Sister Amor Vigare, OP at the dedication and blessing of Mother Julia Hall on Sept. 12. She is pictured with teacher Molly Shawhan, left, and student Ryan Garza and the student on the floor is Aristeo Ramirez.
Mary Cottingham, South Texas Catholic
Orphaned at an early age, Sister Amor Vigare, OP found a family with the Religious Missionaries of St. Dominic.
Amor Maravilla Vigare was the eighth child of 12 born to Eduardo and Asuncion Maravilla Vigare on Aug. 25, 1953 in the province of Binangonan, Rizal in the Philippines.
When she was in elementary school her uncle told her their last name had been de la Cruz, but their great-grandfather had to change it for some reason. She said that her name would have been Amor Maravilla de la Cruz, which means "wonderful love of the cross." She did not know if it was true or not, but she loved the thought of it.
"We were very Catholic," Sister Amor said.
She received her baptism and confirmation at St. Ursula Parish where her family attended Mass regularly. In elementary school she joined the Legionaries of Mary along with her older sisters.
"We recruited people by evangelizing," she said.
They made home visits and also cleaned the church. They enjoyed family life together. For family outings they would take the city bus. It was the first time she saw sisters in their habits.
"My uncle used to put a towel around my head and tease me that I would someday be a nun," she said.
Her father died suddenly in 1962. Her mother was so overcome with grief, that she was unable to take care of herself or her youngest children still living at home. She eventually got sick and died three years later.
One of her older sisters volunteered to care for the younger children, but Sister Amor missed her parents.
"We had an altar with a statue of Jesus, wearing a crown of thorns and I prayed to that statue. I would ask God, why would you take away my mom and dad? Who will take care of me? Give me back my happiness," she would say, in a demanding tone.
Later she realized that Jesus probably answered her prayer by leading her to her vocation.
"In the Bible there is a saying, 'I'm not going to leave you an orphan,'" she said. In hindsight she realized that God had always been taking care of her.
After finishing elementary school, Sister Amor realized her sister was not pursuing her dreams, so she volunteered to take the rest of the children and leave her childhood home to go live with her uncle and eldest cousin in another part of the city.
After a few years in public school, she started attending Camiling Catholic High School in the province of Tarlac, which was a 30-minute ride from her uncle's place. It was there that she came to know the Dominican Sisters who taught at the school.
She first felt the call to religious life after attending a vocation retreat when she was in high school. After high school she persuaded the mother general of the Religious Missionaries of St. Dominic to allow her to enter the convent.
Because she was so young she thought she would not be able to enter, but the mother general saw that she was sincere and she became a postulant on May 24, 1971.
Her uncle and cousin, with whom she had been living, had misconceptions of nuns, so she gave them the impression that she was going to enter the convent for a work-study program. But when she became a postulant they tried to talk her out of it.
"'You are a high school graduate,' they would say or 'you can be anything you want.' They didn't want me doing menial chores, which were sometimes required of a nun. Eventually they did come around," she said.
She received her certification to teach religion and she and the other novices taught children who had no education and lived in the slums of Manila.
Sister Amor made her first profession on Jan. 1, 1974 and her final profession on Jan. 1, 1979.
From 1981-84 she studied at the University of St. Thomas Aquinas in Manila and in 1986 she was sent to America where she was a sacristan, catechist and a teacher.
From 1993-2003 she taught at St. Joseph School in Beeville, which later closed. In 2004-10 she was a catechist and second grade teacher at St. Joseph in Alice. "I loved the children and their parents," she said.
In 2000 she went to see a doctor for a regular check-up. He told her she needed further testing. Not heeding the doctor's advice, she did not go back to the doctor for another 10 years.
The year 2010 proved to be an important year for Sister Amor. She became a U.S. citizen, she began teaching at St. Anthony School in Robstown and she joined other sisters on an ongoing spiritual formation, by going on a pilgrimage to Italy, Spain and France.
While she was at Our Lady of Lourdes in France, she knew there was something wrong with her physically, but was unaware just how bad her health was. While there she asked God "to make it less serious."
"If I had known then what I know now, I would have asked God to take it away," she said.
On Dec. 16, 2010 she was severely anemic and was rushed to the hospital. They discovered she had Stage 2 cancer that required major surgery. She underwent 12 sessions of chemotherapy. She still has to endure "peripheral neuropathy," which is one of the side effects of taking the chemo.
In July 2011 she returned to the classroom at St. Anthony School and continues to love the children and their parents.
She celebrated her 40-year jubilee at the World Day of Prayer for Consecrated Life earlier this year.
"I have no regrets. When I became a Dominican sister I no longer felt like an orphan. I know now that God has always taken care of me. I felt that in religious life," she said.