BROOKLYN HEIGHTS — Mother Marla Marie Lucas has answered God’s call not once, but twice in her life.
In 1983, she left her journalism career at the Washington Post to profess her vows and become a sister of the Parish Visitors of Mary Immaculate. Then, in 2008, she founded a religious congregation, the Maronite Servants of Christ the Light, to work with families in need in the Eparchy of St. Maron of Brooklyn.

Mother Marla is now receiving national recognition for her work. She is one of eight finalists for the Lumen Christi Award, an award given by the Catholic Extension Society, a papal organization that raises funds for missions serving underserved communities across the country. Lumen Christi is Latin for Light of Christ.

The winner, announced in the fall, will receive $50,000.

“It’s really, for us, a confirmation and God’s blessing on this mission,” Mother Marla said of being a finalist. “Having this recognition is like God saying, ‘You sisters are doing the work that I’ve called you to do for the Maronite people.’ ”

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The Eparchy of St. Maron of Brooklyn, led by Bishop Gregory Mansour and headquartered at Our Lady of Lebanon Cathedral in Brooklyn Heights, reports directly to Pope Leo XIV, rather than to a diocese. It covers most of the East Coast and has 45 parishes.

Bishops and dioceses nationwide selected the Lumen Christi finalists. Bishop Mansour nominated Mother Marla.

“I admire her a great deal for daring to start a religious community of sisters where there had been none before,” Bishop Mansour said.

The Maronite Servants of Christ the Light is a consecrated religious congregation of sisters, small in number but operating with a large mandate. In addition to Mother Marla, the congregation has two other sisters. They teach faith formation classes, organize retreats, lead youth and young adult ministries, volunteer in food pantries, and comfort the dying and their grieving families.

While their headquarters is a convent in Dartmouth, Massachusetts, a town approximately 60 miles south of Boston, the sisters do a lot of traveling in their ministry. One week, they might be in Pennsylvania; the next week might find them in Florida.

“We work with everyone from children to the dying, so we span the whole lifespan of the person,” Mother Marla explained. “We meet them where they’re at, and we work with them by serving them, praying with them, listening to them, supporting them and trying to meet whatever their spiritual and material needs may be.”

Underlying all the work is their commitment to their core mission, she added.

“We are called by God to imitate Mary and her selfless giving and to radiate the light of Christ through our pastoral service,” she said.

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Mother Marla originally planned a career in journalism. A graduate of George Washington University in Washington, D.C., she dreamed of becoming a reporter and covering politics. She got a job as an assistant to Herbert Block, the Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist at the Washington Post, known as Herblock. However, while working at the Washington Post, she felt God’s call to live a consecrated life.

“It’s as if God was saying to me, ‘You’re going to come with me. I want you to be all mine and serve my church,’ ” she recalled. “As a young woman, my heart’s desire was to be a journalist and get the truth out there so the public would be informed. God used that as a stepping-stone for me to be a religious, because Jesus is the truth.”

She joined the Parish Visitors of Mary Immaculate in 1983 and enjoyed her work with that congregation. Then, meeting with Bishop Mansour changed her life. The two struck up a friendship after she attended a Lenten series at a Maronite church in Scranton, Pennsylvania, where he was the mainBishop Gregory speaker.

A few years later, Bishop Mansour asked her to start a Maronite congregation of sisters. Mother Marla, who is a Maronite Catholic, accepted the request and the Maronite Servants of Christ the Light was born.

Mother Marla said she hasn’t planned what to do with the $50,000 prize if she wins the Lumen Christi Award.

“The sisters have thought about it more than I have,” she said. “But it’s in God’s hands.”