INDIANAPOLIS — Benedictine Sisters Jill and Susan Reuber have
often shared the same path in life, but their roads to their religious
vocations took different turns.
They were born within two minutes of each other, part of triplets
with their brother Eric.
Growing up, the sisters shared a bedroom and a car, became best
friends and did many of the same activities — from playing in their high school
marching band to working together at Dairy Queen.
One of the few places where they were separated growing up was
during Mass at their parish church.
"Our parents didn't let us sit next to each other,"
Sister Jill told The Criterion, newspaper of the Archdiocese of Indianapolis.
"Probably because they thought we would talk to each
other," Sister Susan said.
"Or hit each other," Sister Jill added, smiling.
Yet despite this remarkable closeness, Susan had a quick,
emphatic reaction years later when older sister Jill chose to make her vows as
a Sister of St. Benedict.
"I wasn't going to do what Jill did," she said
forcefully.
That response makes both sisters smile at the same time.
So begins the story of how these two 39-year-old sisters are not
only connected by blood and love, but now also by their faith and shared vows
as Benedictine sisters.
Sister Jill's journey to religious life took its defining turn
when she was a student at St. Mary-of-the-Woods College in St.
Mary-of-the-Woods, Indiana.
As a freshman and sophomore, she spent her spring breaks on
mission trips to Nazareth Farm, a Catholic community in rural West Virginia.
She was studying elementary education, and as a freshman wanted
"to teach in the Appalachian Mountains," she said.
"In my second year there, we prayed together in the mornings
and the evenings. That's where I found I wanted that prayer life, that
community life," Sister Jill said. "That's when I started discerning
that (religious life) is what I wanted to do. I also wanted God to give me a
lightning bolt, to tell me what to do."
There was just one problem with that lightning bolt plan.
"During one Mass at camp, the priest's whole homily was that
God doesn't give lightning bolts," Sister Jill said.
By her senior year, she started visiting the Benedictine sisters'
community at Monastery Immaculate Conception in Ferdinand, Indiana, in the
Evansville Diocese.
"I fell in love with prayer, community and the way the
sisters loved each other."
Following her college graduation, she entered the Benedictine
community in Ferdinand in August 2003 and professed her final vows in 2011. She
is now the community's vocation director, seeking to lead other women to the
life she loves.
It's the life she wanted, but one Susan "wanted nothing to
do with it."
"When Jill was discerning in college, she was right that I
didn't want anything to do with it," said Sister Susan, a 2003 graduate of
Franklin College in Franklin, Indiana. "I wanted my own car, my own house
and my own paycheck. But deep down, I didn't want to do what Jill was doing. In
college, for the first time, we really had our own identity."
After graduation, she began a career in education, joining
Roncalli High School in Indianapolis as an English teacher in her second year.
"It was my dream job — teaching in a Catholic school,
sharing my faith with my students," she said. "Fast forward eight
years to 2011. I'm starting to think something is missing in my life. I'm at
school way too much."
Right then, she gets a message from Benedictine Sister Michelle
Sinkhorn — vocation director for the Ferdinand community at the time — inviting
her to a "Come and See" weekend among the sisters.
"I didn't know if I wanted to open that door," Sister
Susan recalled. "I talked to Jill, and she convinced me to come, that we
could hang out for the weekend. In my mind, I was just going to see Jill."
Then a series of lightning bolts hit, starting on that weekend.
"God opened my heart and said, 'Why aren't you pursuing
this?'" Sister Susan recalled. "I saw how happy Jill is, and how
happy the sisters are. At the end of the weekend, I sat down with Sister
Michelle. I owned a house in Beech Grove, and Sister said, 'Why don't you visit
the sisters at Our Lady of Grace Monastery there?'"
"The drive home was the longest two and a half hour drive I
had ever made in my life. I'm going to have to quit my job and sell my
house," she continued. "Then at Roncalli, (Benedictine) Sister Anne
Frederick handed me a brochure for their 'Come and See' weekend at Our Lady of
Grace. She didn't even know I had gone to Ferdinand. I saw that as a sign from
the Holy Spirit that I should come here."
She went to Our Lady of Grace for the weekend, thinking "I
have to find something I hate about the place so I could be done with it."
She had a different feeling by the end of the weekend. When it
was time leave, Sister Susan said, "I didn't find anything I didn't like.
I fell in love with the sisters. What I was missing in my life was
community."
She entered the Benedictine community at Beech Grove in September
2012 and professed her final vows this past June. She also has returned to
Roncalli as a teacher.
Sharing the same vows has added another dimension to the
siblings' closeness. Living their vows also has brought them to a deeper
relationship with God.
Shaughnessy is assistant editor of The Criterion,
newspaper of the Archdiocese of Indianapolis.