On February 14, 2026, our community and the family and friends of novice Catherine Addington rejoiced as we witnessed her sacred “yes” as she made her First Profession as a Daughter of St. Paul.
Here, Lord, take this new life of mine, before I waste any more years waiting.
I’m ready for whatever you ask of me, no matter what, just call me to serve
(translation of the hymn Alma Misionera by Enrique García Vélez).
Words sung with full hearts at the end of the Eucharistic Celebration in which Catherine professed her vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, receiving a new name and her new apostolic assignment.
Send me wherever people need your words, need a reason to live.
I offer you my sincere heart, to sing out fearlessly your beautiful love.
Lord, I have a missionary soul, lead me to a land that’s thirsting for God.
With this hymn, Catherine expressed her desire not only to give her life to God as a Daughter of St. Paul but to spend her life also as a #medianun in a land that is truly today “thirsting for God” and searching for “a reason to live.”
So, new name? Sister Catherine Lucia Phoebe. (Sister will be going by the most Pauline part of her name for every day: Sister Phoebe.)
First Inspiration
Sister Catherine Lucia Phoebe tells the story of how in the fourth grade, she participated in a field trip to a convent, where she says she first heard her calling. As she gazed at the sanctuary lamp in their chapel, she thought, “If nuns get to live with Jesus, then sign me up!”
First inklings of a religious vocation in a young girl who was on fire with her faith. As she went through the process of picking a Confirmation saint, she tells of how she literally carried around with her an encyclopedia of saints. She recalled, “They lived important lives, caring about important things. I had this sense that they were living in reality and the rest of us were doing things that didn’t mean much.”
These were early signs of the way in which the Lord would lead her gently through years of searching and longing. During that journey she became a language teacher, a published journalist, essayist, playwright, poet, and translator, with a special love for telling the stories of saints whose lives can illumine the call to holiness in the modern world. She translated Saint Rafael Arnaiz: The Collected Works (Cistercian Publications/Liturgical Press, 2022) and is the co-author of Brother Rafael and the Rainy-Day Devils (Magnificat/Ignatius Press, 2023).
The Gift of a Vocation
When Sister Phoebe speaks about what her profession as a Daughter of St. Paul means for her, she speaks the language of joy and hope. “It’s a dream come true. God’s dream, and mine. I’ve wanted to be a sister my whole life, and I’m so grateful that it is finally happening. I’ve always seen religious life not as something great that I’m doing for God, but as something great that God is doing for me and in me.”
Sister Phoebe has prepared for this commitment as a professed member of the community through several stages of formation, in which she has discerned whether religious life is really her calling. These four years of prayer, study, community, and apostolic mission have led to this moment in the sanctuary of the Chapel. It is at once a culmination of a process of preparation and discernment, as well as the beginning of her new life as a daughter of the great Apostle Paul in our congregation.
“Heavenly Father,
you have consecrated me to yourself in Baptism
and now you call me to follow more closely
Jesus Master, Way, Truth, and Life,
among the Daughters of St. Paul.”
(From the formula of profession.)
At the end of the novitiate, the novice makes her first profession. The word “first” in “first profession” refers to the fact that the commitment made is temporary, with vows renewed annually for about five years before perpetual (also called “final”) profession. Sister Catherine Lucia Phoebe points out, “Even if vows are only binding for a year at a time initially, we do make them with the deep desire in our hearts that our commitment is forever. If you ask a Daughter of St. Paul how long she has been in the congregation, she’ll count from the anniversary of her first profession, not her perpetual profession. Temporary vows aren’t ‘partial’ or ‘incomplete.’ We’re ‘all in’ from the beginning!”
Religious Profession
With religious profession, a novice makes three vows, or public commitments, that are modeled on the way Jesus Christ lived his life as recounted for us in the Gospels. The vow of poverty calls us to live in trusting dependence on God the Father. The vow of chastity calls us to love God with an undivided heart. The vow of obedience calls us to put God’s will before our own. Taken together, the vows proclaim that God is our greatest wealth, our greatest love, and our greatest freedom.
Along with her vowing to “live chaste, poor and obedient,” Sister also commits herself with her profession to “live in communion with her sisters and to be faithful to the charism of the Founder, dedicating [herself] in the Church to evangelization with the means of social communication” (from the formula of profession). She is now fully inserted into the life of the community.
Our mission includes proclaiming Jesus through a holy life, first of all, and then, together with our sisters, through the many forms of modern media. We work in everything from book publishing to radio and podcasting to online video and beyond. We also strive to help people heal from harm caused by the media, which informs our work in media literacy education.
“Remain in My Love”
There is a beautiful prayer that is said at the beginning of the Mass for Religious Profession: “Grant her, we pray, a blessed end to the journey she now begins, so that she may be found worthy to offer you a perfect gift of loving service” (Collect).
That’s it. It is all about love.
Love. In the Gospel that Sister chose for the Mass of her profession we listened together to this word from Jesus, the Divine Master: “It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit that will remain, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name he may give you. This I command you: love one another” (Jn. 15:9-17).
Love. “I had rather one day in your courts than a thousand elsewhere; I had rather lie at the threshold of the house of my God than dwell in the tents of the wicked” (Psalm 84, Responsorial Psalm for her profession Mass).
Love. “I ask the Lord’s mercy and the grace to serve him in the congregation of the Daughters of St. Paul by announcing the Gospel to everyone with the means of social communication” (response of the novice at the Calling after the Gospel is read).
Love. “The lilies of the field and the birds of the air aren’t worried, because they’re in my hands. Have faith in me, I’m right here at your side. / Love all that you are, and the circumstances you’re in. I am with you, with your cross on my shoulders. All shall be well: I make all things new. / I came that you might have life, and have it in abundance” (translation of lyrics of Vida en Abundancia, by Mercedes Ruiz Luque, M. Bernardita Ponce Mora and M. Soledad Sacchiero; sung as a Prelude to the Mass).
Love. “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength” (Dt 6:5; quote chosen for the cover of the profession booklet for the Mass).
Love. Valentine’s Day has become a celebration of divine love this year. Mother Paula, who in her early twenties left her home in Italy and brought the congregation to American shores, embraced Valentine’s Day. She looked at this secularized American holiday and found a wonderful seed of the Gospel in it. Those of us who lived with Mother Paula remember the way in which she would speak to us of Jesus “as our Valentine,” encouraging us to “repay love for love.” Maybe Sister Catherine Lucia Phoebe would say it differently: “I’d say that a religious sister is someone for whom God is everything, and so she dedicates her life to him completely.”
But it’s still all about the one thing necessary: love.
“As the Father loves me, so I also love you.
Remain in my love.
This is my commandment: love one another as I love you.
No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends”
(Jn 15; from the Gospel of the profession Mass).
Congratulations to our dear Sister!