LANGLEY—When God hands out vocations, He also delivers enough grace to follow through with them, according to Sister Gabriella Yi, OP.
The religious sister, a theology professor at Catholic Pacific College, learned this after the first time she seriously considered donning a habit.
“It would be grossly unfair for God to call us to something and not give us the graces,” she said. “That was one of the biggest eye-openers about consecrated life.”
Sister Yi’s story starts like many others: she grew up in a Catholic home, fell away as a teen, and had a conversion experience that drew her back.
Like St. Augustine, she was pulled in by a passion for truth. “I realized that the truth I had been seeking was a person, the person of Christ. I came back knowing not only what to live for but Whom to live for.”
After receiving a BA at St. John’s College in Annapolis, Md., she had her eye on graduate studies in nutrition and natural medicine. Within one week, three people asked her if she had considered the religious life. She hadn’t, so she took a year to discern.
“After about a month the novelty wore off and I was horrified. I thought: Lord, this isn’t fair. Everyone else gets to live a normal life and I have to give up everything?”
A few months later, her mother suggested she add fasting to her petitions. She accepted the challenge.
“I remember getting down on my knees that very night and saying, ‘Lord, I want to do Your will, and if it’s to be a religious sister help me work through the things I don’t think I can give up, like marriage and family,'” Sister Yi recalled.
“All of a sudden they lost their grip on me. I thought wow, God answered that prayer quickly!”
Sister Yi now jokingly calls her mother her vocations director. Her next challenge was finding the right community, which she compares to knowing one’s call to marriage and not knowing whom to marry.
She was drawn to the full-length white habit of the Dominican Sisters of St. Cecilia in Nashville, but nervous about living in a convent 14 hours’ drive from her Philadelphia home.
She braved the trip. “That whole visit opened my eyes to beauty and the joy of a life I had never dreamed existed.”
Sister Yi had never planned on becoming a teacher, but after she joined the Dominicans, the Order of Preachers, she completed her graduate studies in Rome and wound up teaching at Catholic Pacific College in Langley.
“My passion for the truth led me to Christ. Now I, as a teacher, have the privilege of sharing that truth with others.”
Her students at the school, formerly named Redeemer Pacific College, say having a religious sister on campus is a valuable gift.
“It’s a constant reminder that we have different people who fill different needs in our world,” said James Frendo, a student in her New Testament class. “She’s very knowledgeable. When you engage her in heavier topics, she knows her stuff.”
“She has so much joy when she teaches,” added Natasha Dallazanna, who attends Sister Yi’s Catholic spirituality class.
“Being around religious makes it more normal and approachable and something that doesn’t seem so far away. It’s a good presence to have at the school.”
Sister Yi lives in a convent in Port Coquitlam with three other sisters, all of whom teach at local Catholic elementary schools.
“The more I can step aside and allow Christ to be the teacher of my students, the more they themselves will come to know that the truth is a Person, the Person of Christ.”
