Dighton, Massachusetts (USA), 07/09/2021, Sr. Karen Champagne.- With great joy, Claudia Lorena Redondo professed her first vows as a Dominican Sister of the Presentation during a Eucharistic Liturgy on May 31, 2021, at the Chapel of the US Vice-Provincial House in Dighton.
As Sr. Claudia expressed, a vocation is a mystery. At an early age, Sr. Claudia experienced a calling and a longing and thirst for the Lord. She said for so many years she wanted to be a Sister. She had only met one religious sister in Mexico. However, when she was sixteen, she expressed her desire to her father who told her that she had to finish her high school; that her education was very important.
Sr. Claudia met a priest originally from her town, who used to go back for vacation, who helped her discern her vocation and she was able to share with him her intentions and motivations for wanting to enter religious life.
When she was twenty years old Sr. Claudia moved to Denver, Colorado in the United States with a younger brother to join her father and brothers already in Denver. Sr. Claudia was many years in Denver before she encountered a religious sister. Then when she was thirty-four years old, Sr. Claudia met the Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus at Mother Cabrini’s Shrine in Denver. She went for a Come and See experience and lived with the Sisters in community and ministered with immigrants. After two years, she discerned that was not the Community that the Lord was calling her to.
Meanwhile, her heart continued to experience the Lord’s call to religious life and Sr. Claudia continued praying that the Lord would somehow show her His will.
Sr. Claudia, inspired by the Holy Spirit, decided to search on the internet and was directed to the Webpage of the USA Vice-Province and became interested in the Community. She was touched by the Sisters living the Charism of Blessed Marie Poussepin in Community and that the Dominican Community that Marie Poussepin wanted was to have Charity as its soul. She also liked that the Sisters wore the habit.
After contacting the vocation director. Sr. Claudia came and spent a week in Dighton and began her discernment with the Community. After some time of discernment, Sr. Claudia began the process to join the Congregation. While a postulant she spent some time with our Community in Brownsville, Texas working with immigrants. Next followed two years of novitiate with some time in Dighton. During her second year of Novitiate, Sr. Claudia spent six months in our Novitiate in Mexico where she experienced life in a community in Chiapas, Mexico.
While Sr. Claudia was in Mexico, her father became very ill with COVID 19 and he passed away in Denver, Colorado. Her brothers brought his body back to Mexico and Sr. Claudia was able to be present at his funeral Mass with her family.
Sr. Claudia returned to Dighton in April 2021 and began an intense preparation for her religious profession. Sr. Claudia shared that it has been a long journey but one in which she chose freely and consciously to respond to the Lord within a Dominican Community for the service of charity, according to the charism of Blessed Marie Poussepin.
At present, Sr. Claudia is assigned to Brownsville, Texas where she will minister in Parish Ministry and with immigrant youth.
