2026 Vocations Awareness Supplement
In a time of challenges, a sister embraces her new role with hope
Benedictine Sister Jennifer Mechtild Horner considers the chapel as her favorite place in the new Our Lady of Grace Monastery in Beech Grove. She recently began serving as president of the Monastic Congregation of St. Gertrude, a congregation made up of 14 autonomous monasteries across the United States and Canada, including Our Lady of Grace Monastery. (Photo by John Shaughnessy)
By John Shaughnessy
Lessons about the best way to live our lives come at different times for all of us.
For Benedictine Sister Jennifer Mechtild Horner, two parts of her life have especially influenced her, including one that nearly killed her.
The other one involves the guiding principle that has increasingly shaped her through her 37 years as a religious sister.
Her time as a Benedictine sister at
Our Lady of Grace Monastery in Beech Grove has led her to embrace this knowledge about life and leadership: “I can’t do it alone, God. I can only do it with you leading.”
The impact of nearly losing her life in a split second provided another searing lesson.
“When I was a junior in college, I was in a horrible car accident and almost killed,” Sister Jennifer says. “The car went off the road. My college roommate climbed up the hill to get help. I had a lot of serious, serious injuries. I was in the hospital for five weeks and in a wheelchair for the summer.
“When you’re 20, 21, you think you have forever to live. In the recovery process, I realized you don’t have forever. You have today. You need to choose what God is calling you to choose.”
Those life lessons of relying on God and choosing to do his will have led to her latest opportunity to move even closer to him and serve the Benedictine community in another defining way. (Related story: Sister Jennifer shares her favorite parts of her vocation)
‘God was calling me to the next step’
In June, Sister Jennifer was elected to a six-year term as the president of the Monastic Congregation of St. Gertrude, a congregation made up of 14 autonomous monasteries across the United States and Canada, including Our Lady of Grace Monastery.
“The congregation itself is a place of mutual support,” she explains. “There’s also the oversight—to make sure things are being followed according to canon law, and that the communities are able to live a healthy, strong Benedictine life.
“Some of my duties are to do visitations of monasteries. Every five years, monasteries have a visitation where the president and a couple of sisters from other communities come to meet with all the sisters and look at finances, health care, formation—just to make sure the community is doing well. We make affirmations and some recommendations. If things aren’t going well, sisters have a place where they can share that.”
She views her election as president as “very humbling.”
“I consider it a sacred privilege to serve the sisters in this way,” she says. “I had been serving on the monastic congregation council already. And I had been serving as first counsel to the president. I really felt God was calling me to the next step.”
She takes that step at a time of challenges and opportunities for monasteries of religious sisters across the United States and Canada.
Where communities of religious sisters thrived “50, 60 years ago,” she says, the reality is that these communities are getting smaller and some are facing hard decisions about their future, including possible closings.
As monasteries consider their future, they always keep in mind their commitment to care for their sisters.
“Each sister has to be cared for to her death,” Sister Jennifer notes. “Most communities can do that, and that’s why we always want to make sure communities are making good decisions, so they have the resources to do that. If they wouldn’t, then the congregation would be responsible for them.
“As communities get smaller, like I’m working with one community right now, they’re wondering, ‘What do we do?’ I’m in conversation with them as they look to the future. It’s their community, but I assist them when they have questions.”
In her answers, Sister Jennifer partly draws from the life lessons of her father.
A father’s influence
A Presbyterian minister, Rev. Francis Horner approached his life from a strong foundation of faith that was complemented by three other guiding principles: understand the reality, be open to change, and move forward with work and hope.
He moved his family from South Africa to the United States after he received deportation papers from the South African government because of his opposition to the country’s discriminatory apartheid laws at the time.
He also accepted reality, adapted and moved forward with love when his daughter chose to become Catholic and a religious sister—choices she made in the years after her near-fatal traffic accident.
