Sister Mary Aloysius finds  herself, places God above all

Sister Mary Aloysius, SOLT at the 28th Annual Clergy and Religious Appreciation Banquet hosted by the Knights of Columbus at Richard M. Borchard Fairgrounds in Robstown.
Photo by Ervey Martinez | for STC

---

"Our Lady of the Rosary played a pivotal role in my life – I would not be here today without her intercession. I was once dead, and now I am alive. My story is a story of all of us, and a common thread that runs in all our lives – is God’s unrelenting pursuit of us,” said Sister Mary Aloysius Kim from the Society of Our Lady of the Most Holy Trinity.

Sister Mary Aloysius hails from Seoul, South Korea. She realized her call when she was about seven years old. Her aunt is a religious, and her family is devoutly Catholic. Her parents’ dedication to their faith made a significant impression on her.

“Our house was like Grand Central Station with priests and sisters. As a child, I loved hanging out with them, and they nurtured my desire to become a religious,” she said.

In her teens, Sister Mary Aloysius’s parents found out her intentions to become a religious and were devastated. “We were very close, and they did not want to lose me. My mom cried for days, and my dad ended up sick in bed.” 

Consequently, she acquiesced and gave up on her desire to become a sister out of respect for her parents. It would be ten years before she would speak of it again. 

She graduated high school and then came to the United States to attend college at the University of Kansas – not because of their academic credentials, but because of their fantastic basketball program, “yea Jayhawks!”  

“When I attended college, I fell away from my faith and was away from the Church for about ten years. I wanted to be “cool – I wanted to look smart, and I hung out with the wrong friends and read books that told me God was an illusion. With this kind of lifestyle. It’s not a mystery that I lost my faith very quickly.

“I did not become an atheist. I still believed in God’s presence, but I became something worse. I came to despise religion. My attitude was like that of Satan, ruefully shouting, I will not serve you. And most of all, I looked down upon people, praying the rosary, those who loved Mary.”

After college, her goal in life was to be successful and rich. She was hired by a pharmaceutical company, worked hard, and climbed the corporate ladder quickly, but she knew something was wrong. Despite her outward success, there was this overwhelming emptiness that was growing inside her.

After a near-death experience, she decided to reevaluate her life and booked a 19-day Transatlantic cruise. She realized her mistake after her third day. “I was bored out of my mind,” she said.

She hears on the loudspeaker that there would be a Catholic Mass on a particular deck and after the Mass was invited to breakfast by the celebrant. After about three hours of breakfast, she received the Sacrament of Confession. “It was really a graced moment. I’m a very private person, so I don’t easily share my story with people. But there was something about this priest. He was just so compassionate, and so, Christlike – I was drawn to share all my darkness, sinfulness, emptiness, and rebellion,” she said adding, “which resulted in my confession.”

During the next 16 days, her cruise was no longer boring. “I would go out and watch the vast ocean, and I experienced God the Father. I experienced our Father’s great love. His Majesty, His greatness,” she said. “I now wanted to read the Bible, and I wanted to go to Mass. Our Lady of the Rosary, whom I had despised for so long, took charge of my life, and everything started to change.”

At this point, it had been ten years since she had first approached her parents about discerning a religious vocation. Broaching the subject yet again, they still adamantly refused.

Her mom instigated a prearranged courtship of a man she had never met. His family was very wealthy, and he was successful. After a couple of dates, she and her mother went to meet his parents. They lived in a mansion on a hill with fountains and columns, and at one point, while they were drinking tea with them, she had an image of a bird in a cage. 

“I felt like I was suffocating. At that moment, I realized that this would be my lot – if I chose to turn away from God again, if I compromised and just got married to this guy, I would feel trapped and suffocated for the rest of my life.

“I knew I had no other choice, and I wanted to give my life to Christ as soon as possible. So, I went on a pilgrimage with my aunt and entrusted my vocation to Our Lady. Shortly after that, she (Our Lady of the Rosary) took action.”

One cold winter night in Korea, when her dad was home alone, he began to smell a strong rose smell. Her dad, a biochemist, was not generally prone to believe in extraordinary phenomena, apparitions or miracles, and the strong smell had to be investigated. All the windows were closed; there weren’t any plants or perfumes around. He said to himself, “where is this coming from?” He goes from one room to another, and the smell is following him, even in the attic room upstairs. At this point he says to himself, “If Our Lady wants you that much, I can’t really stand in her way.”

Her mom gave her blessing in a Christmas card 15 years later after Sister Mary Aloysius took her final vows. It read, “Finally, I can say that I’m proud of you.” And when I got that Christmas card, “I cried a lot,” she said.

“The SOLT community is very small and hidden, so it’s not easy to encounter them, especially somebody like me. But it is Our Lady’s community, and she arranged for me to meet the Society.

“What was really attractive about the SOLT Sisters was their simplicity of life. It was very evident how much they loved Jesus and Mary in their prayerfulness, and I knew when I visited our convent that I finally made it home.”