‘I am his bride’

A radiant, late spring sun painted a stunning vista as Sister Alexandrine Rosoanirina SOM settled into a comfortable chair at Metanoia Manor, a residence offering a safe haven to human trafficking victims.

Sister Alex’s vocation is not easy but where others see despair, she sees hope, where others see sadness, she looks into the eyes of those young girls whose scars of unspeakable horrors veil a joy yearning to surface.

Nearly 10,000 miles and an ocean away from her native Madagascar, Sister Alex’s life is an answer to a call she first heard at the age of five, when she would watch nuns from two separate congregations prepare the altar for Sunday Mass.

“They would bow and show reverence,” Sister Alex said. “I told my mom I wanted to be like them one day. She said you have to study hard to become (a religious).”

But hers would be a vocation requiring as much patience as prayer, including a detour from the church that would last several years. Approximately a year after informing her mother of her wishes, Sister Alex’s parents had a disagreement with their parish priest and stopped attending Mass, meaning their children were also estranged from the church. The chasm occurred as Sister Alex was preparing for her first Communion, a sacrament that would be delayed nearly eight years, when she was 14 years old.

“I had this longing to go to church but I could not go because the church required a 30-minute walk,” Sister Alex said, adding that on occasions she would attend a Lutheran church a block away. 

“During this time when I did not go to church I forgot about being a nun,” she said. “I got distracted just like any other girl.”

Fulfilling a promise she had made to her daughter several years earlier, Sister Alex’s mother enrolled the third child of her six children in the local Catholic school for eighth grade.

Almost immediately, the stirring for the vocational life resurfaced, a calling that was nurtured by a women religious who Sister Alex befriended. Sister Alex recalled the first piece of advice she received from her “angel” was to pray.

“There were many things I did not understand,” Sister Alex said. “I did not know you could pray for clarification, for discernment.”

Sister Alex soon received first Communion and while on her knees she remembers seeing Jesus and saying, “Jesus, I am yours forever.”

“I do not know if I even understood what it meant at the time,” she said. “I think that led to where I am today.”

Committed to the vocational life, Sister Alex visited a dozen congregations, learning their charisms. She entered the Hospitaler Sisters of Mercy community at the age of 19 and after studying in Madagascar and Rome was transferred to New Jersey in 2004.

Sister Alex professed her final vows in front of her family in Madagascar in 2008. 

While in New Jersey she studied nursing and worked as a nurse at a nursing home her community operated. 

“The reason I choose the Hospitaler Sisters of Mercy was their apostolate,” she said. “I did not like teaching; I have no patience with the kids, I thought I had patience with the sick.”

But God apparently believed otherwise. In 2016, Sister Alex was transferred to the Diocese of Baton Rouge to help found Metanoia Manor, where teaching girls not only in an educational sense but also spiritually is a 24-hour a day commitment.

“It’s amazing,” she said with a smile that rarely leaves her face. “All I can say is God has prepared  me. I never thought one day I could be doing some kind of teaching.”

“I had a good time with the elderly and preparing them for the future of heaven,” she said. “Here, it is the opposite; I am preparing girls for the future of the world.”

One of her many joys she finds in the vocational life is to be in touch with the Lord and having that focus. She also enjoys living with her community members.

Sister Alex also points to the impact her vocation continues to have on her own spiritual life and how it has enriched her love of Jesus. 

“Once you are open to it, he will give you more and more to do,” she said. “For me, it’s like a spiritual growing. At this point it does not matter to me where I go or what I do. I am in love with Jesus. I am his bride.”

She is often asked how she could leave her family and does she miss them. 

“I always answer that I always have my family in my heart,” she said. “But if you are married to a guy you really love you will follow him to wherever he goes. 

“It’s the same with Jesus. I fell in love with Jesus. I left my family for my Jesus, and I surrendered.”

Sister Alex was in for another surprise when shortly before the pandemic she was appointed director of vocations in the United States for her order. She is constantly in contact with young girls who are considering a religious life, and Sister Alex’s first piece of advice is for the girls to pray, spend at least 15 minutes a day talking and listening the Lord.

“He will lead you,” she  said. “You may not know how he will lead you where he wants you.

“This is a process of discernment; that is the Holy Spirit.”

She also advises the young women to have a spiritual director, someone to walk the journey with them in discernment. 

On occasion Sister Alex invites young ladies to spend a month, three months or even six months at a time at sister’ community house in the Baton Rouge area. She said that experience is an excellent way for young women to decide if that is their calling.

For Sister Alex, there is no doubt.

“I am always happy,” she said. “There is a challenge. But I have an understanding that wherever you are in life there is challenge. This is the choice I made; this is God calling me.

“And that’s the commitment of fidelity.”