Catholic women opened door for deeper spirituality

    When Marilyn Quirk opened her eyes on Feb. 8, 2010 – two days after having been packed in ice to control the damage from the cardiac arrest she suffered during First Saturday eucharistic adoration at St. Francis Xavier Church – her husband Pete was standing on the other side of her bed.
    Thankfully, he was not on “the other side.” This was not heaven, but it was close.
    “Marilyn,” Pete said, holding his wife’s hands. “Just to let you know, the Saints won the Super Bowl!”
    Marilyn smiled. Maybe this was heaven after all.
    When Marilyn, who grew up as an Episcopalian, was an undergraduate at LSU in the late 1950s, she was discerning whether or not to become a medical missionary for the Episcopal Church. Her Catholic girlfriends had other ideas.
    “They wanted me to go on a blind date, which I didn’t want to do,” Marilyn said. “Pete was the first Catholic I had ever dated.”
    As it turned out, Marilyn said, “He was amazing.”
    Their spark of new love created a dilemma. Marilyn had prayed about studying to become a nurse who could serve in the medical missions, but she knew if she were to marry Pete, her life’s dream would have to be put on hold or abandoned. And then there were the religious issues. Why did Catholics put so much emphasis on Mary? Who gave the pope all that authority?
    Looking at life through the prism of faith, Marilyn believes there are no accidents. As she and Pete attended Mass together at the LSU Newman Center, she was mesmerized by this small, unassuming priest who smiled a lot, exuded holiness and made time for every student, no matter the problem.
    His name was Father Stanley J. Ott, the future auxiliary bishop of New Orleans and bishop of Baton Rouge.
    “I went to Father Ott to ask him what I should do about this, because I was falling in love with someone who was Catholic, and I didn’t know whether I was supposed to be married or not,” Marilyn said. “He told me that marriage is a vocation. I didn’t understand that at the time. Then he brought me through what I didn’t know then were the Spiritual Exercises to determine whether I had a vocation to be a medical missionary or to be open to marriage.”
    At that point, Pete hadn’t even proposed.
    “It was a grace-filled time,” Marilyn recalls. “Then I said, ‘Father, if I marry Pete, my children will have to be raised Catholic.’ And he said, ‘That’s no problem. I’ll teach you the faith.’ And then my heart became Catholic.”
    Twice a week for nine months, Marilyn met with Father Ott, who shared with her the lives and writings of some of the special saints in his own life, people such St. Elizabeth Ann Seton and Cardinal John Henry Newman.
    “I could sense there was something very special there, and it was the Lord,” Marilyn said. “I read those books, and I just fell in love with the church. Father Ott was so holy and humble. He had a doctorate in theology, and very few people knew that. I felt the presence of God so often when I was with him that I would just tear up. He was like a father to me.”
    Marilyn and Pete married in 1958, and they had six children. Marilyn was going to Mass with her husband and the kids every week, but something was missing.
    “I had always been a good person in the sense of following Christ, and I knew him since I was a child, but I had become involved in a lot of worldly things – nothing evil, but things such as luncheons and style shows,” Marilyn said.
    In 1970, one of her good friends invited her for four or five weeks straight to come to a women’s prayer group at Loyola University.
    “I kind of felt like the unjust judge – ‘This woman is going to wear me out if I don’t go,’” Marilyn said. “I went with her, and my life changed. I recognized how far I was running away from God, but he was running after me, and he was using women to do it.”
     When God caught hold of Marilyn, amazing things began happening. Small prayer groups of Catholic women began sprouting up throughout the archdiocese, and with the encouragement of then-Bishop Ott, Marilyn and several others established and wrote a canonical charter for the Magnificat Ministry to Catholic Women – a private association of the Christian faithful.
    Since its beginnings in 1981, Magnificat has grown to include 80 chapters worldwide, with 14 more in formation. There are Magnificat chapters in Poland, Malta, Ireland and the Caribbean.
    “We have requests from all over to start new chapters,” Marilyn said. “Where it will go, I have no idea. It’s been a great grace to women to be inspired to come together and learn their faith. This is Mary’s ministry. She is our mother, and we are like the children baking the cake, and she’s bringing everything together.”
    After 32 years as Magnificat coordinator, Marilyn has stepped down to give herself more time to pray, read and write.
    “She is a very, very prayerful woman,” Pete says. “She loves Christ, and she loves eucharistic adoration. If we’d let her, I think she’d spend half her time in the adoration chapel.”
    She goes daily to the same chapel where she almost died two years ago. Doctors told her she had a 1 percent chance of surviving the kind of heart attack she had. Last year, she had four surgeries and almost bled to death.
    But she is with us, and she is thankful. She wants to polish some of the spiritual presentations she has given to women over the years.
    “I really have desired more time to pray,” Marilyn said.
    Heaven on earth.
    Peter Finney Jr. can be reached at [email protected].