Sister Maureen Murray, SSND

Our beloved Sister Maureen (Mary Kevin) Murray, 93, died at 6:40 p.m. on Tuesday, May 30, 2017, in Notre Dame Health Care, Mankato, Minnesota.  In mid-April she wrote in a prayer request that cancer had invaded her body and that she would be receiving palliative care because she did not want to go to extraordinary measures to prolong her life. Sisters prayed with her for several days, and Sister Kate DuVal was with her when she died.  The Funeral Liturgy, with Father Eugene Stenzel as presider, will be held Monday, June 5, at 10:30 a.m. in Our Lady of Good Counsel Chapel, followed by burial in the Good Counsel Cemetery. A prayer service of remembrance will be held at 9:00 a.m. Monday, with visitation until the Funeral Liturgy.  We extend our sympathy to her brother, Michael, and his wife, Gerry, her sister-in-law, Ruth, her nieces and nephews and their families, her friends, former students and colleagues, and her sisters in community, the School Sisters of Notre Dame.  She was preceded in death by her parents, Richard and Gertrude (Purcell) Murray, and two brothers, Kevin and Richard. Sister Maureen, the third child and only daughter in a family of four children, was born January 30, 1924, in London, England, and baptized Maureen Gertrude at the Church of Our Lady of Grace about a month later.  Her father, Richard, a British citizen of Irish descent, came to the US from London prior to 1918 and was working for Great Northern Railroad when he met his future wife. After their marriage and the birth of their first child, Kevin, they moved back to London, where Maureen and her brother, Richard (Dick), were born.  In 1926, when Maureen was two, the family moved back to St. Paul, where a fourth child, Michael, was born.  Maureen’s father applied for and received US citizenship, and it was assumed that the two children born in London were also granted citizenship.  The Murray parents were staunch Catholics.  Sister Maureen wrote in her autobiography, “The four of us children were greatly blessed.  Our parents loved God and the Church.  They shared their deep faith with us in many, many ways:  my father, through his many years as a liturgical musician, and my mother, in the many ways she reached out to the lonely, the sick and the poor.”  Maureen and her brothers attended a public school just across the street from their home for kindergarten through second grade.  She enrolled in St. James School, St. Paul, for grades three through seven and was taught by Sisters of St. Joseph.  When she was in eighth grade, a new parish and school opened in the Murray neighborhood and Maureen was a member of Holy Spirit School’s first graduating class in 1938.  She completed her first two years of high school at St. Francis de Sales, where she first met the School Sisters of Notre Dame. (She had actually met one SSND previously – the organist at St. Andrew Parish where her father was the choir director.) Since St. Francis had only two years of high school, Maureen had to make a decision about where to finish school.  She visited Good Counsel Academy in Mankato with some classmates and a sister, and knew immediately that was where she wanted to go.  She wrote, “My parents were delighted, but pensive.  They felt that I might find some difficulty in getting adjusted to living with so many girls when I was so used to being with my brothers.” Maureen became a boarder at Good Counsel in the fall of 1940.  During her two years at Good Counsel, she made the decision to enter the School Sisters of Notre Dame.  Following her graduation in May 1942, she became an SSND candidate in August. This was a hard time for her family as her two older brothers joined the military about the same time.  This was also shortly after the US entered World War II and all non-citizens were required to register.  Maureen continued the citizenship story, “Dick and I had always thought that we became American citizens when our father was naturalized.  Now we tried to find out if we needed to register so as not to be fined/deported. The officials we consulted did not agree.  When Dick enlisted in the Air Force, he became a citizen.  I learned that I had duo-derivative citizenship, and later I learned that I no longer had citizenship in England because I had been gone from there for more than ten years.” (However, it was only in 1951, prior to taking Final Vows, that Sister Maureen received her citizenship papers.) As a second-year candidate, Maureen taught second grade at St. Agnes, St. Paul.  She was received into the novitiate in 1944 and given her older brother’s name – Sister Mary Kevin.  She later returned to her baptismal name.  Following profession of vows in 1945, she began 26 years of ministry as a teacher in Catholic schools. She taught intermediate grades at St. Francis de Sales, St. Paul (1945-47) and intermediate and junior high grades at Holy Rosary, North Mankato (1947-57).  She then taught junior high at St. Philip, Minneapolis (1957-59) and Sacred Heart, St. Paul (1959-64). After two years of teaching high school English and religion at Trinity in Dickinson, North Dakota, Sister Maureen was among the first SSNDs to open the new Grace High School in conjunction with the Christian Brothers (FSC) in Fridley in 1966. This was the first of her several collaborative efforts with the Christian Brothers, and she chaired the Christian Brothers Midwest English Committee.  While at Grace, she also was the province representative on the Archdiocesan Sisters Vocation Council.  During her years in formal education, she earned a BA in English from St. Catherine’s in 1955 and an MA in English from Creighton University in 1961. In 1971, Sister Maureen was elected to the Provincial Leadership Team for the Mankato Province as a Coordinator of Community, a position she held until 1975. She spent the next four years in Winona, serving as editorial director at Saint Mary’s College Press.  She also volunteered at the Center for Spiritual Development, mentoring priests, sisters and lay people who desired to become spiritual directors.  In 1979, she was elected Provincial Leader of the SSND Mankato Province.  At that time, Brother Damien Steger, FSC, President of Saint Mary’s Press, wrote, “Congratulations to the School Sisters of Notre Dame for their wisdom and excellent judgment in calling forth their best to be their leader for the next four years.  Our loss at Saint Mary’s Press will be considerable. . . . I am convinced that in God’s plan she is being called to an even greater need than ours.”  As Provincial Leader, Sister Maureen was privileged to participate in the 1982 General Chapter and was one of the four English-speaking writers of the final version of You Are Sent, the SSND rule of life. She commented, “We worked diligently with four German-speaking sisters to assure that the wording was the same in English and German.  Imagine our great joy when You Are Sent was approved by the 1982 General Chapter and later by the Congregation of Religious and Secular Institutes on March 25, 1986.  That grace, that joy, is still present whenever I pick up You Are Sent.”  Another grace-filled time for Sister Maureen was the beatification of Mother Theresa Gerhardinger, the foundress of the School Sisters of Notre Dame, which took place in Rome in 1985.  In her words: “What an inspiring, joy-filled amazing event!” She also worked with many groups of women religious in leadership positions. Sister Maureen served two terms as Provincial Leader, which were followed by a one-year sabbatical.  Sister Maureen returned to Saint Mary’s Press in June 1988, this time as a customer sales representative, assisting customers in matching their needs to Saint Mary’s Press products.  She saw the switch from her former editorial position to a marketing position as a “new and different challenge.”  In September 1991, Archbishop John Roach of St. Paul and Minneapolis appointed her Coordinator of the Archdiocesan Retirement Fund for Religious campaign. She remained in this position until 1999, also serving under Archbishop Harry Flynn.  Sister Maureen continued as a spiritual director and was active in her local parish, Lumen Christi, joining the funeral choir and helping with parish mailings.  From 1991 through 2015, when she moved to Good Counsel to really retire, she lived in community with Sister Paul Therese Saiko.  Sister Paul Therese retired to Good Counsel in 2016, and in an inexplicable twist, preceded Sister Maureen in death by six weeks. Sister Maureen touched the lives of many people.  Some of her former students from Holy Rosary gathered with her yearly, and others communicated with her via letter, phone or e-mail. Her circle of outreach included family, friends, priests, religious and colleagues.  Ever proud of her Irish heritage, she felt extremely graced and blessed in her life. When Sister Maureen was diagnosed with cancer, she asked sisters to pray that she be patient in the process.  In the theme for her funeral liturgy, she identifies patience as being precious and seeking to hope in God’s help.  May she now enjoy Eternal Life, where patience is no longer necessary – but where her Irish eyes are now smiling forever!