For New Ulm-based Handmaids, a new convent, a new opportunity

Young women dedicating their lives to God as the Handmaids of the Heart of Jesus have a new convent in Hopkins to call home. In August, 12 sisters within the religious community moved into the newly renovated convent, a former rectory of St. Gabriel the Archangel, to begin their work in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis.

“The (archdiocese) has always been home, and it has always been a dream to be here,” said Mother Mary Clare Roufs, who founded the community in 2007 with three other women. “We love the priests and we love the people. It is really home for a lot of our sisters. As diocesan sisters, we want our sisters to be serving in their home dioceses when and where they can.”

Mother Mary Clare formed the idea for the Handmaids of the Heart of Jesus after receiving what she called “the founding grace” in December 2006.

“I was at The St. Paul Seminary and Archbishop (Harry) Flynn was preaching on Mary, and he simply started by saying, ‘Mary. How beautiful is the name Mary?’ And I just thought that God wanted a new community of sisters,” Mother Mary Clare recalled. “This charism was really being born in my heart, and so I asked a few young women to consider living the life with me, and we started in August 2007 with the permission of Archbishop Flynn. From that day it has been a time in which the Lord just continues to lead us every step of the way.”

The Handmaids lived in the archdiocese for three years before Bishop John LeVoir of New Ulm formally invited them to be established in his diocese in December 2009.

“In March 2010, Bishop LeVoir formally established us as a ‘public association of the lay faithful’ in hopes of us becoming a ‘religious community of diocesan right,’” Mother Mary Clare explained.

To gain that distinction — “a religious community of diocesan right” — there are typically at least 40 members in a community and over half of them should be in perpetual vows, she said.

“The Church wants to see that you are growing, that you are strong with good membership before that would happen,” Mother Mary Clare said. “For most communities, that would be about 20 to 25 years into their life, depending on how they grow. We aren’t there yet because part of what the Church does is she says, ‘Give it a try. Let us walk with you and then in time, if it is right, it will be more formally established.’”

In 2018, the Handmaids expanded by establishing a house in Duluth, where four sisters currently reside. The Handmaids’ New Ulm motherhouse includes 17 sisters, and the Hopkins house has 12 sisters, including five postulates, who are women discerning becoming Handmaids. If after a year they want to continue that discernment process, they will enter the novitiate program in New Ulm.

From the rural farmlands of New Ulm to the lakeside environs of Duluth to the urban life of Hopkins, the Handmaids feel called to live in an imitation of Mary as spiritual mothers in a parish family, engaging the new evangelization as diocesan sisters. Quite simply, they are spiritual mothers who are complementing the fatherhood of diocesan priests.

“Where you see a priest in a diocesan parish working and serving a parish family, we would work alongside of him, complementing him in our consecrated lives and helping the parish become a family of faith,” Mother Mary Clare said.

The sisters had begun to renovate space at the Cathedral of St. Paul in St. Paul in 2017, but a series of delays and construction and permit-related red tape impeded that effort, and a year later the Handmaids decided to look for another, more suitable building.

They began their journey to downtown Hopkins in 2020, when four sisters moved into the empty rectory next to St. Gabriel’s St. Joseph campus and worked with volunteers to help renovate the building into a convent. The remaining sisters moved in August 2021, when the renovations were complete.

“It was a real homecoming when we finally came back and established the house,” Mother Mary Clare said. “It is a fulfillment of God’s goodness. And it is where the original charism and grace was received and so what a joy it is for us to finally come home.”

The Handmaids’ apostolate differs according to the needs of the local Church in which they serve. Hopkins provides an opportunity for the Handmaids to express their charism in different ways, including at St. Gabriel and, next door, Chesterton Academy in Hopkins, as well as nearby Holy Family Academy in St. Louis Park, the University of Minnesota’s Newman Center and St. Lawrence parish in Minneapolis, and St. John Vianney College Seminary in St. Paul.

Sister Mary Joseph Evans, postulant directress at the Handmaids of the Heart of Jesus’s house in Hopkins, has been a member of the community for 12 years. She has lived most of those years in New Ulm, before moving to Duluth three years ago, and finally residing in the new house in Hopkins.

“It is such a great joy for our community to have a convent in the archdiocese and to be serving here. Many of our sisters are from the archdiocese and it’s part of our diocesan charism to serve at home,” said Sister Mary Joseph, who grew up as a member of St. Joseph in West St. Paul. “To be back serving among the priests and the families and be able to be spiritual mothers is such a great joy and something we’ve been looking forward to for many years. It has been a great gift to have our postulants here in Hopkins, and it allows them to get a good experience of the different ways in which we serve and the richness of life here.”

Mother Mary Clare said she is thankful for the tremendous support of Archbishop Bernard Hebda, Bishop LeVoir and Bishop Andrew Cozzens, auxiliary bishop of the archdiocese who Dec. 6 will be installed as the eighth bishop of Crookston, as the Handmaids’ community has continued to grow.

“After receiving the founding grace for our community, I had approached Bishop Cozzens and asked if he would consider helping us in our formation of our sisters and he agreed generously. From that day on, he has been very generous in teaching our sisters on such things as prayer, the spiritual life, vows and he directs our sisters (on) an eight-day silent retreat every year,” Mother Mary Clare said. “He has been a spiritual father to us and a friend. Although he’s heading up to Crookston, there will be a little bit more distance, but he will always be a part of our family.”

She said that being part of the archdiocese offers beautiful ways in which the Handmaids can express the elements of their charism and live out their “spiritual maternity” because of its variety of schools and its two seminaries.

“Our hope and our mission is to help people discover the joys of living their Catholic faith and having a personal relationship with Jesus,” Mother Mary Claire said. “As we do that together as a family, it will continue to enrich our lives together as we continue to seek him.”