Little Rock’s Mount St. Mary Academy has launched the first chapter of a new pilot program Alive in Mercy, or AIM. The purpose of the program is to help young women live lives of holiness and service, regardless of vocation or career plans.
“AIM is designed to bring the values of the Sisters of Mercy alive and relevant for them until it becomes part of their consciousness,” said Sister Patricia Pepitone, RSM, of Denver, N.C., who designed the program. “This isn’t pushing anyone to become a sister. What it does do is help young women in high school think about their lives before they take any kind of action and helps them become vibrant young women within the Church.”
Troubled by the personal and societal ills bombarding young women, Sister Patricia came up with AIM as a way to strengthen high schoolers’ sense of self-worth and sound decision making. Rooted in her order’s Mercy Values, AIM stresses community service, involvement with religious activities, contemplative discernment and excellence in the classroom.
Moreover, it develops a support system by which AIM participants hold one another accountable for academic achievement, service to the Church and the community and sound decision making concerning such destructive behaviors as “sexting” (sending sexually explicit messages and images via text), abusive relationships, promiscuity and underage drinking.
“AIM encourages girls to respect their bodies, remain celibate and discern their call in life,” Sister Patricia said. “They are also called to support one another. If one girl is failing in a class, for instance, it’s everyone’s responsibility to help her pass.”
Sister Patricia, as well as the group’s faculty advisor Alice Jones, stress the program is not recruitment to religious vocation, but a means of showing participants how God’s love enriches one’s life regardless of the vocational path they follow. Through interaction with sisters and laypeople, girls get to see God at work from a variety of points of view.
“Young women get to see the married vocation by watching their parents,” Sister Patricia said. “But many of them have never had the opportunity to talk to a single person leading a religious life or see the many different ways they can be a part of the Church.”
When Jones heard Sister Patricia was looking for a pilot school for the program, she was excited to bring it to Little Rock. As a Mercy Associate — a lay person who enters into a mutual covenant relationship with and lives according to the spirit and mission of the Sisters of Mercy — she saw it as a way to lend spiritual richness to students’ high school experience.
“This isn’t about making people nuns,” she said. “This is about learning how to live a meaningful life.”
Five MSM students made the commitment, sealed in a special ceremony during the school’s Founder’s Day activities Dec. 12.
“There are a lot of girls who have been asking about AIM and saying they want to do it next year,” said senior Jessica Garcia, a member of St. Edward Church in Little Rock. Garcia, who was one of the five who committed to AIM, said the regular interaction with religious women was a revelation.
“What surprised me most about the religious women is that they were all normal people like we were,” she said. “You think of nuns and you think, well, they don’t do this or that. But then you find out they are just ordinary people with a very deep spiritual life.”
Girls recommit to AIM after their first year with the group and can also make a promise to continue following the program’s guidelines into college. Sister Patricia said based on the success of the Mount St. Mary pilot, work is underway to bring AIM to other high schools operated by the Sisters of Mercy. The Sisters of Mercy operate 31 secondary schools across the country.
“This starts with baby steps,” she said. “Today, we have five girls with the courage and the guts to stand up and say to their peers ‘I’m going to be the person God called me to be.’ I believe next year there will be even more.”
