“God’s plan is greater than my own,” St Paul de Chartres Sister Theresa Maria Dao has told The Catholic Leader, reflecting on her discernment journey from living as a student in Melbourne to women’s discernment leader at Vocation Brisbane.
While studying in Melbourne, Sr Theresa Maria met several young sisters at a bus stop.
Sr Theresa Maria Dao. PHOTO: The Catholic Leader.
The chance encounter inspired her to leave her university studies in pharmacy, and her family in Vietnam, to pursue a life with the sisters in Australia.
Young people often, and understandably, wanted to know “100 per cent” how a life decision would play out before they would commit to it, Sr Theresa Maria said.
She said there was a sense that life needed to be controlled and always go according to plan.
Asked about how she justified her first “yes” to religious life, she said her decision “cannot be understood”.
She remembered receiving a special grace of the Holy Spirit in that moment that “allows you to make that ‘yes’, to try it out”.
Never before that moment and never again could she make that “yes” to that question because the grace was specific to that moment, she said.
Her path to final vows took 10 years.
She told women not to be worried that they would be ushered along the path to religious vows quickly.
When she first joined, she was not sure she could wake up at 5am every day to pray.
But Sr Theresa Maria quickly fell in love with religious life – waking up early for prayer, morning Mass, evening prayer.
She spent long hours with God every day, saying she felt like “a princess of Jesus”.
“Of course, it takes a lot of sacrifice because we follow Jesus Christ,” she said.
“We need to carry our own cross… I cannot speak for other women, but at least for me, God’s grace is enough.”
Sr Theresa Maria encouraged women to come to the Vocation Brisbane office and ask any questions they had – questions about their careers or big life decisions – and she would be happy to help.
This article by Joe Higgins was published in The Catholic Leader.