“Trust in the Providence of God, and learn to adjust.”
- Sister Therese Wolf
Sister Therese Wolf was born at home across the road from Villa St. Joseph, the former home for retired Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration, where her father was a farmhand. Later the family moved to their own farm. Sister Therese was the oldest of eight children, six brothers and one sister. She entered FSPA after high school, the same day her sister was born, in effect spending her childhood among boys.
During her first year in the convent, Sister Therese came down with rheumatic fever and was hospitalized for a long time. She went home to recuperate, and thus had to repeat her postulant year with a different group of girls. This was the first of many instances in her life where she had to adjust to new people and new situations.
From early on, Sister Therese has lived with a significant hearing loss. This fact left questions with the community about an appropriate ministry for her. Her first assignment was as a nurse aide at Villa St. Joseph. Sister Therese liked the work. But her second assignment to St. Michael’s Home, the FSPA orphanage, in charge of the “big boys,” frightened her. She protested to the Sister Superior, “They will run around me twice before I will even realize they went once!! I think the Holy Spirit wasn’t working.” The superior talked with the Reverend Mother and she agreed that Sister Therese would not be a good fit.
Instead, the community sent Sister Therese to a new FSPA program in Carroll, Iowa, to get her license in practical nursing. She graduated at the top of her class, and became the first LPN in the FSPA community.
Sister Therese was sent back to Villa St. Joseph. She liked the ministry, but it was quite difficult at first because there were no lay employees and they were short one sister. “Many days that first year, I would work nights, then go to Mass, eat breakfast, and then go up to the floor to help clean until noon, eat lunch and then go to bed. Then do the same thing every day.” When asked how she made it through this difficult time, she replied, “I just knew it had to be done.”
In subsequent years, Sister Therese continued to work in nursing, primarily with the elderly. Eventually she realized that her hearing wasn’t getting any better, and she was drawn by the Spirit to take some classes in lip-reading and sign language. This personal need lured her into a change in ministry, that is, working with the Deaf community. At first she became secretary to the director of the Minneapolis-St. Paul office of Religious Education for the Deaf, and lived with sisters from other religious communities. Next she was led to Washington, D.C. to a newly established program in pastoral work with the Deaf community, sponsored by the National Catholic Office for the Deaf, with classes at Catholic University and Gallaudet College (now University). She took her new skills to Madison, Wisconsin, where she found ministry for thirteen years as a diocesan pastoral worker with the Deaf community, which she enjoyed greatly.
Sister Therese’s ministry was not full-time, so she had to scramble around to find other jobs, like home nursing and teaching sign language to various groups. At the same time, she had to scramble to find housing. At first when she moved to Madison, she lived with a group of sisters from many different communities, which she enjoyed. When that arrangement came to an end, she worked in the Home Share program, where she lived with elderly women in their homes and took care of them in exchange for room and board. Those stints didn’t last long, as the women often moved to nursing homes. She also lived with a couple single women to help them pay their rent. Finally, she decided to get an apartment by herself, and lived there for six years, before moving back to La Crosse to be closer to her father.
Sister Therese then worked in home health care and in the Wellness Center at St. Rose Convent for 18 years until she retired. She quips that she “retired by accident “(literally). She fell in the bathroom and fractured her neck. She spent nine months at Villa St. Joseph recuperating.
Sister Therese has been in numerous types of ministry and lived with many different people. When asked what wisdom she would like to share with others, at first she didn’t know. But then she said, “It was all part of Divine Providence, God leading me. All along, as I was searching for work or a home, people would pop up and suggest possibilities. I had opportunities to meet people from all over the world.” What about the most difficult times? “I don’t know of any place that was too hard to handle.”
Sister Therese is even-keeled and loves to tell jokes. For example, one time she was on a ladder retrieving Christmas dishes from a high cupboard. Unfortunately, she fell off the ladder and sustained a compression fracture to her back. When she tells the story, she laughingly says, “But the dishes didn’t break.” Her upbeat disposition, willingness to make fun of herself and positive attitude bring energy to herself and to others.
About Wells of Wisdom
Communities of Catholic Sisters realize what a wealth of wisdom there is among us; it is too rich to be ignored. So in “Wells of Wisdom," author Sister Karen Lueck features a Franciscan Sister of Perpetual Adoration in her golden years who is willing to share some of her wisdom with a world desperately in need of it.
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