“Maybe someday one of you will become a sister.”
Sister Nicole Daly, 33, a Salesian Sister of St. John Bosco, remembered the words spoken to her and a few girls visiting cloistered Carmelite sisters for an eighth-grade field trip. That’s funny, she thought.
Eighth-grade Nicole had plans to become a wife and mother. Consecrated religious life, she believed, was simply not her vocation.
Yet, as is commonly said, when people make plans, God laughs.
The Boston native grew up attending Catholic schools. She recalled her friend’s father teaching her how to pray the rosary during their morning commute to school. She attended Adoration every Thursday and received the sacraments often.
Looking back, she explained, her Catholic school days were the seedbed where the seed for her vocation was planted. She described that time as the Lord at work in her heart, teaching her the path through Catholic education.
Fast forward to today and Sister Nicole is a Catholic school teacher. She teaches theology and is a campus minister at Columbus St. Francis DeSales High School.
Much happened between her time as a Catholic school student and Catholic school teacher.
Sister Nicole attended Northeastern University in Boston. In college, her faith was tested. She said she learned the “hard way” what life is like without the sacraments.
She eventually became involved in the university’s Catholic Center. She met members of the Brotherhood of Hope, a community of Catholic religious brothers who primarily serve in college campus ministry.
Around age 20, Sister Nicole had a flashback to eighth grade. “Maybe someday one of you will become a sister,” she recalled the words spoken to her years earlier.
This time, she explained, the words were different.
Sister Nicole began discerning religious life. She sought spiritual direction and set aside time to pray about God’s calling for her.
“On Holy Thursday, I had this profound experience before the altar of repose, when I realized that even though Jesus was not in the tabernacle that evening, that He had been with me all along,” she explained. “It was as if I realized, finally, that He wasn’t there, but He had been with me.
“That flashback was just, ‘This is what I’ve wanted for you all along – religious life.’ When I experienced this, I kind of freaked out inside. At night, I confided in my best friend, and she encouraged me, which was the encouragement that I needed.”
Sister Nicole talked with religious brothers on campus. The next semester, while studying abroad in Australia, she completed a 99-day discernment novena.
Months later, while on a service trip for spring break, she met the Salesian Sisters of St. John Bosco, also known as the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians, in Tampa, Florida.
The Salesian Sisters work with poor youth worldwide through education and formation. The sisters seek to bring Christ to youth, so they can spread the Good News, or Gospel, in the world.
“I just fell in love,” Sister Nicole recalled. “Nothing bothered them. Their focus wasn’t on the things that were happening around them: if they were on time, if things were clean, if things are happening as they were supposed to be.
“The thing that they were more attentive to was heaven. They were just so much more attuned into the Holy Spirit and to the person in front of them. It just really made an impression on me.”
Still unsure of God’s vocational call for her life, Sister Nicole graduated college, began working and dating. She was not happy, she recalled, with the direction that life was going.
Four years later, on Holy Thursday, she heard the Lord again.
This time, Sister Nicole explained, she was still not ready to respond to His invitation, but she knew she needed to seriously consider religious life.
She spent a week visiting the Salesian Sisters in New Jersey that summer.
“I told God that I would give Him a chance, but in the inside, I wasn’t really giving Him a chance,” she admitted. “I just wanted to check it off and pretend like I didn’t have to consider religious life again.
“I sized myself up against the other girls, and I said, ‘They would be so much better off,’ but throughout that week, God spoke really clearly to me that this is where He wanted me.”
That sense of affirmation, perhaps oddly enough, came in the form of braiding hair.
Sister Nicole longed to have children, specifically a daughter. She wanted to braid her daughter’s hair as her mother did hers while growing up.
Being a religious sister, she would not have that daughter she longed for – or so she thought. She shared that desire with God in prayer.
“The next day, we were celebrating Don (Father) Bosco day at camp, and the girls were preparing for their show in front of the parents. One of the girls came up to me and asked me to braid her hair, and once she asked me, then 25 other girls in the group came up to me and asked the same thing,” she recalled.
“I realized that God was not only seriously calling me but that He was trying to show me that He would answer the desires of my heart through spiritual motherhood.”
The following year, Sister Nicole applied to enter the Salesian order. She officially entered in September 2018 and professed her first vows in August 2022.
Parts of formation were difficult, she acknowledged. She was called to change her ways and leave behind her former self.
She trusted that she was where God was calling her. She maintained a sense of certainty, which she had first experienced when entering the order.
Her first assignment as a religious sister was as a theology teacher at St. John Neumann High School in Naples, Florida. She spent two years as a theology teacher and campus minister.
In 2024, Sister Nicole came to Columbus to teach and minister at St. Francis DeSales. She is currently in her second year at the high school.
She lives with a community of six Salesian Sisters who minister in the diocese and live near Columbus Our Lady of Guadalupe, Star of the New Evangelization parish, formerly Holy Name Church.
“It’s so nice being on Ohio State’s campus, to go for walks around the neighborhood and sometimes just say my rosary,” she noted.
“I have the best encounters with young people on campus, young people who have questions about their faith, or if what I’m wearing (a habit) is real or if it’s a costume. It just opens up a whole lot of opportunities for evangelization.”
Serving at St. Francis DeSales High School has equally been a blessing.
Sister Nicole described the atmosphere as “vibrant,” where students are hungry for the faith. Several students, she noted, seek out opportunities for Adoration, Lectio Divina (a form of prayer with Scripture) and retreats.
“That’s really invigorating just to know that I’ve been assigned to a place where the need is great but that also young people know their need and that they’re looking for God,” she reflected.
“As a teacher, I have lots of lesson planning and grading, but whenever they come by, no matter what they want to ask, if it’s, ‘I gave this up for Lent. Can I … ? How do I … ? Is this … ?’ They’ll have all sorts of questions about … knowing if God is speaking to them in prayer, or how do they know it’s really Him and not their own head.
“Whenever they come into my office, that’s who I’m there for. The grading waits.”
Since professing her first vows in August 2022, Sister Nicole has renewed her temporary vows annually.
She is preparing to make biennial vows in August 2026, which would be in preparation for final vows, anticipated for August 2028.
The Institute of the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians was co-founded in 1872 by St. John Bosco and St. Mary Domenica Mazzarello. Its North American apostolates include schools, camps, retreat ministries, oratories, parish education, day care, youth centers and young adult ministry.
Related to: Consecrated religious sisters make final vows – Catholic Times: Read Catholic News & Stories