The call of Africa came early to Sister Mary Kerber, a member of the School Sisters of Notre Dame.
“I hated geography in school, but I was mesmerized by the continent of Africa,” she said.
“My roots are in rural Minnesota; we lived near a seminary of Franciscans that sent some of their men to Africa,” Sister Mary said. “They came home and shared slides of their time in Africa — with every slide they showed, I could see my face and body in there.”
“This had to have been from the Holy Spirit,” she said. “Africa was calling me.”
Sister Mary, who will celebrate her 50th anniversary as a School Sister of Notre Dame next year, was introduced to the SSNDs when she attended then-St. Mary of the Purification School in Shakopee. She went on to their then-high school in Mankato, Good Counsel Academy.
“I received an incredible education, and because I was a boarder, I experienced the sisters’ life in community, which sparked a desire in me to be in community with them; I entered the Mankato province of the congregation after high school,” she said.
“But it was a hard discernment for me, as I also sensed God was calling me to Africa,” said Sister Mary. “When I entered the congregation, we did not have SSNDs in Africa, but I still made my desire known — and it was taken seriously.”
During Sister Mary’s novitiate, the SSND provincial chapter agreed to support sending sisters to Kenya.
“It was eight years before I went, and this gave me adequate time to minister in the U.S. as a teacher, and then as a vocation director, before getting a master’s degree with a specialization in mission studies at the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago,” she said.
Sister Mary arrived in Kenya in 1984, “where I felt like I was on a different planet. Everything looked different, smelled different, tasted different — it was an exciting difference that after a while wore off, and I thought, ‘Wow, not all is so great.’”
“That’s all part of your own transformation while on a mission,” she said. “I received a wise piece of advice from a fellow SSND who said in your first year, keep your eyes open and your mouth shut. I could more easily accept things — and not judge them by how I saw life — when I remembered her advice.”
For two years, Sister Mary taught in a diocesan girls’ secondary school in Kisii in southwest Kenya. Her following 21 years in Africa focused on adult education, working with Catholic high school teachers and catechists; she also taught in major seminaries and in the Institute of Social Ministry in a constituent college of the Catholic University of Eastern Africa. As the SSNDs began formation with African women who desired to join them, Sister Mary served as the postulant director in Kenya.
“Living in community with African sisters brought our unique gifts to each other as well as our differences in full view,” said Sister Mary. “Sometimes, I lived with mostly Africans, but from different countries and different ethnic groups — it was very, very mixed. We were challenged to move beyond multiculturalism to interculturalism, a totally different dynamic focusing on creating something new together.”
“But oh, the beauty of it,” she said of life in Africa. “I’ve never danced so much in my life — you dance when there’s any kind of celebration, you dance in liturgies at Mass. Africa has a very joyous culture.”
In 2007, Sister Mary moved to Accra, Ghana. She served in leadership positions for the next eight years, focusing on fellow sisters in mission as well as the growing number of women who were joining the SSNDs in Africa. She returned to Minnesota in 2015 for a sabbatical, worked at Notre Dame of Maryland University in Baltimore, and is now ministering as the director of mission at St. Mary of the Lake in White Bear Lake.
“My role has similarities to what I did in Africa: getting to know the culture of the parish, listening to parishioners, and meeting their needs,” said Sister Mary.
“This year’s World Mission Sunday theme reminds us that each celebration of the Mass sends us forth to live the mission that we all received through our baptism,” she said.
“Some of us stay in a local area to do that, some cross oceans, but it makes no difference — each of us is called to share our gifts with humility and respect, and to open ourselves to receive the gifts of others,” she said. “All of us direct our lives toward that oneness for which Jesus Christ was sent.”
