Keeping the faith

Sister Rose Ashour, who was 19 when she took her vows at St. Scholastica Monastery, is about to celebrate her 100th birthday

Sister Rose Ashour will celebrate her 100th birthday this month. She is the oldest and longest serving nun at St. Scholastica Monastery in Fort Smith.
Sister Rose Ashour will celebrate her 100th birthday this month. She is the oldest and longest serving nun at St. Scholastica Monastery in Fort Smith.

FORT SMITH -- As the oldest and longest serving Benedictine nun at St. Scholastica Monastery, Sister Rose Ashour is preparing to celebrate her 100th birthday later this month. In the past 99 years she has seen a lot.

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Sister Rose Ashour will celebrate her 100th birthday on April 18, making her the oldest and longest serving nun at St. Scholastica Monastery in Fort Smith. Ashour’s hobbies include poetry and woodcarving. One of her carvings is shown above.

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The Benedictine nuns at St. Scholastica Monastery follow the Rule of St. Benedict, which emphasizes prayer, work, study, renewal and hospitality.

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Courtesy Photo

The St. Scholastica Monastery in Fort Smith will honor Sister Rose Ashour with a reception at 3 p.m. April 16, the day before her 100th birthday. She served many years as a teacher in Arkansas, Oklahoma and Missouri.

She has lived to see nine popes lead the Roman Catholic Church, from Benedict XV to Francis, and has seen 17 U.S. presidents lead the country, starting with Woodrow Wilson. Two world wars have come and gone, as well as the Great Depression. She has been there to see the highs and lows of the nation, all while living a life of prayer and devotion to God.

Ashour was born April 17, 1916, in Morrison Bluff in Logan County. The third of nine children (she had six sisters and two brothers), she attended school at St. Benedict's in nearby Subiaco and it was there that her journey into Benedictine life began. The Benedictine sister teaching her eighth grade class talked with some of the girls about joining St. Scholastica Convent. Some of them were interested, including Ashour.

"I went home and told my mother I was going to the convent, that I felt like this is what God has called me to do in life," she said.

At the time Ashour was 14. Two years later she went to Fort Smith and entered the convent -- first as a candidate, then she served six months as a postulant before serving two years as a novice. They called them "white novices" because they wore white veils instead of the traditional black worn by full members of the religious community. During her first year as a ­novice,

Ashour and some of the other novices were sent to serve at Shoal Creek (now known as New Blaine), the original site of the convent, in Logan County.

Four Benedictine sisters from Immaculate Conception Monastery in Ferdinand, Ind., had been sent to Arkansas in the late 1870s to start a mission at Shoal Creek. Monks from St. Meinrad Abbey, also in Indiana, had arrived a few months earlier in Creole (now known as Subiaco). They had all come to establish churches and schools and the sisters soon established St. Scholastica Convent in 1879.

But the isolation, lack of water and difficulty getting supplies prompted them to move to Fort Smith in 1924, where they continued their ministry of teaching. Sisters from the monastery taught students in schools in throughout the state and beyond. They also got involved in hospital ministries. At the height of their ministry the sisters numbered more than 300. Today, 43 remain.

Ashour recently recalled her time at Shoal Creek.

"We did all kinds of things there," she said. "We worked in the yard, in the garden and field and the priest gave us lessons in church history."

After returning to Fort Smith, Ashour took her first vows on June 24, 1935, at the age of 19 and her final vows in 1938. Her ministry was teaching, and she taught elementary students for 39 years in schools in Arkansas, Oklahoma and Missouri. Friends say she's known for her ability to remember the names of students from so many years ago.

When she retired from teaching she volunteered to serve as a charter member of Our Lady of Peace Monastery in Columbia, Mo., the first daughter house of St. Scholastica. While there she worked in pastoral ministry, visited the homebound and taught religious studies. During her time there, her elderly mother needed her help, so she returned to Arkansas to care for her mother until her death at the age of 109.

In all, Ashour served in Columbia for 40 years, until the monastery closed in 2010.

"We had to close because there were so few of us anymore," Ashour said. "Seven of us were left and we couldn't make it anymore."

She and a few of the other sisters returned home to St. Scholastica. Others went to Benedictine communities elsewhere.

Through the years one of Ashour's hobbies has been writing poetry. She is known as the monastery's "poet emeritus" and has written hundreds of poems. She enjoys looking through them and sharing them with others. She finds inspiration for her poetry everywhere, but mostly, she said, "I just get them out of my head."

She dabbled in woodcarving and also taught youngsters the craft. She also enjoys singing, in English and German.

These days, Ashour spends her time in the monastery's third-floor infirmary. Her room is filled with pictures and mementos, including a few of her wood carvings. Confined to a wheelchair, she still manages to fully participate in the life of the monastery. She attends Mass with other sisters in the infirmary by watching a live feed from the second-floor chapel. She and the other sisters also work with a personal trainer twice a week to keep active. And every evening she visits with a fellow sister who has Parkinson's disease.

They end the day in prayer, the bedrock of the Rule of St. Benedict, a way of life that Sister Rose has faithfully followed for more than 80 years and counting.

The sisters will host a reception for Ashour at 3 p.m. April 16. More information is available online at stscho.org.

Religion on 04/09/2016

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