From an atheist with guns in West Point to a catechist nun of young people with videos of spirituality

Anna Marie McGuan entered in 2003 at the Institute of Religious Sisters of Mercy of Michigan, a modernized refoundation of the Sisters of Mercy. In 2011 she professed her perpetual vows. He studied at the University of Santa Croce in Rome, also at the Pontifical Biblical Instituteserved time in Knoxville as director of Christian formation and since 2020 he is in Edinburgh, Scotland, as a catechist, often working with young people and also with spiritual formation videos that have helped many during the pandemic.

I couldn’t have foreseen any of this as a child. in her early youth, when she considered herself an atheist.

At 7 or 8 years old, it was very clear to me that he wanted to be an army officer and study at West Point, the elite military academy. “She had seen it on a postcard and was intrigued,” she recalls.

Although he was from a Catholic family, at the age of 10 he stopped believing in God completely. “He hated the church and I didn’t want anything to do with her,” she says flatly.

At West Point, the demanding military academy

Upon finishing high school, he did indeed get into West Point, the famous military academy for officers. “Military training was totally new to me. You get beat up, it’s to be expected. AndYou’re in an elite academy, but everyone is elite there, so you’re not special, and that’s how you learn to be a good soldier,” he explains.

West Point academy officers, young men and women.

Officers at the West Point Military Academy. But Anna Marie would end up joining an army far more powerful and benign than any country’s.

“It was a good year in many ways, and also a very difficult year. Little by little, but surely, I realized that that thing I wanted to dedicate my whole life to was not what I was supposed to do with my life. He did not believe in God. It was a very dark time,” she recalls.

Serious questions were asked. What to do with his life, really?

“The worldly answer is ‘what makes you happy, enjoy the pleasures’. But something in me rebelled against it, I wanted to commit to something bigger than myself. In fact, that’s what had gotten me into the military academy.”

She had an inner conviction that she, and everyone else, is in the world for a reason. She didn’t know what for. And it was torment, because she had done things that were supposed to fill her up but they didn’t.

Alone in church, sitting in the last pew

Anne Marie today is enthusiastic about churches being open. she believes that his life was on track, perhaps even saved, because he was able to enter an open temple for a whileeven when he declared that he did not believe in God.

It was a Friday night. She was driving a car, going around. She saw a church with a parking space. She didn’t know her. He stopped the car, parked and went to the door, which was open. “I sat on the back bench, way back, as far away from the tabernacle as he could… he had had a Catholic background, hadn’t he?”

He sat down, looked at the tabernacle and prayed thus: “I don’t know if you’re there, but if you are, God, I wish I knew what to do with my life. I am listening, perhaps for the first time in my life. Please, I need to talk to someone.”

Nothing seemed to happen at the time. She he prepared to leave, but saw a light on in the parish office. He approached and found a priest. He was amazed to see that he knew him! She had seen him 7 years before, when he was still going to church with his parents.

He remembered that he had been in his parish in a talk for young people and that he had said: “I want you to know that God loves you, I love you, and we want you to come to Mass.” (Some time later the priest would explain to Anna Marie that that homily seven years earlier had cost him a lot to prepare and was the one that had scared him the most).

Anna Marie remembered that and said to the priest:

– Father, seven years ago you gave a homily… If you were serious, I’m here now and I need to talk to you.

Anna Marie assured him that she would ask him just three questions and then leave him alone:

– Does God exist, do we know?
– The Eucharist, the presence of God in it, is it real?
– How do you pray?

Today she believes it was the Holy Spirit who prompted those sudden questions in her. And deep down I had a concern:how to live in such a way that you produce the best, the truest, and share it with the most people?

The priest answered in some detail. Yes, God exists, we know it, faith is reasonable and the ways of Saint Thomas are sensible and logical. We know that Christ existed, he preached him and he is trustworthy. Y He gave the girl a book to start praying: The Russian Pilgrim. She even told him, “I think you might have a religious vocation.” She thought: “no, no way”.

The vocation: from “no way” to crush

From there, they began to see each other every two weeks and he became her spiritual director. Why did she agree to continue talking again? “I guess I wanted answers to the most important questions, and I hadn’t found them satisfactory anywhere else,” she explained.

The idea of ​​”religious vocation” came back to him again and again. Now that she confessed, prayed, took communion, Grace acted strongly on her, her entire interior life was different. Was it true that she had a religious vocation?

your spiritual director He gave her a piece of paper with directions to 3 convents to explore. But she tore up the paper and was left with only the name of the first and said to God: “I give you only one chance.”

Anna Marie already as a nun of the Sisters of Mercy

Thus he visited the Sisters of Mercy on a Friday, and “on Saturday I was quite convinced and on Sunday I had it very clear. It was the feast of the Baptism of the Lord, it couldn’t be more perfect.” That’s how he entered the community.

He tells his story especially to young people, so that no one closes the door to God, nor to a possible consecrated vocation and generous intimacy with God.

Sister Anna Marie has told her testimony in the website of your congregation and in the scottish catholic.

From an atheist with guns in West Point to a catechist nun of young people with videos of spirituality