From left, Sister Patty Chang, CSJ, Sister Irene Barboza, SSCC, and Sister Malia Dominica Wong, OP, at St. Anthony Retreat Center posing in a golf cart used to navigate the large property located in Kalihi Valley. (Photo courtesy of Sister Malia Dominica Wong, OP)
In this year designated to celebrate the consecrated life, three local Sisters of the same generation discuss their religious calling
Thirty-three years ago, three Oahu women began their lives as consecrated women in three different religious communities. Their parallel paths not only took each of them to the University of San Francisco where they earned their master’s degrees, but also led them to unique ministerial service through the faith, hope and love they embody.
Irene Barboza is a Sister of the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary originally from St. George Parish in Waimanalo. Patty Chang is a Sister of St. Joseph of Carondelet from St. Elizabeth Parish in Aiea. Malia Dominica Wong is a Dominican Sister of the Most Holy Rosary from St. Anthony Parish in Kailua.
This summer the three were pleasantly surprised to meet up again at St. Anthony Retreat Center in Kalihi Valley. They used the opportunity to reflect on their religious calling and record their thoughts. Sister Malia Dominica Wong directed and taped the conversation. Here is the transcript, edited for length.
Sister Malia Dominica: Over the years, as I have watched us grow, I often think back to our profession remembrance cards and how the Scriptures we chose seem to characterize the theological virtues of faith, hope and love in each of our lives. Sister Irene, your life has been one of abiding love in and through the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary. Sister Patty, you continue to inspire and give hope to all generations, while I have been steadfast in faith in the ministry of building bridges between cultures and religions.
Sisters, tell us a little about your current ministry.
Sister Patty Chang: I am a member of the leadership team for the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet in Hawaii. We have about 1,200 Sisters in the U.S., Hawaii and Peru, and in 10 years we’ll be half that size. I currently serve on a committee to develop processes for reflection and dialogue across the congregation about our preferred future. Recently, 50 of our youngest congregational members gathered to discuss that which mattered to them, such as the greatest hungers in our world today (i.e., respect, Gospel values, care for the poor, enough resources for all peoples, reconciliation, end to violence). I know there is still a need for our congregational charism of an active inclusive love that our Sisters generously share.
Sister Irene Barboza: Aside from being chair of the theology department at Sacred Hearts Academy, helping in campus ministry and teaching full-time, I also serve as treasurer and pre-novitiate director of the province. We are an international, missionary congregation with Hawaii being the first foundation outside of France. Presently, we are about 600 Sisters living in France, Belgium, Ireland, Holland, Spain, Ecuador, Peru, Paraguay, Bolivia, Colombia, Chile, India, Indonesia, Philippines, Congo and Mozambique. We are on a reflective journey process called “The new face of the Congregation.” We don’t know what the future entails as we are a part of the process and embrace it with trust in God’s loving providence.
SMD: I have passed my leadership days serving as regional councilor and secretary for many years. It is time to pass on the torch to the younger generation. This year, the Dominicans celebrate the 90th anniversary of the congregation’s founding. We have over 250 professed Sisters ministering in the Philippines, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, Kenya, Rome, San Francisco and Hawaii.
I am an instructor at Chaminade University of Honolulu, involved with interfaith ministry and for this papal Year of the Consecrated Life, serve as the diocese’s Vocations Office coordinator. Several years ago, after serving on the executive board of the Leadership Association of Religious Communities (LARC), I was appointed to the Diocesan Pastoral Council as the representative for women religious. That spurred my becoming a contributing staff writer for the Hawaii Catholic Herald on religious in the islands.
What moved you to choose religious life and your particular congregation?
SPC: I grew up around the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet (CSJ) having them as my teachers from K through 8 at St. Theresa School in Honolulu, and a cousin who is a CSJ, Sister Claudia Wong. As a sophomore in college, I became very active in my home parish as a catechist and lector. Still I wanted to do something more with my life. As a young adult, I found the Sisters welcoming and joy-filled, yet prayerful and reflective. As it was in the ’80s, the days of liberation theology, I was also attracted to the peace and justice issues the CSJs were involved with.
