“Lord, call someone else. Don’t call me.”
Sister Cecilia Nguyen had felt the call to become a religious sister since she was a young teenager. Through various obstacles with a grandmother who challenged her, a move to the United States, and a conflicting desire for marriage and family, God continued to call her to Himself.
Growing up Catholic in Vietnam
Sister Cecilia grew up in a devout Catholic family in southern Vietnam. As hardworking farmers, her family made it a priority to go to their local church for Mass every morning at 4:00 AM and again every afternoon to pray the rosary.
“Most of the Catholic community lived together as a village,” she said. “The church was right in the middle, and everyone lived around that in walking distance. Everyone nurtured everyone’s faith.”
Her grandmother had a large impact on Sister Cecilia and her four siblings. Every night when going to bed, she would share stories of saints and priest missionaries who risked everything, and at times lost their lives, to spread the Gospel with the poor and those in need of Christ. These stories gave little Sister Cecilia big ideas.
“With all the stories my grandmother told us about the saints and missionaries, I thought it was kind of cool!” she said. “I wanted to be a priest and become a missionary. I planned for myself when I was about 7 or 8 years old. I said, ‘Lord, you can do everything! I want to be a boy! Change me to be a boy!’
“I planned an easy life. I can go to seminary, become a priest, go and be a missionary. Then I can go to some country — I have no idea what country, but some place that was poor and didn’t know Jesus. So I can tell them about Jesus, teach them about the faith, and two, three, four, five years later, they will cut my head off and I will become a martyr!”
Persecution under Communism
Since the 16th century, Catholicism has been persecuted in Vietnam. At the time, little Cecilia didn’t know that she was living in a country where many missionaries wanted to go themselves.
“The Gospel spread like in the Acts of the Apostles — from the North to the South,” she explained. “People ran from place to place hiding, and it spread. The whole country is not Catholic, but in every part of the country there is a Catholic Church.”
In spite of the persecutions, the Catholic faith remained strong in its communities. Through the past four centuries, however, Catholicism has clashed with Buddhism and ancestral worship.
For the first two centuries, Vietnam witnessed hundreds of martyrs — if not more. In 1988, Pope St. John Paul II canonized 117 of these Vietnamese martyrs, who were a mixture of missionary priests, bishops, as well as native Vietnamese. “We don’t have enough money to open more cases,” she said, “but there are many, many more.”
While Sister Cecilia’s village was full of devout Catholics and direct persecution had diminished, the government was still persecuting the Church. Many times, choir practice was cancelled, and Sister Cecilia’s community had to quietly sneak out of the church to go home without being caught by the police. “We had stronger faith through the persecution,” she said. “You had nothing to hold onto, only your faith in God.”
Admiring the Sisterhood
When she was a young teenager, Sister Cecilia started taking special notice of the religious sisters in her community. She admired how beautiful their habits were and the time they spent in prayer and teaching others. She wanted to be like them.
Throughout her childhood, her family always added on to the traditional blessing before the meal, “and that our brothers would become priests and our sisters would become religious sisters.” This prayer set the idea in her mind early on, but it wasn’t until she was about 13 or 14 years old that she started to consider it as a potential path.
“I went to my grandmother, and I said, ‘I want to become a sister.’ She looked at me and said, ‘I don’t think so.’ I was disappointed!”
It wasn’t that her grandmother didn’t want her to become a sister, she just thought Cecilia had some growing up to do.
“I played a lot of practical jokes around people. I didn’t hurt anyone, but I played around for fun. She told me, ‘You play so many practical jokes around people. You have to quit that. If not, you enter today, and they kick you out the next day!’”
Moving to the United States
During the Vietnam War, Sister Cecilia’s father was captured and held prisoner for ten years. When he was released and offered the opportunity to move with his family to the United States, he took it.
While she was in high school, Sister Cecilia moved to frigid Minnesota from tropical Vietnam with the call to become a sister still in her heart. She wanted to stay behind and become a sister then and there, but she was too young.
