Sister Rachel Lauze
Current Mission Location – Maryknoll Sisters Center, New York
Rachel Lauze was born on May 27, 1950 in Lewiston, Maine, U.S.A. to Raymonde (Bouchard) Lauze and Laurier Lauze. She has two sisters, Mariette Renard and Denise Lauze. Rachel graduated from St. Dominic’s High School in Lewiston in 1968. Rachel then trained to become a nurse receiving her diploma from St. Mary’s Hospital School of Nursing in Lewiston, where she was honored with the Psychological Nursing award of her graduating class in 1971.
Rachel worked as a registered nurse at St. Mary’s Hospital for a year until she entered the Maryknoll Sisters on August 21, 1972 at the Initial Formation house in St. Louis, Missouri. At the end of the spring semester at the Jesuit University, her entrance group moved to the Maryknoll Center, New York in the summer of 1973. In the fall of that year, she and her entrance group mate, Patricia Edmiston, helped nurse the elderly sisters at Maryknoll’s Bethany house.
In 1974 Rachel arrived in Indonesia on her first mission assignment. She joined the Maryknoll Sisters Community in Bandung, West Java, where she volunteered as a visiting nurse from St. Joseph’s Hospital run by the St. Charles Borromeo Sisters. Rachel then began a community-based health program in the neighborhood with the help of her social worker Maryknoll Sister Susan Gubbins. After a year of mission experience, Rachel pronounced her first vows in Bandung on February 14, 1975.
On returning to the States for the Reflection Year program, Rachel pronounced her Final Vows on September 2, 1979. Upon request of the Leadership Team, she then continued studies at Marymount College, Tarrytown, to complete a BA degree, majoring in Psychology, and then at Maryknoll School of Theology, an MA degree in Theological Studies in 1981. Summer was spent nursing our senior sisters at the nursing home section of the Center.
Following a call to a life of prayer and solitude in support of Maryknoll missioners and mission throughout the world, Rachel entered the Maryknoll Sisters Contemplative Community on August 8, 1981, living at the Regina Coeli Cloister at Maryknoll, New York, the one in Gallop, New Mexico, and in 1990, Udon Thani, Thailand. When things were not able to work out as planned, Rachel returned to the Center in New York in 1992 for a two-year leave of absence from the Cloister. In 1994 she rejoined the Contemplative Community, but eventually requested to be reassigned to active ministry on August 8, 1998.
A new phase of Rachel’s mission life took her back to Asia. On March 23, 1999, Rachel arrived at the Kichijoji, Tokyo house of Maryknoll Sisters. After two years of basic Japanese language study, Rachel’s next decades of ministry to the homeless in Tokyo began. She worked with the staff and volunteers of Sanyukai, a non-profit organization, where she prepared and served food to homeless men and women. On ‘outreach day’, Rachel and other team members visited the public parks where the homeless camped out and slept on cardboard behind bushes. The teams distributed rice lunches and informed the sick about the free clinic at Sanyukai, where another Maryknoll Sister, Rita Burdzy, was clinic nurse.
At another non-profit organization, You-I Home, Rachel facilitated Art Therapy projects for homeless women. In that small shelter for women, Rachel was able to practice what she had learned at the Westchester Art Workshop in White Plains, NY, from where she had received a Certificate in Applied Arts in 1994.
Throughout her years in Japan, Rachel also joined with Maryknoll Sister Kathleen Reiley in facilitating Zazen Meditation retreats to adults from many walks of life and religious persuasions. This was one ministry that was able to resume quickly after the peak of the Covid Pandemic. Sitting meditation in silence didn’t spread the virus and probably even strengthened one’s immune system! At any rate, it supported the spiritual journey of all.
Wishing to offer some years of Congregational Mission Service at the Center in NY, Rachel left Japan in January 2024. In the spring, she began assisting her seniors of the Chi Rho Community by helping out in the office, doing some driving and other small services to the sisters at the Maryknoll Center, who had been her models and inspiration throughout her mission years.