‘Yes, Jesus, I will follow you’
CHARLOTTE — When she took her vows 34 years ago, Dominican Sister Zenaida (“Zeny”) Mofada never imagined she would serve the Church living halfway around the world from her home in the Philippines.
Sister Zeny felt the tug of a religious vocation when she was 13, a freshman in high school in Surallah, South Cotabato. Her religious education teacher inspired her to ask life’s big questions: Who am I? What is my purpose in life?
“He helped me understand that life is from God and what is important is our journey with (and back to) God,” she recalls. He helped her understand what he called the three paths to God – the priesthood, religious life or single life.
“He said if we choose the path of religious life, it is just like taking a plane, and you will reach your destination (back to God) shortly and efficiently. He said in religious life you have all the means you need to be holy. Your life is characterized by prayer, the daily Eucharist, and all of your hours are with Jesus or with God.
“I was convinced with that! I wanted to be in the religious life because I want to go back to God faster. I want to have that direct contact with God, to do what He wills.”
She privately consecrated herself to God at that moment, and she began attending Mass more often, visiting a chapel for prayer every day, and cultivating a devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and Our Mother of Perpetual Help.
“I took all of those opportunities to be with Jesus. With that private consecration and with God’s grace, that love for the vocation to religious life was sustained.”
Sister Zeny went on to college, earning a degree in education from Notre Dame of Marbel University in Cotabato City. But still, religious life was calling her.
“During my time in college, God helped me discern what He wanted of me. I had a profound experience of Jesus’ presence one night while on a retreat, a vision of Jesus extending His hands, and He said, ‘Come, my child, follow me.’
“I found myself, when I was awakened, on my knees next to my bed. I said, ‘Yes, Jesus, I will follow you.’”
After graduation from college, she decided to join the Dominican order. She entered the Congregation of Dominican Sisters of St. Catherine Siena, headquartered in Quezon City, Philippines, and made her profession of vows in 1988.
In 2015, her congregation sent her as a foreign missionary – traveling to the United States to serve as the religious education director at St. Thomas Aquinas Church in Charlotte.
“I was very happy to be sent here in 2015 to be part of the foreign mission in the Diocese of Charlotte,” Sister Zeny says.
In 2020, she started assisting with the faith formation work at St. Mark Parish, and last year she became the pastoral associate for catechesis.
Guiding religious education teachers, students and their families through virtual classes and isolation during the pandemic has been a big part of her leadership focus. For Sister Zeny, meeting the challenges head on has been just one more way she can serve God.
“Serving here at St. Mark has been another great experience for me to live (our community’s motto) to serve with compassion for truth and compassion for humanity, loving God and loving my neighbor through the Church, in my ministry.”
The Dominican Sisters of St. Catherine Siena have ministered in the Diocese of Charlotte for 27 years, serving as faith formation educators.
Sister Zeny believes that her order’s presence – their smiles, their prayers and work as teachers, even the habits they wear – encourage people in their own faith journey and show everyone how joyful it is to serve God no matter what one’s situation in life. The answers to life’s big questions, she believes, all point back to God.
In October, she will wrap up her “foreign missionary” assignment here and return to the Philippines to continue her ministry of serving God and His people.
Says Sister Zeny, “I am thankful to God for the gift of my vocation and for the grace of sustaining me 34 years.”
— SueAnn Howell, Senior reporter