Her joy shines even more when she remembers her own students and talks about how she still prays for them as she holds the small black book filled with their names.
“They are part of me,” she says. “They worked with me, and I worked with them. They are close to my heart.”
Starting in the 1930-31 school year, she taught for 50 years, including assignments at Assumption School in Indianapolis, St. Paul School in Tell City, St. Michael School in Bradford, all now closed, and St. Mary-of-the-Knobs School in Floyd County. Some of her former students remember her as fondly as she remembers them, and sometimes there are unexpected reunions.
“I approached her once at the St. Vincent de Paul food pantry and said, ‘Do you remember me, Sister?’ ” recalls Otto Schwab, now 75. “She said, ‘What’s your name?’ I said, ‘Otto.’ She said, ‘Are you Otto Schwab from Assumption?’ Since then, I’ve been at the monastery a couple of times to have lunch with her. She got out the black book, and we reminisced about the people from Assumption. There couldn’t be anyone sweeter. Everyone wanted her as a teacher.”
Her joy also resounds in her laughter, especially on Sunday evenings when she and a few other sisters get together to play a dice game called, “Oh, Shoot!”
She also has her share of memorable laugh-at-herself lines, including, “I don’t make money. I make trouble.”
“She enjoys things so much, and she has such a free laugh,” says Benedictine Sister Mary Carol Messmer.
Sister Mary Sylvester keeps the joy and plays the dice game even though most of her sight has been taken away by macular degeneration. Still, she rolls her walker through the monastery, steering it often in the direction of one of her favorite places—the chapel.
She’s there each morning, praying before the Blessed Sacrament.
She wheels herself to the nearby cemetery every afternoon to talk with her friends who have died and pray for her friends who are still living.
She also continues a 25-year tradition of leading a group of sisters as they pray the rosary for vocations.
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“She’s the most prayerful person I know,” says Sister Bernardine.
Living life as a prayer
For nearly 100 years, Sister Mary Sylvester has offered a countless number of prayers of thanks to God. Still, her most enduring legacy is that she has lived her life as a prayer of thanksgiving to God.
The gratitude shows in the way she fondly recalls those horse-drawn wagon trips with her siblings and other children to their Catholic school—her first journey of faith with others.
Her happiness also flows in the memories of her students, and the care she has extended toward people in need—including the way she stuffed 47 pillows last Christmas, hoping to bring a touch of comfort to military veterans at a hospital.
And perhaps most of all, her appreciation for her life has always been reflected in her joy of being part of a religious community dedicated to God. She comes to all the meals, and attends all the events, Masses and celebrations within the community.