Lay associates find their calling with religious communities

GREEN BAY — The Associates of the Hospital Sisters of St. Francis — lay men and women, married and single, who dedicate their lives to practicing faith through the example of St. Francis and St. Clare of Assisi — have found what each of them was searching for: “A deepening relationship with God.”

RuthEllen Davis of Decatur, Ill., left, who serves as associate coordinator for the Associates of the Hospital Sisters of St. Francis, speaks to associates at a meeting in February at St. Vincent Hospital. Also pictured, second to left, is Sr. Annice McClure, coordinator, Joyce Burns and Mary Thomas. (Sam Lucero | The Compass)

RuthEllen Davis of Decatur, Ill., left, who serves as associate coordinator for the Associates of the Hospital Sisters of St. Francis, speaks to associates at a meeting in February at St. Vincent Hospital. Also pictured, second to left, is Sr. Annice McClure, coordinator, Joyce Burns and Mary Thomas. (Sam Lucero | The Compass)

RuthEllen Davis of Decatur, Ill., serves as the associate coordinator for groups based at St. Vincent Hospital, Green Bay, as well as the community’s hospitals in Wisconsin and Illinois. There are eight associate groups and 153 associates, to date, in the program that was founded in Springfield, Ill., in 1987. The Green Bay group will celebrate its 20th anniversary this year.

Sr. Annice McClure leads group members at their meetings, which occur the second Wednesday of each month at St. Vincent. Sr. Annice, a Hospital Sister of St. Francis, also helped launch a Chippewa Falls group. In Green Bay, Sr. Annice was aided by a former hospital staffer, Sr. Jonette Devlin, who retired two years ago and resides in Springfield now.

Davis travels regularly to join each of the groups and when she’s not with them, she provides discussion plans and resources.

Group members must be baptized Christians, ages 18 or older, male or female, who want to join in a relationship with the sisters while continuing to live their own lifestyle. They don’t have to be Catholic. They join the religious community, sharing the Franciscan way of life and healing spirit as well as the spirit of community that Francis espoused.

New members, after months of studying about the mission of St. Francis, join a three-day weekend retreat at the order’s motherhouse in Springfield, which culminates in a Mass and commitment ceremony. Each new member commits to a two-year contract and formally turns in their written commitment to be accepted by the mother provincial.

Commitment entails three aspects, Davis said: prayer and a deepening relationship with God; community with other associates; and ministry which may include volunteer work, caring for loved ones or other efforts.

There is no financial commitment and Davis noted that the associates’ focus isn’t on the hospitals or patients. They are united in their dedication to the two patron saints of the Hospital Sisters.

“By joining the group and learning about the lives of Francis and Clare, and by learning our community’s history, they feel part of what’s going on,” Sr. Annice said.

The associate groups keep connected through the quarterly newsletter, Franciscan Connection.

The fact that there are only 100 active sisters in her organization today, while they boast over 150 associates speaks to the difficulty in recruiting young people to religious orders, Davis noted. Other local communities, including the Norbertines based in De Pere and the Sisters of St. Francis of the Holy Cross based in Bay Settlement, also promote their own associate groups.

Dan Dallich, 58, of Green Bay, joined the local associates group a year ago, but he’s had a long working relationship with the Hospital Sisters in Green Bay and Springfield after more than 25 years of health care design work. He is an architect and vice president of the Green Bay firm Berners-Schober Associates Inc., which has built projects at St. Vincent and St. Mary’s over the course of its 117-year history.

Becoming an associate let him “find something spiritually I could connect with,” Dallich said. He and Mike Winters are the two men in the group.

“Being an associate makes me feel … a sense of belonging,” he added. “The sisters are aging and their numbers are not replenishing. It’s up to this kind of group to carry on for them.”

Dallich said he feels “privileged to rub elbows with people like that. There is so much to learn from their mission-focused lives.”

Lynn Gonwa, 59, of De Pere, joined the associates in fall 2013 seeking to understand Catholicism. “What drew me was working with Sr. Jonette and Sr. Annice. You witness their caring and commitment, their love,” she said. She found the associate group welcoming. “It is so heartwarming to be among them and to listen to what they’ve given back and why.”

Gonwa said she grew up in a community that was primarily Protestant. “Now I have a better understanding of Catholic traditions and how they worship.”

Although she is married to a Catholic man, she attends church services at First United Methodist Church.

Last fall she traveled to Springfield for the commitment retreat and had a wonderful, eye-opening experience there. “I felt like I was on holy ground,” she said. “It was so serene. You feel the presence of God.”

She was nervous about going forward during the commitment ceremony. “I had tears in my eyes,” Gonwa recalled. “It had so much meaning to me that I was accepted as an associate of the Sisters of St. Francis.”

Associates are drawn to the examples of Clare and Francis as illustrated by their love of creation, their closeness to God, their simplicity and poverty. “People are really searching for a deeper relationship with God,” Davis said. Although the Hospital Sisters run hospitals and clinics, the focus of the associate groups “isn’t on hospitals or medical issues.”

The associates come together one time a month for meetings and a second time for service at St. Vincent de Paul.

While the 11 members are not all Catholic, nor are they all related by occupation to the hospital, what they share is a calling to “seek a deeper faith life … to enhance their personal commitment to Jesus,” Davis said.

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