No one in her family spoke or understood English when they first arrived. They all got jobs to help make ends meet, getting by with “yes,” “no,” “bye,” and smiles. While they all worked hard, they still didn’t have much money left over at the end of the month, as most of their money went to their rent. They decided they would all work even harder over the next few years and save up enough money to buy a house.
With a specific list in mind of a certain number of bedrooms, bathrooms, and natural lighting, God turned their dreams into a reality in the house that her parents still live in to this day. This was their first house that was truly their own.
Discerning Religious Life
Eventually, Sister Cecilia graduated from high school and entered college. During her time in college, God placed the call to become a religious sister on her heart once again.
“The call was still in here, but I denied it,” she said. “I put it in the back of my head and said, ‘Lord, call someone else. Don’t call me.’”
At this time, she also felt the competing desire to have a husband and a family. Instead of leaning in to discernment, she tried to distance herself from the call to religious life. While she never stopped going to Mass, she avoided Bible studies and retreats because she didn’t want to answer the call. She made herself busy with school and worked in the Church to avoid it.
In her second year of college, she began to really feel restless and without peace. That was when she gave in and agreed to mail a letter to a convent in Houston.
“After I accepted His call, I got peace in my heart. All of the restlessness left.”
The Perfect Husband
However, she still felt the competing desire to have a husband and family. To figure it out, she came to Our Blessed Mother Mary and said, “Okay, Mother Mary, I want a husband, but he cannot like smoking, he cannot like drinking, and he cannot like gambling. I want all the virtues.”
One day during prayer, she heard in her heart, “Who on Earth is perfect? Only my Son is perfect.”
Even after this day in prayer, she still wanted a sign and waited to see what the convent in Houston would say. When they responded to her requesting she apply again after she finished school, she tried to use it as an excuse to get out of the call to religious life.
“See God, they refused it!” she said.
State of Women’s Vocations
The United States has seen a decrease in women’s vocations into religious life. In the past 60 years, the number of religious sisters has fallen from around 180,000 to around 40,000. This means today in the United States, there is 1 religious sister for every 1,667 Catholics.
What might be causing this decrease? There are likely many factors, but Sister Cecilia points to families having fewer children and not prioritizing praying as a family. Her family is an example of how having multiple children and prioritizing living out the faith can bear the fruit of religious vocations.
She continued seeking guidance for her decision, relying on the faith taught to her as a young child. Once she graduated from college, she found the Olivetan Benedictine Sisters in Jonesboro, Arkansas. This was where she felt truly at home.
Sister Cecilia has spent the last twenty years in religious life helping other young women discern their own call and supporting religious vocations. In 2022, unworthy though she felt, Sister Cecilia was given the role of Minister to Religious in the Diocese of Little Rock by Bishop Anthony Taylor. Mimicking her call to religious life, she told Bishop Taylor, “I don’t think I can do it. I think you asked the wrong person.” Through the Bishop’s encouragement and taking the request to prayer, Sister Cecilia accepted.
The Sign of Jonah
We learn from the story of the prophet Jonah that you cannot outrun God’s call on your life. Jonah did not want to go to Nineveh and preach repentance as God called him to do, so he ran away. He first hopped on a ship going the opposite direction, but God stepped in and sent a storm to call him out yet again.
He then ended up getting eaten by a large fish, likely thinking the call was finally over, just to wake up spat out on the shores of Nineveh where he finally accepted God’s call and preached repentance to a surprisingly receptive people.
Sister Cecilia heard God’s call from a young age, but through seasons of doubt, misreading signs, and conflicting desires, God stayed faithful to His call on her life. Through the obstacles she faced in her life, He led her to exactly the spot He wanted her to be, an ocean away from where she first heard His voice.
“When God calls you, He can never let go.”
For Sister Cecilia’s full story can be found in her interview on our YouTube channel.