WASHINGTON — Sister Anna Wray is a big fan of Eucharistic
adoration.
There is something about the quiet time in prayer that has spoken
powerfully to her over the years making her understand God a little more and
also get a clearer sense of her path in life.
It's where — as a self-described "not particularly
pious" teenager — she said she felt God's love profoundly even though she
was just joining some high school friends for early morning weekday adoration
without really knowing what it was. She was drawn in by the group and the
appeal of breakfast afterward before school started.
It's also where she went some evenings in college and, as she put
it, parked herself one night during her senior year, desperate for direction.
At the time, she was dating and had already considered a religious vocation and
neither fit felt right. There, in the quiet chapel tucked between classrooms,
she got a clear sense of what God wanted her to do, not with specific details
or through a thundering voice, but an answer to what she had been seeking: a
sense of peace and a realization she should pursue the religious life.
And now, 15 years from those college days, Sister Anna, a
Dominican Sister of St. Cecilia, finds herself frequently back at that chapel
at The Catholic University of America in Washington while on the school's
campus working on her doctorate in philosophy. A philosophy major as an
undergrad, she now teaches a freshman philosophy class while writing a
dissertation on Aristotle, the ancient Greek philosopher who lived in the 300s
B.C.
As a student nearly two decades ago, she might not have believed
she would someday be back on campus, as a sister no less, dressed in a long
white habit and black veil.
That's because when she came to Catholic University she had no
sense of women religious. She hadn't known any sisters from her hometown of New
Canaan, Conn., or from the public high school she attended. When she got to
college, she was so shocked to see a Dominican friar walking in a long flowing
white robe that she followed him and finally asked him who he was.
He invited her to join him at vespers with the Dominicans and
Sister Anna, then simply Andrea Wray, was taken aback by the prayers and
watching the priests and brothers. "I want this," she thought, and
when she found out the Dominican order also had sisters, it seemed a natural
fit for her.
But she also was not about to do what seemed so obvious.
Sister Anna visited the Dominicans of St. Cecilia at their
motherhouse in Nashville, Tenn., during a spring break. After her stay, which
raised a lot of questions in her mind, she decided the community wasn't for
her.
She wondered if she was cut out for religious life, if she needed
to find a different community, or if she should pursue a relationship and even
marriage.
In the confusion years later, she simply asked the question:
"Lord what do you want?" that night in the chapel. The answer she
felt was simple but poignant. She felt God wanted her to follow him, or as she
described it: He wanted her heart. When she realized this, she felt at peace.
"It was a huge grace that it was God calling me," she
said.
Sister Anna went back to the Dominicans where she professed her
final vows in 2009. She even embraced teaching — a charism of the Dominicans
that she initially wondered if she could do. "Once I was in the classroom
I loved it," she said of her experience teaching kindergarten and then
high school and college classes.
In the Diocese of Arlington, the Dominican Sisters staff St.
Thomas Aquinas Regional School in Woodbridge and Saint John Paul the Great
Catholic High School in Dumfries.
Sister Anna said the job puts you "closer to souls"
than most other roles, other than parents, adding that "education is a
mission field."
She also said Dominicans "go where we are sent," which
for her in 2008 meant going to Australia as part of a delegation to assist with
preparations for World Youth Day.
Her own World Youth Day experience in 2000 in Rome also helped
influence who she is today. She said she took to heart the message of St. John
Paul II who said: "Do not be afraid to live the Gospel directly."
"That is something I have tried to do ever since," she said
in an interview nine years ago.
And these days, as the number of young women joining the
Nashville Dominicans continues to increase, Sister Anna is not surprised.
As she sees it: "The steady stream of young women are drawn
by God's voice and the presence of the Holy Spirit in us."