Nurse, Hospital Chaplain Makes Commitment to Dominican Sisters of Peace
The Dominican Chapel on the Plains in Great Bend, KS, was home to a celebration of faith and commitment on Sunday, July 31, as Sr. Margaret Uche made her perpetual vows as a member of the Dominican Sisters of Peace.
Sr. Margaret grew up in Nigeria. While her family were devout Catholics, she was only able to attend a local convent school for a brief time, but that early experience was the beginning of a call to religious life.
Sr. Margaret earned her Bachelor of Science degree in biology from California State University. She began her career working in the lab, but found the work unsatisfying, and moved into nursing.
“I loved taking care of people, and was very fulfilled doing that,” Sr. Margaret says. She earned her RN from the University of Houston-Victoria and then worked as a pediatric nurse. She enjoyed her job and was fulfilled in her work, but something was missing.
“Something was not right. My Nigerian culture always says that you must get married, but the idea of marriage was not working for me,” Sr. Margaret said. On the advice of her sister in Nigeria, she began to pray in front of the Blessed Sacrament and sought the counsel of a spiritual director.
“After I began to pray in front of the Blessed Sacrament, I started to experience such peace. I felt something different … and I started to remember my time in the convent school. I kept feeling such peace and joy,” Sr. Margaret says.
Her spiritual director suggested the next step in her journey – that she investigate entering religious life. Sr. Margaret believed that because she was feeling such peace, this direction had to be from the Holy Spirit – and she started looking for a religious community.
Her first contact was with the Dominican Sisters of Great Bend, a founding congregation of the Dominican Sisters of Peace. Their long history of ministry in Nigeria was appealing to Sr. Margaret and she began to discern with a vocation director.
Sr. Margaret was welcomed into the Congregation on November 1, 2014 and moved into the Congregation’s House of Discernment in New Haven. She entered the Novitiate in 2016 and made her temporary vows in July 2018.
Since her first profession, she has followed in the itinerant steps of our founder Dominic, working in health care in Garden City, Kansas, then in New Orleans, before moving to Wichita to study clinical pastoral education as a Chaplain Resident in a healthcare setting.
“Going through both formation and my training as a Chaplain Resident, especially during COVID, was so demanding – but I feel like if God knows what you are doing is good, God gives you that grace to do it. That grace is what is helping me do it.”
Fr. Bob Schremmer of the Dodge City Diocese presided at the Eucharistic Liturgy. Sr. Patricia Twohill, Prioress of the Congregation, received Sr. Margaret’s profession of vows. Many Sisters, Associates, and guests, as well as members of the Sacred Heart Sisters in Nigeria, participated in the joyous celebration.
Sister Margaret is in the final unit of her clinical pastoral education program as a Chaplain Resident. She hopes to continue her education to earn a master’s degree in Theology and remain in the ministry of healing of the body and the spirit.
Single Catholic women who are interested in learning more about religious life are encouraged to visit the Congregation on their website at OPPeace.org, or on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
To watch the recording of Sr. Margaret’s Final Profession ceremony, please click here.