Seated in a well-worn, comfortable chair in the Grey Nun Motherhouse in Yardley, Pa., 95-year old Sister Molly McGuire reflects on her life as she celebrates her 80th year as a woman religious.
She entered the Grey Nun congregation as a 15-year-old in 1933. She grew up in Mahanoy City in Pennsylvania’s coal region, and her values, she says, were formed by her strong and stoic family and neighbors.
“My father was a miner,” Sister Molly remembers. “It was a hard life. My mother was up at three in the morning, getting him ready to go to work in the mines, packing food for his lunch can.”
Young Molly McGuire’s life changed dramatically when she began attending Catholic school in third grade. She saw the principal, a Grey Nun in a traditional habit, ring the school bell and was deeply impressed. “That’s what I want to be!” she thought to herself.
Over the years, she lived out the typical childhood of the time and place, but the thought of becoming a nun was, she says, always with her. When she was 15, the Mother Superior of her school invited her to enter the Grey Nun community, and the teenager quickly accepted. “I marvel that my father didn’t try to stop me because I think I broke his heart.”
She entered the congregation, traveling to the Motherhouse, then located outside of Philadelphia.
“I didn’t like all of the rules,” she said. “But I wanted to be a nun and the rules were all part of that life. I had the example of my parents and so, I didn’t expect life to be easy.”
After making it through the first years of community life, Sister Molly, then Sister Mary Angela, was sent to Massachusetts to teach first grade. She was 17 years old. “There were 75 children in the first-grade class and I was on my own with them. But, I loved the children and I loved teaching, from day one! It turned out that I was a ‘natural’ and so God lead me to my purpose in life.”
In 1942, the Grey Nuns sent her to Blessed Sacrament School, Jackson Heights. That was the beginning of many ministry years in the Diocese of Brooklyn, teaching every grade from kindergarten to eighth: Blessed Sacrament, 1942-45 and 1961-63; St. Joan of Arc, Jackson Heights, 1949-53 and 1963-66; St. Leo, Corona, 1947-49 and 1954-60; and Our Lady of Fatima, East Elmhurst, 1977-81.
Sister Molly also served as a tutor at Msgr. McClancy M.H.S., East Elmhurst, from 1981 until 1984.
“Jackson Heights, East Elmhurst and Corona were all wonderful places to live and serve in ministry,” she said. “They were vibrant, bustling neighborhoods of generous, hard-working, family-oriented folks. Everyone looked out for one another.
“One special memory of my time at Fatima was the view from the convent window of Manhattan and the Empire State Building, lit up at night. Breathtaking!”
Since she retired, Sister Molly has resided at the Grey Nun’s Yardley Motherhouse. She traverses the halls there at a rapid clip, dispensing good humor and sage advice to sisters and lay staff alike. She sometimes sees her former students from New York, who visit her at the Motherhouse.