Sister Laurena Alflen - It’s Not What You Wear 

 

 

When I was in the second grade, I began making preparation for first Holy Communion. Jesus was not my focus. It was about what I would wear. [audience laughter and applause] So, my mother borrowed a white dress, and I would wear my sister Madeleine's holy Communion veil. That morning when we woke up, it was raining. Mom was putting my communion clothes in a bag, because we were going to walk to church. She saw me licking up the crumbs from the cookies she had made, the night before. She grabbed me and shook me over the sink,- [audience laughter] -saying, “Spit it out. Spit it out.” [audience laughter] I didn't know why she was doing that. [audience laughter] And she said, “I don't think you can go to communion. You broke your fast.” I cried all the way to church. And the pastor, Father Bertram, shooed everyone out of the classroom, and he said to me, “Did you swallow the crumbs?” [audience laughter] And I says, “I don't know.” [audience laughter] He said, “You can go to communion.” I wore my white dress and my veil, and I made my first communion. [audience cheers and applause]

 

The sisters I had at St. Mary Magdalene wore that beautiful white habit. I love them, and I love that white habit. In fact, I told my mom, when we needed new kitchen curtains, “Maybe we could make them out of the same material that the sister’s habits are made out of.” [audience laughter] She looked at me strangely and said, “I don't think so.” [audience laughter]

 

Two very changing experiences happened to me in the seventh grade. My classmates were struck by a car on their bicycles, and they were terribly maimed. Later on, a second boy was killed in the same type of accident. Sister Mary Ada, our teacher, tried to console us and said, “I think God has something special in mind for this class.” We began praying the prayer for vocations. I liked Sister Mary Ada, and I could help her after school, put up her bulletin boards and write the sentences on the blackboard, long ones for diagramming. [audience laughter]

 

I think that's the moment after school, when I thought, “I would like to be like her. I'd like to wear a habit and be a sister.” Well, there were few other girls who were thinking the same thing. So, when we finished the eighth grade, four of us came to Marywood as aspirants. We were not recognized as academy girls, because we wore a different uniform. We had a black jumper, and a black blouse, and a plastic collar and cuffs, and brown cotton stockings and black oxfords. That didn't bother me. 

 

The sisters gave us a fine education, and I went on to study piano and choir. When I graduated from Marywood in 1950, I entered the postulancy. One of the very first things we had to do as postulants was to begin sowing our habits and making them. Sister Conrad was holding her breath with some of us. [audience laughter]

 

Then, she announced that the reception ceremony called for us to walk in as brides of Christ. She didn't know that that year wedding dresses came with big hoop skirts, petticoats underneath them. So, when we prostrated towards the altar- [audience laughter] - the priest in the front row had a good show. [audience laughter] Before you knew it, it was time to go and teach. I was holy. I wore the habit. I was all knowledgeable. [audience laughter] And I could teach classroom music and piano and choirs, because I had one year of college. [audience laughter] I even taught religion the next year, because anyone in a habit should be able to do that. [audience laughter]

 

With Vatican II, there was a life-giving experience to me that I had longed for a long time. These were life changing times. We were urged and invited to dismantle this veil and this habit and to wear something that the people we were serving would were wearing. This didn't happen overnight. We brought the skirt up, and we made the sleeves smaller and we made a little veil that her hair was showing. That was called an experiment. [audience laughter]

 

In those years of experimenting with the habit, I was teaching at St. Stephen's School and had large music classes. They gave me a practice teacher to help. I put her in a classroom with some fifth graders. When it was time to go, I opened the door and I saw her playing away on her guitar, and the kids had their arms around her shoulders and they were singing. I thought to myself, “They never touched me like that.” This habit put me on a pedestal. That wasn't right. I wanted them to know I loved them and I wanted them to love me. I was more than just a classroom music teacher. I didn't need a habit to do that. 

 

Another thing happened at that same parish. They had an amateur show. Well, the Smolensky family singers won first place. [audience laughter] And I came in second. [audience laughter] A sister in my modified habit, singing [sings] I feel pretty, oh, so pretty. [audience laughter] I was so nervous. “What did I look like? How could I sing a song that was so vain?” But I had an Eliza Doolittle moment. I was a woman, not someone dressed in androgynous men's underwear shirt and heavy black shoes. I wanted to sing with Helen Reddy, “I Am Woman, I Am Strong.” [audience cheers and applause]

 

Little did I know how much strength it would take. There were times when we studied the documents from the Vatican that I felt this was an answer to something that I had longed for all my life. And so, I knew as a Dominican, I needed to do my duty. I studied the documents, I read, I made retreats, I chose a spiritual director and I meditated. 

 

Meditation and the study of scriptures brought me to a knowledge of the love of God, and God's son's love for me and my neighbor. I began to see that this was a transformation that was happening in me. My interior life became my exterior life. I could serve the hungry and the homeless in a simple dress, because what was in my heart was what God had made holy, it had become my habit. Thank you.