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Unconditional love – perpetual, unwavering, uncompromising – as demonstrated by Jesus’ mother Mary.
Humanizing the Holy Family and the saints as daily examples in life.
That’s how Cindy Nolan’s children Gregory and Alison described how their mother raised them.
“To me, the most meaningful examples of my mother’s love are not grand spectacles,” Gregory Nolan said. “It was that ‘feeling of love’ anchored in her small gestures throughout my life, the note in the lunch bag, the cheer from the sideline, the hug after a tough day. … Her sincerity and generosity of spirit in her actions are what really touch our souls and give us, her children, the irreplaceable feeling of warmth and love.”
This devotion to faith and family earned Nolan the 2020 Regina Matrum award bestowed by the Council of Catholic School Cooperative Clubs (CCSCC) to Catholic women who are models of motherhood.
She will be honored as the 74th recipient with a Mass Oct. 5 at 7 p.m. at her parish church since 1972, St. Andrew the Apostle in Algiers. The Mass, usually celebrated the Monday after Mother’s Day, was delayed due to the pandemic.
Lisa Thriffiley, a consummate Notre Dame Seminary volunteer, nominated her, saying Nolan made her a better person just being around her.
“As I watch Cindy volunteer and help others, I just can’t help wanting to be a better Catholic, a better wife and mother,” Thriffiley said.
Faith started young
A strong Catholic faith was ingrained in Nolan in her hometown of Breaux Bridge, Louisiana. She recalled her great aunt Nan Grace walking her down the street to St. Bernard Catholic Church’s grotto to pray the rosary and litany of the saints in French, and sitting in her great grandmother’s bedrooms with altars and often hearing the French words, “What the good Lord wants.”
The eldest of five children who “weren’t always angels,” Nolan said that her parents, Mavis and Warren Finley, exemplified unconditional love and involvement in community. They founded the town’s crawfish festival and the St. Bernard School Foundation. They also volunteered at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, where Nolan graduated.
“In a small town, if you didn’t do it, it didn’t get done, so you had to do everything,” Nolan said. “That’s how you grew up.”
She said God’s additional blessings came through other faith-filled individuals in her path, including the Sisters of the Most Holy Sacrament who taught her in grammar and high school; Father Bryce Sibley at Our Lady of Wisdom Church and the Catholic Student Center at the University of Louisiana; the members of Catholic Women in Action; Legatus; and Jesuit Father Harry Tompson, who was at Jesuit High School when her son attended.
Nolan remembered Father Tompson telling parents: “Don’t stop calling your children. Just ask my momma. She would call me and call me and finally I would answer the phone and say, ‘Yes Momma, what do you want?’”
A mother’s love
Nolan said Father Tompson “talked about that unconditional love. He would tell this story about his time in Houston at Strake Jesuit, and one of his students got in trouble. The daddy was furious, but the momma went in there, hugged her son and said, ‘We love you, and God loves you.’
“(Father Tompson) had a tremendous influence on my faith and giving to people. You can just do it, day in and day out. It could be your family. It could be anybody on the street.”
Nolan also considers God’s other gift to be her 49-year marriage to her husband Mike and their three children and eight grandchildren. She has relied on the Blessed Mother as her constant companion through the daily rosary, the Memorare and Mother Teresa’s “quick” rosary of nine consecutive Memorares.
“The Blessed Mother always takes care of me,” she said.
Seminary volunteer
Nolan’s volunteerism has included being a parish council member and capital campaign co-chair – among many other duties – at St. Andrew the Apostle. She was on the school’s foundation board of directors and was its president from 2000-02. She earned the St. Louis Medallion in 2005 for these efforts.
Notre Dame Seminary also has been the recipient of her time, talent and treasure through the Christmas luncheon for priests and the annual seminary gala. She and Mike also have been seminarian prayer partners through Legatus, an organization for Catholic CEOs.
Through this, they’ve heard “heartwarming stories, the battles they go through at the seminary and how their vocation came about. You have such faith in the future of our church with these men.”
What has most deepened her faith recently, she said, was being a host family for international seminarians such as Thomas Binanbiba Bamoah from the Diocese of Yendi in Ghana, Africa, who recently became a deacon. It’s here she’s witnessed the love seminarians have for the church. Many, like Thomas, arrived in New Orleans with just the clothes on their backs and have humble needs.
When asked what he wanted for an ordination gift, Deacon Thomas told the Nolans about a special missal he could use when he returns to Ghana to celebrate Mass at 20 to 30 sites beyond his parish. The Nolans recognized further necessities and bought him three pairs of sturdy sandals, to which he replied, “Now I have shoes for 10 years.”
This encounter with Deacon Thomas was just another blessing to Nolan.
“What a gift God has given us,” she said. “They’ve dedicated themselves to this life and our job is to support it. To see this man who is so dedicated to the church and to his people. ... We have to do these things. That’s what we’re here for.”
Award was a surprise
The day Nolan learned of the Regina Matrum award was the final Sunday Mass celebrated with Catholics in the pews – before the COVID-19 quarantine made live streaming Mass commonplace. She remembered wanting to avoid socializing at the Mass’ end when her pastor, Father John Talamo, called up CCSCC president Cindy Wooderson. Nolan didn’t think anything of it until she heard her name.
“That was the furthest thing from my mind for me,” Nolan said. “I had to be pushed up to accept the flowers (Cindy presented). It blew me away. It’s sort of a blur.”
Having known other Regina Matrum recipients and realizing that her husband Mike’s grandmother, Mrs. Norris “Nora” Nolan also was one, Nolan was astonished.
“I can’t believe it,” she said. “It is a God-given gift. It is very humbling to be considered in that company of women.”