Oklahoma women become first called to Sisters of Life

Two young women from the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City are beginning a journey to become sisters in religious life and brides of Christ.
 
Karalyn Finnell, from Saint Monica in Edmond, and Catherine Bublis, from Saint Mark in Norman, were among eight women who entered the postulant for the Sisters of Life in New York City on Sept. 7. They are the first Oklahomans to join the religious order.
 
Before leaving for New York, they talked about what drew them to religious life and what lies ahead.
 
“It’s a journey. It’s a relationship. It’s an adventure,” Finnell said. “Christ reveals how he designed your heart to love others.”
 
Following 10 months of study and discernment, the postulants – or candidates – will be given their religious names and habits when they enter the novitiate in July.
 
As college students five years ago, both Finnell and Bublis dreamed of careers and married life. Finnell planned to use her degree from the Academy of Contemporary Music at the University of Central Oklahoma to become a Catholic singer and songwriter.
 
Bublis enrolled at Oklahoma State University as a fashion major, but when she graduated in 2015, her path was going in a different direction. She broke off an engagement to be married and went to work for the Fellowship of Catholic University Students. She joined the FOCUS ministry at the University of Colorado about the same time the Sisters of Life opened a convent in Denver.
 
“The more you know Jesus, the more he reveals to you who you are and your heart’s desire,” Bublis said.
 
She went to Kansas State University two years later to start a FOCUS ministry there. Bublis said she tried dating, but “something was off.” It came to her in the summer of 2018: the image of round peg in a square hole and Christ asking, “Could I be enough for you?”
 
Finnell said she attended a FOCUS conference in Nashville in 2015 and was moved by all the “young beautiful religious” there. Christ asked her to give him her entire heart to discern if it was the life for her.
 
“It was such a beautiful invitation. How could I say ‘no?’” Finnell said. It reminded her of Jesus calling the apostles to follow him.
 
The future sisters met in September 2018 on the KSU campus and discovered each had reached out to the Sisters of Life vocations director about religious life in the order. After separate brief “taste of life” visits, they went for a month-long stay with the community in December.
 
Finnell said the community – founded by Cardinal John O’Connor in 1991 – isn’t looking for “cookie-cutter sisters.”
 
“You can totally be yourself,” she said.
 
Sisters rollerblade, play ultimate frisbee or enjoy improv games. Some are excellent cooks or musicians. From a Wall Street attorney to a NASA engineer, they remain as unique as God created them.
 
Bublis said she and Finnell both visited the convent again in May and met the six original sisters who are still there.
 
“They’re all quirky and beautiful too,” she said.
 
“There is beautiful wisdom just listening to them,” Finnell said.
 
In addition to the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience all religious sister take, Sisters of Life take a fourth vow to uphold the sacredness and dignity of human life.
 
“Most people focus on the negative – giving up cute shoes and having kids – but we’re gaining so much, a greater fulfillment,” Finnell said.
 
“We’re all called to be in heaven one day,” she said. “Those who are called to religious life get to start living that on earth.”
 
K.S. McNutt is a freelance writer for the Sooner Catholic.

Upholding Life
“This is the charism of the Sisters of Life: to mother the mothers of the unborn; to mother the unborn; to mother all those who are frail, all of those who are vulnerable, all those who are ill, all of those who are in danger of being put to death, all those whose lives the world considers useless. Our Lord says to each Sister of Life, 'Woman, behold your son. Behold your daughter.'” - Cardinal John O’Connor

Photo:  Catherine Bublis, left, from St. Mark in Norman, and Karalyn Finnell, from St. Monica in Edmond, are the first two Oklahomans to enter the Sisters of Life, a religious community of women consecrated for the protection of human life. Photo K.S. McNutt/Sooner Catholic.