God Had a Hand in It

An old pump organ first brought Sister Grace Walle in touch with Marianist brothers.

A community of them from Philadelphia were staying at their summer house in Cape May, N.J., and officiating at a seaside parish church. While vacationing at the coast, 16-year-old Walle answered an appeal for an organist for the summer services.

Despite little piano experience, she thought it would be fun to try her hand at the organ. She and a girlfriend applied for the job, and became summer musicians – Grace at the keyboard and her friend at the pump.

“God had a hand in it,” Grace says, remembering that first contact with Marianists would lead her into the Marianist women’s order.

After graduating from Archbishop Prendergast High School, Grace was working in the accounting office of a large Philadelphia department store.

After experiencing a retreat organized by Marianist sisters, Walle started corresponding with the Order’s vocation director.

“One night I began to think about becoming a Marianist sister,” she recalls. “Yet each day I would think to myself, ‘Surely this feeling will go away.’ I was apprehensive.”

Walle saw the women’s order as more conservative than the men’s, and feared the life would be too confining. “But as I realized that the sisters enjoyed a full life and were sensitive women sharing a sense of belonging, including interchange with the brothers, my apprehensions faded,” she says. “I got to know more about Marianist spirituality and sense of community.”

Sister Grace Walle, F.M.I., Campus Minister for the School of Law, has been a Marianist for 27 years.