. They were inspired by St. Louis Marie de Montfort’s classical treatise, “True Devotion to Mary.” Their daily life reflected that consecration.
“We’ve always kept the traditional Latin Mass,” I explain. “For us, it’s part of staying anchored.”
Over time, I entered religious life and found myself immersed in a rhythm of prayer, community and apostolic work. We run a small school of about 140 students and a summer camp. Families come to us because they want their children formed in something deeper.
Religion is woven into everything we do, both in our curriculum and extracurricular activities. Students are trained to be of service in the church — the boys as altar servers, and high school girls as Immaculate Heart of Mary sodality members.
This kind of formation in religious conscience and faith matters to me. Yes, there are sports and crafts and laughter, but at its heart, it’s about strengthening the children spiritually with strong roots.
We also have a publication apostolate, a magazine, “From the Housetops,” that we send out to share the faith in a thoughtful, accessible way.
One memory that stays with me of Hawaii, is a visit I made with my younger sister to Franciscan Sister Richard Marie Toal in Kalaupapa. Those were the days when after a plane landed, a crank phone was used at the tiny airport to inform the hosts of their guests’ arrival.
After touring us around in an old Volkswagen van, Sister Richard Marie took us to her favorite fishing spot. I can still see her full-length white habit trailing in the breeze. All the while she kept telling me not to worry, that one day my younger sister would become a Catholic. Eventually, she was baptized at St. Stephen’s Church in Nuuanu.
What sustains me even now, is a deep sense that God is personal. He meets each of us in our own story. I’ve seen it unfold in my life, in my family, in the people I’ve encountered along the way.
“All of our stories matter,” I often reflect. “God is infinitely great, and yet he still cares for each of us individually.”
Sister Miriam Teresa Yorita belongs to the Sisters, Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, a public association of the faithful in the Diocese of Worcester, Massachusetts. She is over 40 years professed. She ministers out of Saint Benedict Center in Harvard, Massachusetts.