The Sisters of Mercy :: Exploratory Essays Research Papers

The Sisters of Mercy   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   For this assignment, I decided to research the Sisters of Mercy, a Catholic order of nuns.   I never before realized that there is so much behind their amazing devotion to the Catholic Church and God. I must admit that they are beautiful examples of God's teaching, and I feel truly blessed to be involved with the Sisters of Mercy. Each and every one of them has a unique story to tell about her life, but none is more intriguing than that of Sister Mary Joel Hopkinson. Having only heard bits and pieces, and not knowing for sure the steps that each of these women had to take to become who she is today, I asked Sister Mary Joel to share her story with me.    When she was born into a Protestant family in New England, no one could have guessed that Sister Joel would end up becoming a Catholic, let alone a Sister of Mercy. But as it turned out, as Sister Mary Joel Hopkinson says, "There was no way to deny it; this is what God wanted for me." Sister Joel has been a Sister of Mercy for almost fifty years. What is so interesting about her story is that she has been a Catholic for only fifty years. Only a little more than a year after she converted to Catholicism, she found herself looking to enter a convent. She explained that all her life she had had Catholic friends. At one of her jobs, she was the only non-Catholic in the carpool. The Catholic Church intrigued her, and she was of a curious nature, but not until years later did she realize that God was sending her a sign. She puts it rather bluntly when she says, "God pushed me out of the window and into the convent." Sister Joel was not always a businesswoman; in fact, she worke d in a building in Brooklyn, New York, cleaning windows on the second floor. It was a rather old building, and the chains on the windows had been painted over a number of times. Once, while struggling to pull the window down, she lost her footing and fell out the window. The reason she says God pushed her is that the only ambulance on call that day was from St.