Colorado woman enters novitiate

MISHAWAKA, Ind.—Having completed her postulancy, Rosa Beyer was officially admitted into the novitiate of the Sisters of St. Francis of Perpetual Adoration and given the name Sister Mary Rosaria of St. Joseph.  Before entering the convent, Sister Mary Rosaria was a member of Heart of Jesus Parish in Peetz, Colo., where her parents, Michael and Melinda Beyer, are still parishioners.  Before she entered, Sister Mary Rosaria was studying at Franciscan University in Steubenville, Ohio, and was a catechist for Totus Tuus, serving in the Denver and Cheyenne dioceses.

On the eve of the feast of St. Clare, during a ceremony called “investiture,” a new brown habit was blessed by the convent chaplain, then given to Sister Mary Rosaria by convent provincial, Sister M. Angela.  Sister Mary Rosaria then left the chapel to exchange her blue postulant jumper with the Franciscan habit.  Meanwhile, the community prayed the rosary for her, asking the Virgin Mary’s intercession for her perseverance in religious life.  On her return, midday prayer was chanted after which Sister Mary Rosaria received a crucifix, a sign of her willingness to follow Christ.  She was presented with the Liturgy of the Hours, which she is now commissioned to pray in the name of the Church.  Finally, she was given the Franciscan Rule and the Constitution of the congregation, which she will study and begin to live out.

Sister Mary Rosaria will spend the next two years as a novice, deepening her prayer life and experience of religious life, studying the theology of religious life and the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience.