Hearing Christ's 'whisper'

By Maria LeDoux
The Catholic Free Press

Maegan Fredette of Charlton received a habit, a white veil, and the religious name of Sister Roberta Maria, July 2, in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin, as she was officially initiated as a novice into the order of Carmelite Sisters of the Divine Heart of Jesus in the Northern Province.
The formation process to become a nun with the Carmelite Sisters of the Divine Heart of Jesus is eight years. The third step is the novitiate. For one year, the novice is cloistered and must remain in silence, study and prayer. The second year, she becomes familiar with the apostolates in the community. Following this two-year period, the sister makes the first profession, or temporary vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience. The final step is the profession of perpetual vows, and it is at this stage that the woman is consecrated to the service of God for the rest of her life.
Sister Roberta Maria was born on Oct. 31, 2002, to Keith and Toni Fredette. A lifelong parishioner of St. Joseph Parish, Charlton, along with her three siblings Henry (18), Jacob (16), and Charlotte (12), Sister Roberta Maria and her family were very involved with the community life of the Church. She recalled her mother’s active participation in good works – teaching religious education and working to support homeless shelters. The four siblings would attend retreats and youth events at the parish.
At the early age of 7, Sister Roberta Maria knew she wanted to be a nun. One Sunday morning she visited her grandparents’ house for donuts after church and saw a picture of a nun on the table. Curious and intrigued, she asked her father why the woman was dressed like that. “Because she is married to Jesus,” he answered. She knew that this is what she wanted to do with her life despite not knowing what a nun did. “I told my whole family and was very excited … I just fell in love with him – Jesus. God captured my heart from the very beginning of my life,” she said.
Sister Roberta Maria remembers only knowing or seeing one nun in real life, and that was Sister Agnes Patricia Guzzi, a Carmelite Sister of the Eucharist from her parish. She claimed that she was ignorant of who a nun was and what a nun did. But, around age 9, she was watching the movie “Elf” for the first time and saw a nun in habit. She said at this time she wanted to be “just like her.”
Toni Fredette, Sister Roberta Maria’s mother, recalls when her daughter was in the fourth grade at Heritage Elementary School in Charlton. Linda Jieles, her teacher, had told Mrs. Fredette that one day an artist visited the school and was painting upside down; when he finished and turned the painting right side up, it was Mother Teresa. Sister Roberta Maria was “filled with tears for an hour.”
The same teacher had her students write letters to themselves that they would receive at the end of the year. In this letter, the fourth-grader indicated she wanted to be a nun, according to Mrs. Fredette.
When asked if Sister Roberta Maria had any skills or traits that would make for a good nun, Mrs. Fredette half-jokingly stated, “No. She is very talkative.” The doctor told her to stop talking so much or she would have bad asthma, according to her mother. More seriously, Mrs. Fredette asserted that her daughter’s love for Christ and her faith will allow her to be a great nun.
As a middle-schooler, Sister Roberta Maria recalls sitting in adoration with her religious education class. She was stressed out with school but felt at home in the church. She thought to herself, “This is home. This is where I am meant to be – with Jesus.” She started crying because she knew what she was called to be. “I would hear the word ‘nun’ whispered in my heart. ... It was an audible voice,” she said.
As a young teenager in high school, Sister Roberta Maria had no desire for this call to the religious life. She pushed it aside as she was caught up in “worldly vanities.”  She would become angry at times when she did not want this for her life. She was consumed with schoolwork and hanging out with her friends, like any normal teenager. She had the dream of becoming a medical doctor and took the most rigorous classes she could. “I took so much pride in my work it was ridiculous, it was a vanity, I wanted to be the best of the best,” she stated.
Despite having other goals and dreams, she always knew there was a call to the religious life in the back of her head “no matter what.” At the same time, due to this secret acknowledgement, she offered a “halfhearted, lukewarm ‘yes’ to God.”
In 2020, when she was a junior in high school, the COVID-19 pandemic shut down most of the world and Sister Roberta Maria was no longer focusing on schoolwork, hanging out with friends, being a dancer, or other “distractions” that were “prideful.” She said, “Everything became secondary.” It was during this halt of life that she “realized how these things did not really matter.”
Just a month after the beginning of the shutdown, it was Divine Mercy Sunday, April 19, 2020. She had a devotion to divine mercy and during “online” Mass begged God for grace. She asked to “always be united to him.” She prayed, “I want to be in perfect union with you for my entire life.”
It was on this day that she was filled with the grace she needed to say “yes” to her vocation. She felt “so exuberant” that “God gave me the grace to accept. ... My life was transformed after that final ‘yes’!”
At the age of 17 she now had to discern which order she was called to join. Still, she recalled, “I didn’t know what religious life was, but I knew I wanted it.”
Following Divine Mercy Sunday, Sister Roberta Maria was in adoration at St. Joseph’s and was praying the rosary for her vocation. She heard the words “divine heart of Jesus” and normally she would think about the Sacred Heart. So, “Why the Divine Heart?,” she asked herself. Sister Roberta took this as a sign from the Holy Spirit. “I only desire to do [God’s] will,” she exclaimed.
When she left adoration, she had a message from her father on her phone to look at the list of orders that was sent to her by Father Donato Infante, the vocations director for the diocese. The first order on that list was the Carmelite Sisters of the Divine Heart of Jesus. This was the answer to her prayer.
A few days later, she had a vision of a “little nun peeking from behind a rose bush” in a desert. “I was totally freaked out ... I knew it was real, it had meaning.”
Uncertain of who this person was, she searched the internet for the patron saint of flowers – St. Therese of Lisieux. The pictures of St. Therese looked the same as the “little nun” in her vision. She prayed a novena to St. Therese, unsure of what this vision meant. Mrs. Fredette had found a DVD about the saint’s life from her daughter’s childhood and put it aside for her two weeks prior to this vision. During a scene in the movie, St. Therese is upset with her sister who is leaving for a convent. The sister tells her that they could always reconnect in the desert rose garden the pair had made in their imagination as children. Acknowledging this as another important sign in her vocation, she stated “My whole life changed.”
These subtle pushes and whispers, as well as her deep faith and trust in God’s will throughout her life, led Sister Roberta Maria to answer God’s call for a vocation to the religious life.