Sr. Paulamarie Splaine is from Worcester, Massachusetts. She has been a Daughter of St. Paul for sixty-three years, and served for twenty years as a missionary in Taiwan.
Sr. Paulamarie, can you tell us what it was like to be asked to be a missionary?
It was several years after I made my vows, maybe ten or fifteen years after. Mother General [the superior of the Daughters of St. Paul worldwide, based in Rome] was in the United States for a visit and I met with her. She told me, “We’re thinking of sending you to China.” So many thoughts went through my mind at that moment, but what came out of my mouth was, “All right.” I knew that if God wanted it, then everything would be ok.
I arrived in Taiwan in time for the feast of Saint Paul the following year. Two of us missionaries arrived that year, myself and another Sister from Japan. The two of us went to language school to learn some Mandarin. I studied Mandarin for two years, on and off, but I also began helping in our communities and going out to meet the people on evangelization.
All in all, I was in Tawain for twenty years. I was there for thirteen years, and then I was sent back to Boston for about five years. After that I went back to Taiwan for another seven years. I also traveled to our communities in Hong Kong and Macau.
To me, on one hand, everything was different in Taiwan. It was a terrific culture shock. But on the other hand, in another way everything was the same (except that it was in Chinese instead of English!)—the apostolate, our prayer, community life were all the same. The joys were the same and the difficulties were the same. It was a beautiful experience that I thank God for.
What is something that has been important to you throughout the course of your religious life?
In my sixty-three years of religious life, I have discovered that there is a certain mysticism in our life that is within the action of our day-to-day. Mysticism, meaning our life of closeness with God, because as religious, we give ourselves over to God.
There’s an element of our charism, expressed in a prayer called the Pauline Offertory, that calls us to consecrate our action in reparation for any evils that are done through the media. So within all the action, we consecrate our action. It’s thinking of ways throughout your day where you can lift your heart to God. So when I’m waiting for the elevator in the morning, or getting my food at lunch, or walking to chapel in the afternoon, I’m consecrating all those actions to God. That is mysticism in the Pauline sense.
Part of this mysticism is the not knowing, the mystery of it. We enter into the mystery. When we start this life, we don’t know where we’re going to end up. When we work on a book, we don’t know who this book is going to go to. We don’t know anything, we enter into the mystery. This is what we have to learn how to do, to accept God’s will and to enter into it. And as you go on, you find that God is giving you so many gifts is so very many little ways.
What advice would you give to someone discerning their vocation?
Listen to God speaking in your heart. Be on the lookout for what makes your heart jump. That’s what did it for me—my heart leapt when I met real, live Daughters of St. Paul. Look for the peace that comes in prayer. God will show you, because he wants your happiness just as much as you do. Sometimes we forget, but there’s somebody else involved in discernment—the Creator who is calling you.
