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Febuary 3, 2012
Receiving Help?
It was a warm summer day, with the bright sun shedding its light on the colorful scenario: little hills, a small village, palm trees, baskets of fresh fruit carried by “simple” people trying to win their daily wage. For you it might be something very similar to a mere poor town in the middle of the jungle. For me it was my “daily bread”, one more day of missionary work, of visiting parish priests, and of helping with some projects for the poor.
I contemplated the scene from the copilot seat inside my air-conditioned minivan parked on the top of a hill. Mom and dad were down the hill, about a half mile away, but I could still trace them with my eyes.
I turned up the volume on the radio, singing along and watching people come and go from the traditional “plaza” to a store, to the parish, to a…
What was that? I read “Health Care” on something that seemed to me like a mobile home. “That’s nice”, I thought, “even to these ‘underprivileged’ parts of Chiapas, medical attention is provided… but why with English words? Are they American doctors?” Let’s just say that it’s a big contrast to see unpaved roads and a clean module right in the middle.
My parents came back in silence with a sad look on their faces. I didn’t ask, but simply turned the volume down, and returned to my back seat. Finally I broke their silence “Well, what was that?” Their answer was simple, according to what a 12-year-old can understand, “they give people medial attention, but at the same they do some medical interventions that don’t allow women to have more babies”. “Why would they do that?” I asked, “Do the women know what they are doing to them?” “No”, my mom answered “they simply realize that they can’t have more babies”.
Confused as I was, I didn’t know what else to think… they were helping, but… they were not.
Now, 10 years later when I hear about overpopulation and study some initiatives launched by the UN, the US government or other organizations in order to control world population, I don’t need to imagine, I just remember.
I don’t look for simple answers anymore, and I try to understand why they use people –many of them from third world countries- to achieve a goal that was decided according to “alarming statistics”. Why would the UN take advantage of their ignorance and appear to be their savior? Why is the United States still supporting this agenda when 38 countries have been declared to have human rights violations because of the enforcement of their population policies? Why do they keep sending millions of dollars to provide for sterilization surgeries, devises, and drugs instead of listening to their cry of justice and dignity?... all questions that are in the mind of a 22-year-old, and I believe, in many more.
 Adrienne Rowles is following Christ as His bride. She shares the same love with the first martyrs, like St. Agnes. She shares the same love with the great saints of history, like St. Therese of Liseaux. She shares a love that might seem old-fashioned.
But all three of these women believe it is a love worth following for life – and worth dying for.
Adrienne recalls reading the life of St. Agnes during one Friday adoration when she was 8 years old. Agnes’ response to the proposal of the soldier that wanted to marry her touched her very deeply: I can’t marry you, because I’m Jesus’ bride. Ten years later, she will also feel in her heart “like a ton of bricks” that “I couldn’t marry someone else when I was in love with Jesus”.
It’s easy to think that priests, nuns and consecrated persons are born with a habit, a cassock, or a tag in their hand: “set apart for God”. Not so.
“I just felt it inside,” Adrienne says.
The call was clear and always present, but gentle. During her high school years, she felt “a competition in my heart between Christ and my boyfriend. I brained washed myself pretty well, thinking ‘I don’t have a vocation because I need a human love’”.
But the call persisted.
“I went to Steubenville, where we had a Regnum Christi section, and from my circle of friends many were Regnum Christi missionaries the year before. We also had the Blessed Sacrament exposed in each dorm and the opportunity to go to Mass every day. All these helped me to rediscover Christ’s love, to go deeper and fall in love again with him”. Inspired by her friends, she decided to go and be a Regnum Christi missionary.
“Lord, I will do it if you open the doors… and the doors flew wide open. I didn’t see a reason not to do it”.
She went to Greenville, Rhode Island, for her RC missionary training.
“I knew I had a vocation, but I didn’t feel ready to take the step; that’s why I wanted to give Christ a year”. But Christ couldn’t wait and during an 8-day retreat she decided not to be a missionary but to stay in Greenville and get consecrated. “It was a rainy but happy day, the feast of Christ the King in 2000”
Today, eleven years after, she knows she is loved by Christ, “a real Person that wanted my heart for him and can fill it”, and to whom she wants to answer with a “radical and crazy trust, like St. Therese, who taught me how to love God and let myself be loved by him”. Inside her she keeps that same desire that inspired Agnes:
“When I die”, Adrienne says, “I want to know that I loved Christ as much as I could in this world… I gave up everything… and I won’t regret it”.
Adrienne Rolwes, daughter of Jim and Laura, was born in St. Louis Missouri April 1st, 1981. She spent her first two years of Consecrated life in Greenville, Rhode Island, studying at Mater Ecclesiae College. She concluded her studies in Monterrey, Mexico and stayed one more year there helping other consecrated women in their formation. At the end of the school year she was sent to Overbrook Academy as an instructor of formation. From 2006 to 2011 she worked in Dallas at the Highlands School. She currently lives in Greenville, helping young consecrated women in their years of formation at Mater Ecclesiae.
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