Sister Jayne Erickson Celebrates Her Perpetual Monastic Profession

After years as youth and children’s minister and elementary school teacher in Minnesota and Iowa, Jayne Erickson joined us as a live-in associate in 2017, a welcome addition to our ministries and our common life. After discerning a vocation, she entered as postulant in 2019 and in 2021 made her First Monastic Profession.

For the next three years, under the wise guidance of Sister Donna Schroeder, she deepened her spirituality and studied Scripture and the Rule of St. Benedict to embody it in thought, word, and action. She also completed studies to become a Life Coach, explaining, “I want to help people explore where and how God is calling them, by raising the awareness of what is deep inside each and every one of us.” In her internal ministries she helps plan liturgies and enriches our Common Prayer with her sacred hymns.

On July 11, the Feast of St. Benedict, in the presence of Bishop Daniel Felton of the Duluth Diocese, Prioress Beverly Raway, diocesan priests Fr. Tom Foster, Fr. Seamus Walsh, and Fr. William Fider, Fr. Corbin Eddy our resident chaplain, Pastor Dan Munson from Andover, Minnesota, many friends and family members, and the Sisters of this Community, Sister Jayne made her Perpetual Monastic Profession. As she entered the Chapel, she paused and sang her hymn about her chosen life, called I Am Yours, Lord:

“I am Yours, Lord, heart, mind, and soul. Love is my aim and Heaven my goal / To be in Your presence, to see Your sweet face, to walk side by side, Lord, to know Your embrace. / Make me Your vessel that I may bring healing where people are broken and long to be whole. / Filled with Your Spirit, transformed by Your grace, make me Your vessel. Live through me today.”

After the Readings, Sister Donna Schroeder as Director of Formation called Sister Jayne forward to request perpetual profession as a Benedictine in this Community. Prioress Sister Beverly Raway honored her request and the Community responded in praise and thanks to God. Bishop spoke briefly of the life to which Sister Jayne had been called, and she responded with her resolve to follow Christ and to strive to abide in him though a life-long commitment to the monastic way of life, ending with trust that the grace of God, the love of Christ, and the gift of the Spirit will make possible what she cannot do for herself. She then prostrated herself before the altar while we sang the Litany of the Saints.

Sister Jayne rose and read to all present her written vows, in which she promised to embrace stability to this Community, fidelity to the monastic way of life, and obedience. Placing it on the altar she signed it, followed by the Prioress, the Director of Formation, and her two witnesses Sister Theresa Spinler and Sister Marie Therese Poliquin. Then facing the Community, she intoned three times the Suscipe from Psalm 119, verse 116: “Receive me, O Lord, according to your word and I shall live, and do not fail me in my hope,” to which the Sisters responded, “We have received, O Lord, your mercy in the midst of your temple.” This plea to God is sung at each Sister’s Perpetual Monastic Profession and will be sung again at her funeral, a cry of life-long trust in the providential care of God.

Then Sister Beverly placed a monastic ring on Sister Jayne’s finger, one worn by many Sisters in turn before her, as she becomes the latest in a long line of Benedictine women that began in the sixth century with the founding of the Benedictine Order. We were then invited to welcome her as a fully professed Sister of our Community.