For Marie Josée Seide, 53, the passage to become a Daughter of Wisdom seems to have taken root long ago.

Educated as a child in Haiti by the Sisters of St. Joseph of Cluny, her first encounter with the Daughters of Wisdom came in Port-au-Prince where she attended high school at Sacre Coeur, a school with a rich tradition dating back to 1875. Decades later, after relocating to the U.S., she crossed paths again with the Daughters of Wisdom when, as a member of Our Lady of Mercy parish, Brownsville, she met Sister Bernadette Sassone, D.W., who was serving as a pastoral assistant.

Her years of association with the Daughters of Wisdom nurtured her vocation to religious life. In 2012, she joined the French Speaking International Novitiate in Paris, and on Aug. 9 of this year, she made her first profession of religious vows with the Daughters of Wisdom in the Chapel of Incarnate Wisdom at The Montfort Spirituality Center, Bay Shore, L.I.

Sister Marie Josée has lived in the U.S. since 2004 and had worked for the Diocese of Rockville Centre since February, 2006. She served as a bilingual senior secretary to the New Evangelization Department and as an assistant to coordinators of the Haitian-American Apostolate and Campus Ministry.

In her native Haiti, she was employed by the National Olympic Committee of Haiti and by Catholic Relief Services. She worked for the Board of Education of Haiti on a project funded by the International Development Bank and also on an affordable housing project funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development in Haiti.

Her education includes an associate’s degree in legal studies from New York City College of Technology, Brooklyn. While in Haiti, she earned a degree in bilingual commercial studies from Christ the King Secretarial School (Sisters of St. Anne of Lachine, Quebec, Haiti Branch) and completed three years of study in psychology and a four-year course in law at the State University of Haiti. She studied Spanish at Institute Lope de Vega.

She is the most recent member on Long Island to join the USA Province, headquartered in Islip, L.I.

When asked about her call to become a Daughter of Wisdom, Sister Marie Josée said that she had always had a very strong faith, which her family passed on to her, and felt an attachment to religious life. As a young adult, she fell in love with the prayer of Solomon to acquire wisdom, and she prayed the same.

As she awaits a ministry call, she now resides in community with the Daughters of Wisdom in Port Jefferson, L.I