“Be diligent in serving the poor. Love the poor, honor them, my children, as you would honor Christ Himself.”
St. Louise de Marillac
In God’s Time
By Associate Angela Anno
S. Ruth Ann Rody entered religious life in 1978.
When she graduated from high school, S. Ruth Ann Rody had her life planned out. She would enter the Vincentian Sisters of Charity congregation like her older sibling Christine Marie and become a religious Sister. But that wasn’t to be – at least not in the usual way. As her life unfolded, she learned that God often had other plans that took her places she hadn’t chosen but which surprised and enriched her life and ministry in ways she hadn’t imagined.
“I was an aspirant during my high school years,” she said. “When you were a senior, you became a postulant and then Aug. 15 you became a canonical novice. Instead, we were asked to take time away as the order responded to the changes of Vatican II.”
For her, the time away was 10 years and she later saw that time was a gift from God in which she grew, found her life’s calling as a nurse, and could more freely and authentically respond to God’s call. During that time, she worked as a nurse’s aide before becoming a registered nurse, serving as a ‘floater’ in the hospital and gaining experience across a wide range of nursing specialties, including hospice care.
Looking back, she sees that time as a special grace. “God gets you where you’re supposed to be when you’re supposed to get there,” she said and her life continues to prove that, including when the Vincentian Sisters merging with the Sisters of Charity of Cincinnati in 2004. “Our mission and charism fit hand in glove,” she said, “and it opened new opportunities for our ministries and for living the Gospel. It was where God wanted us to be.”
Though she continued her nursing career, she always felt a calling to be a missionary and when the time was right, there was an opening at the order’s Pineville mission in Appalachia. God opened the door for her to become a home health nurse for 15 years. She loved the work and the people and saw God’s hand at work so many times in their interactions. She delighted in the way God sometimes surprised her and provided her with something she didn’t know she needed, like the time a doctor friend donated some oxygen tubing. She thanked him yet wondered what she would do with it. Later she had a patient who needed oxygen, but his insurance didn’t cover the tubing. She thanked God and marveled at God’s care for seemingly small things.
She left Kentucky in 2001 and went back to school to become a legal nurse consultant but when she completed the course there were no jobs available in the field. It seemed like another closed door, but God knew better. She just “happened” to visit the Health Resource Center in Cincinnati that provides affordable health care for low-income, indigent, and homeless persons. “The moment I walked in, I fell in love,” she said. “That’s why I couldn’t find another job. God wanted me there,” she said. “And God brings me people to love that I wouldn’t have known otherwise, and they have become my brothers and sisters. I am so enriched by knowing them. It’s a mutual relationship.” She says the sickest clients are “such a blessing to me. It’s such a privilege to see them allowing themselves to be seen and loved as a child of God – to see all that goodness.”
She’s been volunteering at the center since 2013. She has become a strong advocate for those who come there in many ways, including helping provide the things they need but can’t afford, like coats, hats, gloves, socks and warm clothing. She asked those attending the Associates’ Fall Soup to bring those kinds of items and took them to the center where they were gratefully received.
“I’ve been very blessed,” she said. “God’s been with me through everything, whether I recognized it or not.”
S. Ruth Ann Rody (right) ministered with S. Imelda Sekerak (left) at the VSCs Pineville mission in Appalachia in the late 1990s.
S. Ruth Ann Rody (front, right) with fellow members of the Vincentian Sisters of Charity of Bedford, Ohio.
Contact Us
The post In God’s Time first appeared on Sisters of Charity.