I was born in Janesville, Wisconsin, to Arline and Felix Matarrese. I have two brothers, Mike and Mark, and have many wonderful and happy memories of family vacations and fishing trips in northern Wisconsin.
My journey in Colorado began as a VIDA (Volunteer in Diocesan Action) with the Pueblo diocese. I taught in Walsenburg, where I met the Benedictine Sisters of Benet Hill Monastery. The rhythm of communal living, prayer and ministry was inviting to me. This witness was God’s invitation to the monastic life.
These 46 years as a professed Benedictine woman have taken me down a variety of roads as I have sought integration of community life, prayer, and contemplation in action.
My work/ministry involvements have been: educator, serving meal at the soup kitchen, providing safe housing/community for women and children at the Peace House, peace activist-nonviolent resistance to militarism, administration for low income housing, spiritual director, co-facilitator of house church, centering prayer, lectio, and currently a member of our monastic leadership team.
Through my journey as a monastic woman, it really is not about anything that I do; rather it is about what God is doing through me, with me and in me. I celebrate with gratitude and praise for God sustaining and upholding me; the promise of Yahweh who speaks “I will be there as there I shall be.”