SMD: For the theme of your profession, you chose Jeremiah 29:11: “For I know well the plans I have in mind for you — oracle of the LORD — plans for your welfare and not for woe, so as to give you a future of hope.” Can you share with us how this passage has played out in your life?
SPC: I am one of those persons that must have a plan, and I’ve learned that God’s plans always work out better. For example, when I was studying secondary education math, my vocation director asked me to switch to religious education. It was at the University of San Francisco that I received my master of arts in religious education. That led to my working in parishes and campus ministry. In visiting the homebound, I wished there was more I could do for them. So I asked my community if I could study gerontology. I guess that was God’s way of nudging me and saying that there was a need out there to be fulfilled.
My work in the State’s Executive Office of Aging over a few years prepared me for the things I do for our Sisters — caring for those with long term care needs along with serving in community leadership. God took me by the hand and led me there. All it took was my “Yes.”
SIB: I was taught by the Sacred Hearts Sisters in intermediate and high school. I always tell my students at Sacred Hearts Academy that I never really graduated, I just got promoted to the next level!
It was through seeing the lives of the Sisters witnessed in their adoration, prayer life and their dedication to the students, that I was attracted to their charism. I joined the community in September 1979. I was also very touched by the story of our foundress, Henriette Aymer de Chevalerie, and how she basically lost it all — her personal wealth and even almost her life —during the French Revolution. Her conversion story took place in prison where she said, “All to God, I will hold nothing back from him.” She was spared because of her kindness to the jailer’s daughter. It was really a love story lived at a radical level.
SMD: What was the theme of your religious profession?
SIB: “Forever with you, I will be.” I took the saying from Matthew 28:20, which appears at the end of Jesus’ telling the disciples to go teach and baptize all nations. We are called to know God’s love, live God’s love, and hopefully witness to that love. For example, I try to communicate to each student I teach how much God cares for her.
SMD: What degree did you obtain at the University of San Francisco?
SIB: After double majoring in psychology and religious education at Chaminade University, I went on for my master’s in religious education. That is where we met again.
SMD: Yes, I was completing my master’s in applied spirituality there after having double majored at Chaminade in religious studies and education.
SPC: So, Sister Malia Dominica, share with us your story.
SMD: From second grade at St. Anthony’s School in Kailua, I was inspired by the Maryknoll Fathers and the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet to be a religious. While in high school at Punahou, on Sundays I used to teach CCD at St. John the Baptist Church in Kalihi where the Dominican Sisters were. I was attracted to them because of their semi-contemplative prayer style with the chanting of the Salve Regina, etc., in Latin. St. Dominic de Guzman was also an itinerant preacher. I entered the convent in 1979.
The saying on my profession remembrance card was from John 17:21, “Father, that all may be one, as we are one.” As the saints and mystics enjoy the sweetness of being united in loving relationship with God, so I desire it for myself and others.
Regarding faith? Even when God’s hand is hard to see, I believe. Why? Because, I have been humbled and awed by blessings in ministry from Asia to the Amazon to the sands of my birth here in Hawaii. I know God has used, and keeps leading my life, in ways and in places never dreamt of.
We have covered a lot of ground in the diocese planting the seeds for a culture of vocations and personally inviting people in the pews to consider becoming a priest, religious or deacon during the celebration of this Year of Consecrated Life. What has it meant for you?
SPC: As we visit the different churches and missions for the Year of Consecrated Life, I find that it is not about us. With grateful remembrance, it is about the relationships and connections the religious brothers, sisters and priests made with the people of God before us. They were powerful, simple women and men who lived God’s love and touched so many lives by responding faithfully to God’s call. This makes me proud to be a woman religious and gives me great pleasure doing the talks during this year. I’m hoping that more women and men will come along to be a part of this extended lineage. God is not done with religious life yet.
SIB: God is always calling his own. There is always hope that more people will be attracted to the consecrated life. Dovetailing with what you said, Sister Patty, there is hope that our witness will bring forth greater vitality moving the church into the future. That’s why this Year of Consecrated Life is really a gift for the church. As religious we are called to give prophetic witness of faith, hope and love to the church and to the world. This is why religious life is a gift to and of the church.
