“And that last month at the Post was agony because all of a sudden, whatever they had against the Catholic Church, I was absorbing it. They didn’t throw me a going away party,” she said with a chuckle.
She made her first vows in 1986 and her final vows in 1993.
Mother Marla “loved the life” in her religious community and had several assignments on the East Coast including in New York, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, and Washington, D.C. The Parish Visitors are a New York-based congregation that has the charism of being contemplative-missionaries to the home.
But it was during her time in Pennsylvania she began deepening her awareness and affection for her Lebanese heritage as a Maronite Catholic.
Mother Marla was always aware of her Maronite roots. Her mother was from Lebanon and her father’s parents were from Lebanon. There wasn’t a Maronite church near her childhood home in Poughkeepsie, New York, so her family attended a Latin-rite parish. But a Maronite priest would make his way up to the Lebanese community there a few times a year to minister to them.
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During her assignment in Pennsylvania, Mother Marla attended a series of Lenten talks in Scranton at a Maronite church. The speaker for the week was Maronite priest Father Gregory Mansour.
“I was very impressed with his spiritual teachings and I said, ‘This is a man of prayer. This man really practices his priesthood.’ And we struck up a friendship that God used,” she said.
The two would occasionally cross paths and keep in touch over the years. Mother Marla sent Mansour a note of congratulations in 2004 when Pope John Paul II appointed him as bishop for the Eparchy of Saint Maron of Brooklyn.
Mother Marla and Mansour wouldn’t reconnect again until a few years later, in Washington, D.C., where Mother Marla spent a year taking classes at the Dominican House of Studies.
Twenty-four years a nun at this point, Mother Marla was not on an assignment at a particular parish, so she chose to attend Mass at the Maronite church in the city, Our Lady of Lebanon Parish.
The priest at the parish approached Mother Marla and asked her if she would head the parish’s religious education program. In her previous assignment, she served as a director of religious education for several years.
“And I said, ‘Oh Father, I’m here for other reasons.’”
But the priest insisted, so Mother Marla took it to prayer, and with the permission of her superior, discerned that God was asking her to head the program.
She then asked the rector of the Our Lady of Lebanon Maronite Seminary, adjacent to the parish, if she could take some classes to learn more about Maronite spirituality and liturgy to help her with catechesis.
He agreed.
Just a few weeks after she accepted the position, Mother Marla again crossed paths with Bishop Mansour while the prelate was visiting the parish.
Mansour was happy to hear that Mother Marla was heading the program. But the next thing he said to her would change the course of her life forever.
“He said to me, ‘Sister Marla Marie, would you help me found a Maronite congregation of sisters for our Church?”
“And it was just like that. He just said, ‘Hello, it’s nice to see you. How are you?’ And then the next thing was, ‘Would you found a religious community?’”
Mother Marla was “startled.” But at the same time, she felt “a deep abiding peace.”
“It was the same peace I had 25 years prior, when I realized my call to be a religious,” she said.
Mother Marla told Mansour she would take his request to prayer and discernment. In time, she agreed and requested leave from her congregation to pursue this vocation.
On June 1, 2008, Sister Marla became Mother Marla Marie, foundress of the Maronite Servants of Christ the Light.
The sisters were founded to “radiate Christ’s love and light to our people,” Mother Marla said. “Our life is rooted in Eucharistic prayer and devotion to the Mother of God."
Fast approaching the community’s 16-year anniversary — or “sweet 16” as Mother Marla calls it — the sisters are involved in a variety of ministries including facilitating conferences and parish missions, teaching catechism classes, leading youth and young adult ministry, bringing solace and prayer to those with grief, and accompanying those passing to the next life.
Sister Therese Touma, 40, joined the congregation in 2010 and Sister Emily Lattouf, 29, joined in 2019.
The sisters encounter and serve more than 1,000 people each year, including hundreds of children and young adults in their several ministries, Mother Marla said. Last year the sisters visited 10 parishes for missions across the Maronite Eparchy of Saint Maron of Brooklyn, which spans from Maine to Florida.
Sister Emily, who took her first vows in 2023, said that “Mother Marla Marie is an amazing and courageous woman.”
“I admire her courage to leave the world she knew in her previous community to begin this new foundation. I am blessed to have her as a mother-servant, friend, and formator,” she said.
The Maronite Servants are now located in suburban Dartmouth, Massachusetts, located in close proximity to several Maronite parishes and dozens of Roman Catholic parishes where they serve in ministry.
“I keep looking at my life and thinking, ‘Wow, that happened to me?’ Isn’t it amazing how God works? And he does that in your life too, and in everybody’s life. If people stop to look and be attentive, we can see that the Holy Spirit is always acting. We just have to give him room,” Mother Marla said.
Joseph Bukuras is a staff writer at the Catholic News Agency. Joe holds a bachelor’s degree in Political Science from The Catholic University of America. He has interned in the U.S. House of Representatives, on a U.S. Senate campaign, in the Massachusetts State House of Representatives, and at the Susan B. Anthony List. He is based out of the Boston area
