Sr. Bernita Wasinger SSND returning to St. Louis after 40 years of service in the diocese
Through most of her 74 years in religious life, Sister Bernita Wasinger SSND never knew what it felt like to be tired.
“I don’t know what ‘tired’ is,” Sr. Bernita, 93, would tell people. “I just keep going and going.”
She remained tireless while ministering in and around Loose Creek, Linn and Westphalia, visiting people who are homebound or living in nursing homes, praying with them, bringing them Holy Communion and just enjoying their company.
Then, all at once, she began thinking: “Oh! So, this is what ‘tired’ feels like!”
Sr. Bernita, a School Sister of Notre Dame, recently moved from the Immaculate Conception Convent in Loose Creek to the Sarah Community, a residence in suburban St. Louis for retired SSNDs and other religious sisters.
She had been ministering in Osage County, her childhood stomping grounds, for the past 10 years.
She previously served for nearly three decades as pastoral minister for St. Martin Parish in St. Martins.
Before that, she was an associate superintendent of Catholic schools for the Jefferson City diocese.
She most recently lived next to Immaculate Conception School in Loose Creek. Students would run up to her whenever they’d see her coming or going.
She kept a large jar filled with Jolly Rancher candies.
“I’d say, ‘You can have three-minus-one,’ or ‘take two with your right hand and one with your left,’” she recalled, “just to make it fun.”
She recently revealed the candy’s deeper symbolism.
“Some are a little sweet, some are a bit tart,” she told the children of the parish. “Kind of like us. We’re all ranchers in God’s Kingdom. We have to do our best work on God’s ranch, and we need to do it joyfully.
“What I’m saying is, we all need to be jolly ranchers!” she said.
State of being
The SSND charism — that is, the Holy Spirit-inspired, defining mission of the SSND congregation — is to promote unity throughout the Church, under the patronage of the Blessed Mother, and to educate others, especially women, children and people in need.
A visiting delegation from the SSND world leadership council recently asked each SSND in this diocese, “How are you living the charism?”
Sr. Bernita spontaneously responded: “It’s how I express myself.”
“People tell me, ‘You say things so differently,’” she noted. “I don’t know if that’s good or bad, but they seem to like it.”
She drew a parallel to children learning from their parents, mostly by who they are and how they live.
“They only learn a little bit from what their parents say,” Sr. Bernita noted. “It’s the same for teachers and preachers. It’s not what we say, it’s who we are.”
“Give it to God”
Upon arriving in Loose Creek 10 years ago, Sr. Bernita went from a high-profile ministry where everyone in the parish recognized her work, to something much less visible.
“I was used to having to be in front of the class or leading the RCIA group and having everyone see what I was doing,” she noted. “Here, I felt I had a clear path to God, with all the glory going to him and not to me.”
But especially in the past five years, she’s received more affirmation for her work than any other time in her life as a sister.
“Naturally, I appreciated that,” she said. “But I would tell people, ‘Give it to God, because he’s who’s working through me.’”
She considers it a privilege to work with people who are elderly — even those who are younger than her.
“I have met saints here,” she said. “What I see and hear from them puts me to shame. They’re so holy and so good.”
Some come to a point where they question their life’s achievements and wonder if they matter to anyone.
Sr. Bernita is quick to point out for them the intrinsic, lasting value of having raised children, having been active for years in the Church and their community, offering up their discomforts for others, and praying for the people they love.
She has had numerous experiences of being with people when God called them home to himself.
“I said things that just came to me,” she recalled. “I said things that I never even thought of before.
“I think — no, I actually believe — that God was saying those things through me,” she said.
“Powerhouse of prayer”
Sr. Bernita was born into a large Catholic family in Victoria, Kansas, and moved with them to a farm near Linn, Missouri.
She felt called to religious life and attended the SSND high school and college in St. Louis.
Upon officially entering the congregation, she received the religious name Sister Thomas Ann — a combination of one of her brother’s and her mother’s names.
She professed first vows on Aug. 1, 1952, and final vows exactly six years later — promising a life of chastity, communal ownership of goods, and holy obedience to God through her religious superiors and the SSND constitutions.
For 29 years, she taught at and led Catholic schools in St. Louis and then in Poplar Bluff.
She served as associate superintendent of Catholic schools for the Jefferson City diocese from 1985-88.
After a one-year sabbatical to study theology, she branched out into parish work, first in St. Louis, then in St. Martins, where she spent the next 28 years.
There, she directed the parish religious education program for children and teens; prepared high school youth for Confirmation; coordinated the Order of Christian Initiation of Adults; instructed altar servers; visited the sick in nursing homes; and took Holy Communion to nursing-home residents and people who were too sick to go to church.
She was preparing to move to St. Charles and take up less-strenuous ministry in 2016 when three pastors made a request.
They asked her to minister to people who are elderly and homebound or living in nursing homes in the area served by St. George Parish in Linn, Immaculate Conception Parish in Loose Creek and St. Joseph Parish in Westphalia.
The populations of those communities are largely Catholic, and their elders are the bedrock.
“These people are the powerhouse of prayer for the work of the parish and the Church,” Sr. Bernita noted. “They need to know that they are important, that they’re loved and appreciated and cared about.”
“God, lead me”
There are three levels of care at the Sarah Community for retired sisters, each named after a woman in Scripture: Naomi, offering independent living; Veronica, offering assisted living; and Anna, offering skilled nursing.
Sr. Bernita had not yet decided to retire but was convinced that Veronica House was where she’d eventually land.
Two fellow SSNDs thought she’d be better off at Naomi House, but Sr. Bernita wasn’t convinced.
One morning, she got out of bed and felt a little shaky in the legs. She leaned up against a wall, praying that she wouldn’t fall and get hurt.
“All of a sudden, in the stillness of the house,” she recalled, “I heard the word ‘Naomi.’ Just like that, out of the blue. Clear, gentle, beautiful. And I suddenly felt really good. So, I said, ‘I guess I’m going to Naomi House.’ And I’ve been at peace with that ever since.”
Fellow sisters tell her she’ll probably spend a week or two getting settled and situated in the Sarah Community before she’s off visiting with and ministering to other sisters and laypeople there.
“Right now, I have no definite plans,” she said. “I don’t know what I’m going to do, but I know I cannot do nothing. I have to interact with people. I’m not sure how it’s all going to shape up. I’m just going to have to say, ‘God, lead me.’ Because he’s gotten me this far.”
She hopes all her former students, the people she helped shepherd through sacrament preparation and the initiation rites of the Church, and all who have welcomed her into their homes these past 10 years will keep her message in their hearts.
“I just want them to remember that it’s worth being good,” she said. “And something I learned from my mother: ‘Just do the good thing.’”
Now the last of her parents’ 11 children still on this earth, Sr. Bernita asks for simple prayers for her as she begins her life’s next chapter.
“Ask God to straighten me out!” she said. “And I want him to help me continue to be sincere in what I do, not doing anything for my own sake but for God.”
Her new address is: Sr. Bernita Wasinger SSND, Sarah Community-Naomi, 3393 McKelvey Rd., Apt. 235, Bridgeton, MO 63044-2545.