“It was hard on my parents not because they felt negatively about the Catholic Church, but you raise your children and you want them to be the way you want, and I think my dad always thought that maybe I’d be a pastor,” Sister Jennifer says. “And then I announced I was going to be a sister a couple years later, so he and my mom had to go through that again. But they were fine. My dad would always tell people, ‘We work for different companies, but we have the same boss.’ He had a good humor about it.”
She also admired and learned from the choices he made near the end of his life.
“He stayed in charge of his decisions, which was helpful,” she says. “He gave up his driver’s license. He was a pastor and a very good preacher, but as his memory started to slip, I remember he came home one day, and he said to my mom, ‘That’s the last sermon I’ll give because I caught myself slipping. I don’t want to be remembered for the time I got lost in a sermon.’
“For me that was such a beautiful thing because he was able to name reality. In our world and in all of our lives, to name reality isn’t to say we failed, it’s just to say this is where we are.”
She embraces that approach as the president of the monastic congregation.
A new reality touched with hope
“I’m a person who is full of hope, but I’m also realistic,” Sister Jennifer says. “I definitely see hope in situations, but I really believe in naming what is, so we can create something new. If we don’t name what is, then we’re living in a way that’s not going to help us move forward.
“There are some communities in our congregation that really realize what some people call, ‘coming to completion.’ I like to call it, ‘coming to fulfillment.’ The community has lived what God has called them to do.
“But there are other communities—and I think we’re one of them here at Our Lady of Grace—that are still open to taking vocations.”
That combination of understanding the reality, being open to change and moving forward with work and hope has been on magnificent display at Our Lady of Grace Monastery since the sisters moved into their new, smaller, more inviting, stunningly-more-light-filled home in the spring of this year—a $24 million facility that replaced the one that served the sisters for more than 60 years.
“I’m proud of our community for making the decision to downsize our monastery so it really fits us,” Sister Jennifer says. “Even more than downsizing, I call it ‘right-sizing.’ When you have a big community and you’re getting smaller, you’re in a place that’s not really livable, and it gets more and more expensive. Every community has to face this.”
She also sees another benefit to the new facility.
“We’ve had some people visiting us. Because we’ve made a decision to ‘right-size’ our buildings, I think if a younger person is looking at us, they see that we are making decisions about ourselves and not just living in a place pretending that everything is fine.”
‘I know that God is always with me’
There’s one place in the new monastery that immediately became a favorite of Sister Jennifer and many of the other 39 sisters who call it home.
“I love our new monastery chapel,” she says about the setting where huge windows allow light to pour in, offering a scenic view of the trees, plants and flowers that mark the monastery’s grounds. “The chapel is the heart of the monastery, and we are blessed to gather there often. I am a person that loves the outdoors. Being able to connect with nature in our chapel draws me closer to God.”
She counts the new monastery, the breathtaking chapel and her latest calling as the president of the monastic congregation as continuing the many blessings she has received as a religious sister in the Benedictine community.
“The greatest gift is being able to seek God with others who have the same goal,” she says. “Daily, we turn to God together asking for God’s grace. We cooperate with one another as we discern God’s call and help one another grow in God’s love. I will always be thankful that God has called me to this way of life.”
Her gratitude extends to the way her religious life has enhanced her connection to Christ.
“The blessings I have received from my relationship with Christ are too many to be named,” Sister Jennifer says. “I would say that trusting in our all-loving God has given me the courage to face both the joys and struggles that come my way. I know that God is always with me, calling me to become more of who God calls me to be.”
The call she has received is one that she believes we have all been called to follow in our lives.
“My relationship with Christ has called me to reach out to others and to be aware of the many needs in the world,” she says. “It reminds me that there are so many in our world longing for love and a place to belong. I am called to reach out wherever and whenever I can, sharing Christ’s love with others.”
(For more information about a vocation as a Benedictine Sister of Our Lady of Grace Monastery in Beech Grove, go to benedictine.com.) †
