Today the Catholic Church celebrates the beautiful Memorial of Saint Angela Merici, foundress of the Ursuline Order. Her legacy is deeply personal to me, for she is woven into my family’s story through my mother, who was received into the Catholic Church as a teenager at a boarding school run by the Ursuline Sisters.
My mother devoted more than fifty years of her life to teaching students from kindergarten through twelfth grade. Twenty years after her retirement, her once-robust health began to decline in puzzling ways. She was eventually diagnosed with lung cancer and given a prognosis of only three to six months. I brought her to America and entrusted her care to natural treatments: weekly lymphatic massage and foot zoning, frequent reception of the sacraments, and joyful outings twice a week. By God’s grace, she lived with us for twenty-two months, never once experiencing pain.
She was the first Christian in her family, and through her witness both my father and I became Catholic. As I grew up, she patiently formed me in the faith and often shared the remarkable story of her own journey to Christ.
My mother was born in China, not far from Shanghai. My grandfather was a high-ranking military officer who fought the Japanese throughout the 1930s and 1940s. After World War II, he was appointed to a post in a southwestern province. He made the difficult decision to leave his two eldest children—my mother and her brother—at Catholic boarding schools, while he relocated with my grandmother and the younger children. My mother was sent to an Ursuline school staffed almost entirely by Italian Sisters, with the exception of one Chinese Sister. My uncle attended an all-boys Jesuit boarding school. Nearly all of my mother’s friends were Catholic or preparing to become so. Wanting to share fully in their faith, she chose to become Catholic herself. At the Easter Vigil of 1948, she received Baptism, Confirmation, and her First Holy Communion.
Unbeknownst to her, she would never return to that beloved school after summer vacation. My grandfather was called to fight the Chinese Communists, and he withdrew my mother and uncle from their boarding schools. The family reunited and settled in Jiangsu Province, while my grandfather remained on the front lines.
The Chinese Ursuline Sister who taught my mother was known to her as Sister Shi. My mother knew only the Sisters’ religious names—Italian names for the foreign Sisters, and, in accordance with Chinese custom, she addressed her Chinese teacher respectfully as Sister Shi.
In the spring of 1949, my grandfather arranged for the entire family to board the last military ship evacuating soldiers to Taiwan. The journey took a month. They eventually reached Taiwan, where some of my grandfather’s friends had immigrated earlier. The family remained there until my grandfather was finally able to join them later that year.
For decades, my mother lost all contact with her beloved Ursuline Sisters. Years later, when I attended a college about fifty miles southeast of our home in Taipei, she discovered that there was an Ursuline convent nearby. She took me with her to visit, and to her astonishment, one of the elderly Sisters was her former teacher. My mother repeatedly told the Sister her name, hoping she might be recognized, though the Sister was hard of hearing. I could not tell whether she remembered my mother. My mother then asked anxiously, “Where is the Chinese Sister, Sister Shi?” No one at the convent knew her whereabouts or could offer any information.
In 1999, I came across a book chronicling the lives of Catholic women martyrs under the Communist regime after 1949. The very first account was that of Sister Shi. From the description of the convent where she had taught, I knew with certainty that she was my mother’s teacher. Eagerly, I read on to learn what had become of her.
After the Italian Ursuline Sisters were forced to leave China in the 1950s, Sister Shi was appointed superior of the remaining Ursulines. She was later sent to a labor camp, where she died after ten years of imprisonment. Even in those brutal conditions, her heroic fidelity to the Lord stood as a radiant witness to all who encountered her. She offered everything to God, living her vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience with unwavering faithfulness until her death.
It was only then, as I read the book, that I learned Sister Shi’s given name. In Chinese culture, a first name usually consists of two characters. I was stunned to discover that although my mother had never known Sister Shi’s full name, Sister Shi and I share the same character in one character of our first names. I also learned that Sister Shi was a direct descendant of the renowned Prime Minister of the last Ming Dynasty, Shi Ke Fa—himself a martyr.
Sister Shi Xian Zhi, pray for us.
Saint Angela Merici, pray for us.
