Born to Eternal Life We commend to your charity the soul of our beloved + Sister Mary Robert Reis who departed this life on Saturday, April 21, 2007 in the seventieth year of her religious life Funeral – Monday, April 23, 2007 at 4:00 p.m. Entering the community from St. Mary Parish in McKees Rocks, PA, Geraldine Reis left behind her parents, her brother and her sister. During her early years in the community, newly-named Sister Mary Robert, she quietly demonstrated a love of learning and a desire to instill that love in her students. The “spark” of her knowledge and the “flame” of her enthusiasm satisfied the hunger she found in her students, offering them a vision of life's purpose and strengthening them to walk their own journeys. From her earliest days, Sister Mary Robert increased her knowledge, developed her innate gifts for history, language and philosophy and shared these gifts with her students and her community. Some said she was a brilliant teacher; others knew her as an avid learner and a voracious reader. Always her clarity and her wisdom endeared her to her students and challenged them to use their intellectual gifts for the benefit of all. Beginning her teaching at elementary schools in Overbrook and Glassport, Sister Mary Robert moved on to educate high school students in Carrick, West End, and Utuado, Puerto Rico and at Johnstown-Bishop McCort, Canevin, and Divine Providence Academy. After receiving a Doctorate in Philosophy, Sister Mary Robert taught at Loyola University in Chicago , always inviting her students to reach for their highest potentials. Sister Mary Robert was a woman of deep faith, a faith which supported her in ministry and in her community life. As her vowed commitment developed through years of prayer, study and reflection, she gradually moved toward the simplicity of life that freed her from collecting “things.” After sixty years of community life and compassionate service, Sister Mary Robert returned from Chicago to Providence Heights with no more possessions than that with which she had left -- a suitcase and a small trunk. In her last years, Sister Mary Robert slowly diminished physically, but for those who had known her and had grown with her, she continued to seek knowledge and to share new understandings. The ember had become fire. Now as she meets Christ to whom she had so long ago committed her life, “the wind scatters ashes, the promise survives. The Spirit in her is unleashed and the face of the earth is renewed! Feast Day: September 17 SMFF
|
