Powerhouse of Prayer

Sister Catherine Marie is grateful for God’s presence

After she receives the Eucharist at Mass, Sister Catherine Marie Lauterwasser says a prayer that was taught to her when she made her first Holy Communion. It begins, “Look down upon me, good and gentle Jesus …” and continues for two lengthy sentences.

“It means so much to me,” she said. “I use it as my thanksgiving prayer after Communion. It says what I want it to say.”

While that formal prayer is important to Sister Catherine Marie, showing any gratitude for what God does in our lives is a worthwhile prayer, she said.

“When I have a problem of any kind, and I’m able to solve what I need to do, my first reaction is ‘Oh, thank you Jesus.’ I don’t know how many times a day I say that,” she said. “I think the Lord helps us in so many ways that we don’t even know about. I’m so grateful.”

Sister Catherine Marie has been an Ursuline for 62 years. For many of those years, she was a music teacher. One of the most thrilling times of her life was earning her master’s degree in music education from The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.

She grew up in Owensboro, Ky., where her father owned a shoe repair shop, Blue Ribbon Shoe Stop.

“My mother taught me to pray,” she said. “We said the rosary as a family and grace before meals.

“I like to have my rosary with me to pray,” Sister Catherine Marie said. She’s made several rosaries. She made the beads for a large, wooden rosary that hangs on her wall, and another rosary that uses aurora borealis stones.

She was taught by Sisters of Charity through the fifth grade, but when the family moved, she switched to Sts. Joseph and Paul School, where she was taught by the Ursulines.

“Sister Rose Agnes Buckman taught me music there,” Sister Catherine Marie said.

After two years attending Owensboro Catholic High, she transferred to Mount Sister Catherine Marie Lauterwasser holds her favorite rosary that she prays with while Saint Joseph standing in front her favorite picture of Jesus. Academy. “I know Jesus didn’t really look like that, but I She joined like it,” she said. the Ursulines upon graduation.

Today, she is retired at the Motherhouse and serves part-time as an information receptionist and in the Powerhouse of Prayer, where she prays for the receptionists and the information services staff. It’s a fitting role considering that in the 1980s, she introduced her eighth-grade students to computers at Mary Carrico Catholic School in Knottsville, Ky.

While formal prayer is still important to Sister Catherine Marie, she also enjoys the peacefulness of sitting with Jesus.

“I like to just be,” she said. “I close my eyes to pray, so I can clear out all the scenes in front of me so I’m not distracted.”

Friends can write to Sister Catherine Marie at 8001 Cummings Road, Maple Mount, KY 42356.n

LEFT: The Ursuline Sisters at Maple Mount held the first of two Synodal listening sessions on Feb. 17. Pope Francis has set aside two years for this Synod in an effort to listen to all. RIGHT: More than a dozen Ursuline Sisters took part in the Diocese of Owensboro’s first Memorial Mass for Saint Josephine Bakhita, the patron saint of human trafficking victims (pictured on a banner at the altar), on Feb. 8 at St. Stephen Cathedral.