Mev: What in your life has brought you to the decision to cast your lot with the poor?
Ann: From childhood, my parents were great lovers of Francis of Assisi — so that whole image of someone who lived poorly and tried to live according to the Gospel is an image I grew up with as an ideal person.
As a young adult entering the Sisters of Loretto at eighteen, somewhat naively, I spent a lot of genuine effort to read and take seriously the Gospel. What has sustained me over the long haul, from all the theology I studied in college as a young sister, was really scripture study. I really learned to turn to the scriptures as a source of life. When I was in my twenties, I began to feel quite skeptical about the church and about religious life -- it was a real crisis of faith. I stopped praying and going to mass regularly. But later I realized, I wanted to live authentically this vocation I chose as a teen. I was twenty-four and I remember thinking — almost instinctually — of turning to scripture to see if the Gospel still made sense. I remember sitting under a tree in Forest Park in St. Louis and reading the Gospel of Matthew, coming to the Sermon on the Mount and thinking — yes, this is what I want to do with my life! This is real. This is true for me. I think this will always be true for me.
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