RUSSIA — It’s not every championship athlete who trades her track shoes for a nun’s habit, but that’s just what Sister Mary Xavier, now of Steubenville, did.
The Anna native will share her story, March 18, at 3 p.m., in the Russia High School gymnasium. The program, presented by St. Remy Church and Craig Fiessinger of the Fish Report, an online sports broadcast, is free and open to the public.
She was Sarah Schulze when she played basketball and set school track records in the 100-, 200-, 400-, 800-, 1600- and 3200-meter runs at Anna High School between 2003 and 2007.
She won the state cross country championship in the 800-meter event in 2004.
“My life revolved around sports,” she told the Sidney Daily News by phone, recently.
That didn’t stop when she got to college. She attended the Ohio State University on a basketball scholarship and played forward on a team that won the the Big 10 tournament three times and went to the Sweet 16 twice.
Even as a little girl, she was a tomboy.
“She liked to play outside. She hunted. She was not the Barbie (doll)-type girl, never a girly girl. (She was) very driven, competitite and strong, ” said her mother, Jill Schulze.
So how did she end up becoming a nun?
“I knew I was supposed to be a sister since I was a freshman in college. While I was reading a book by Mother Theresa, I knew I was supposed to be a sister like her,” Sister Xavier said. The prospect excited her. She majored in comparative religious studies — “I wanted to be a missionary, so I thought I should know what people believed in if I was going to convert them,” she said — and after graduation in 2011, she spent a year of service in St. Louis, working in an inner city Catholic school as an office aide.
“It’s called a year of discernment. It’s to see what the Lord was asking of my life,” she said. While she was in St. Louis, she met women who were among the Sisters of St. Francis of the Martyr St. George. The mother house is based near St. Louis, in Alton, Illinois.
Schulze had found the order she wanted to join. She began the process of application and entered the convent in the fall of 2012.
“Becoming a nun is a 10-year process. I am a professed sister. I have said my first, temporary vows. You renew them every year and then you take your final vows,” Sister Xavier said. She is about five years into the process.
The order maintains what are called daughter houses, one of which is in Steubenville. Sister Xavier lives there and is enrolled for a Master of Arts in the Franciscan University of Steubenville, where she studies theology with a specialization in chatechetics.
“That’s the passing on of the faith,” she said.
Sister Xavier isn’t sure what she’ll do when she completes her degree, June 2. The order is led by a mother superior who decides where each sister will work.
“I could foresee myself being a teacher at some point. I’ve very versatile, so whatever is needed in a community (I would do),” Sister Xavier noted. “I always felt very called to excellence. it’s always all or nothing. I’m not a half-way person.” Entering religious life, she added, has freed her from things that prevent greatness.
And it has not prevented her from playing the basketball she loves.
“I play every now and then with my sisters and every now and then we get a pick-up game going with the brothers down the street,” she said.
Following her speech, she’ll compete in a free-throw shootout with St. Remy’s priest, the Rev. Martin Fox.
“In a very unwise moment, I challenged her to a shootout,” Fox laughed. “I think we all know how this is going to end. We just wanted to have a bit of fun. Come see Father Fox be beaten by a girl.”
The program, he noted, was organized to give the parish congretation a chance to meet Sister Xavier and hear her story.
“We want our young people to think about religious vocations,” he added. If some are considering a religious life, Sister Xavier could give them some guidance, he said.
The speaker is a daughter of Jill and Mark Schulze, of Anna. She has an older brother, James, and a younger sister, Sami. They look forward to seeing her, something that they don’t get to do very often.
“I’ve been home three times since I entered the convent,” Sister Xavier said.
“I feel like the whole family took a new vocation, when Sarah entered the convent,” her mother said. “We all sacrifice and miss her but support her totally. We get to talk to her on the phone for a half hour every six weeks and visit her at the convent two weekends a year. Most years, she gets to come home for a visit for five days. Holidays were the biggest adjustment. She does not get to come home for any holiday, but we can talk to her on the phone.”
Still, she is extremely proud of her daughter.
“She told us (that she would become a nun) when she was home for Christmas from college,” Jill said. “You go through every emotion, but my first thought was just very proud. For my daughter to have such a strong faith, to give up everything and follow Jesus. I remember going to midnight Mass that Christmas and looking at Sarah as she gazed at Jesus on the cross. I could tell in her stare, there was something different. She had said yes to Jesus. I admire her. My own faith has grown since she entered the convent.”
