BY GRETCHEN KEISER

Staff Writer

SNELLVILLE--Sister Mary Immaculata Collin, VHM, celebrated 50 years of consecrated life as a contemplative Visitation sister on Sunday, May 3.

At the age of 16 in Toledo, Ohio, she followed her heart's desire and entered the cloistered contemplative community there. If not for that strong attraction, she might have been a missionary working in the South.

As her Visitation vocation unfolded, Sister Collin made her first profession of vows May 3, 1948, and was sent to the South in 1954 as part of a group of sisters establishing a new monastery in Georgia.

Forty-four of her 50 years as a Religious have been spent in the Atlanta Archdiocese, first on Ponce de Leon Avenue where the foundation was made, and then in Snellville where the monastery, named Maryfield, was permanently established.

Recollecting her intention as a young woman, Sister Collin said she wanted the prayer life of a sister, but was not attracted to the teaching ministry many orders carried out at that time.

"The (call to the) vocation was not that spectacular," she said. "You just know that this is something I think I could do...To me, a sister was a person who prayed."

Gifted musically, although not formally trained, she also was attracted to the song and chant of monastic prayer.

She first approached the Carmelites, but was told their asceticism was too austere for her.

So she entered the Visitation order, which was intended by its founders, St. Francis de Sales and St. Jane de Chantal, to be more moderate in monastic demands and humble and hidden in its spirituality.

"The order of the Visitation is relatively unknown. It is not famous, which is exactly what St. Francis de Sales preferred," said Sister Collin, who has been novice mistress at Maryfield for about 30 years.

"It is the imitation of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in his hidden, annihilated life--great humility toward God, great gentleness toward neighbor, a very close community life."

"The ability to live in community is of the essence," she said, noting that every sister must be ready to ask for forgiveness for her failings.

Founded in 1610 with the image of a heart surrounded by the crown of thorns as its symbol, the Visitations are strongly linked with devotion to the Sacred Heart. A Visitation sister, St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, received the revelations of Jesus concerning his Sacred Heart in the years 1673 to 1675.

In community, sisters experience the demands of the Christian life, including the need to forgive and to be forgiven, to obey the directives of the superior, and to be faithful to the daily schedule of prayer, the Divine Office, work and silence. They do so in order to develop an interior spiritual life in which they draw closer to God, seeking union with him for the good of the church and the salvation of others.

"The monastic life is highly scheduled and disciplined. If it were not, it becomes trivial," the jubilarian said. "The whole day is silence, except the recreation period, a short hour after dinner and an hour after supper. The life is very disciplined and I think is very healthy."

The Mass is the heart and soul of the life. The Mass leads to adoration of God and intercession for the world and into the rhythm of the office and the psalms. The rule embraces the thought life of the sisters also. "Let their whole life and all their actions tend to unite them to God," Sister Collin summarized.

She renewed her vows of poverty, chastity and obedience in a Mass celebrated by Archbishop John F. Donoghue and concelebrated by priests from St. Oliver Plunkett Parish in Snellville, members of the Missionaries of St. Francis de Sales, Redemptorists and chaplain Father John Fallon. Deacon Michael Mobley assisted the archbishop.

Friends and relatives filled the chapel to capacity on the sunny May afternoon. Sister Collin played the organ for the Mass and sang the responsorial psalm. The community of 16 sisters is guided by Mother Mary Jozefa Kowalewski.

"Your way is, in a very special sense, narrower and more exacting," the archbishop told the sisters. "For this reason, and even after a life of keeping the counsels for fifty years, it remains wise to renew those vows of chastity, obedience and poverty, of devotion to service, to the writings of our founders and the constitutions of our order, and of humble faithfulness to following the example of our Lord's Mother, and our mother in obedience."

Sister Collin knelt before the archbishop and renewed her perpetual vows, saying again, "I choose Jesus my Lord and my God for the only object of my life."

At the heart of the Religious vocation is a desire to love God and experience the divine love of God for his spouse.

"A woman who wants to enter a monastic community is very much a woman who wants to be loved and who needs love...You know you were created for love and that only divine love can fulfill that," the jubiliarian said in an interview.

"Jesus Christ as a person has to be real to you. You cannot live for a principle. You have to live for a person. Your life of faith has to be very strong."

Throughout Scripture the relationship between God and his people is described in terms of a spouse and the wedding feast.

"Marriage is a symbol of the relationship between God and the soul and the Religious embodies that," Sister Collin said. "The intimacy that exists between spouses is what God wants between himself and every soul created."

Sister Collin had an experience of that divine life during the visit by Pope John Paul II to the U.S. The sisters traveled to New Orleans to see the pope and were placed at the front of the Basilica of St. Louis.

When the doors to the basilica opened, "you felt instantly that all the focus was on the pope," Sister Collin said. "For the first time, my center was not in me."

"When striving to be good Christians, we are trying to do the right thing, but we have to overcome our selfishness," Sister Collin pointed out. "But when (the pope) came in, the focus was not on myself anymore. The focus was outside of myself. Heaven must be like that. The self exists, but selfishness does not exist....That is the whole point of the Christian life: to go out to God and out to the neighbor."

In this life those moments of intimacy with God are not a permanent state, but the life of prayer and discipline keeps the sisters preparing for what lies ahead.

"God will finish up the work," Sister Collin said.