It’s a year of reflection for Jill Underdahl, CSJ, ’92. The St. Paul Province leadership team member and St. trustee is celebrating her 25th jubilee, marking a quarter of a century committed to life as a Sister of St. Joseph of Carondelet (CSJ). Twenty-five years in, the CSJ mission — loving God and the dear neighbor without distinction — remains the focal point of her life.
But Sr. Jill says when it comes to milestones, there’s been a different one on her mind recently: her parents’ 60th wedding anniversary. “Their anniversary was just the beginning of this month, so we had a family celebration. I feel like I’ve been much more attentive to that,” she muses. “25 years is far less than 60.”
Though the difference in years seems large, the two anniversaries both provide moments for reflection, and Sr. Jill has considered how both celebrate commitments to love that require daily renewal. She describes the experience of change over so many years — through marriage, or a mission — as “water rolling over you.”
“If that mission is like water rolling over you, your rough edges soften a little bit,” Sr. Jill says. “There’s a growth and a deepening. I can see that in my parents — 60 years, and in their aging, I see that softening and that tenderness. So here I am at a marker in my life, but…there’s still a lot of work to be done, on me. It’s a lifelong journey.”
With her on that journey is a community — of sisters, consociates, and partners: all with diverse viewpoints and personalities, all committed to the same mission. This commitment to mission remains the most meaningful part of her vocation.
“There’s that sense that where one of us is, we all are,” Sr. Jill says. “It’s not that sense of, ‘I am myself alone doing this thing.’ I am myself doing what I am, as you are doing what you are, and together that’s creating an energy and a presence in the world for love of God and neighbor.”
Growth and change through faithfulness
Though her work these days on the province leadership team is largely administrative, she has prior experience teaching high school English and working in young adult spirituality, and she still finds ways to remain connected to younger generations. At a recent picnic the CSJs hosted for incoming St. students, she found herself talking with students whose paths to St. Kate’s echoed her own in many ways.
She asked them what attracted them to St. Kate’s, “and it was a very similar and resonant story,” she says. “‘I really don’t know, but when I came to campus I just knew that this was where I needed and wanted to be.’ It was a surprise to me when it happened, but that’s how I ended up being there.”
Sr. Jill attended St. Kate’s as an undergraduate, and has remained closely connected to the campus as a CSJ: “My brother jokes that I went to St. Kate’s and I never left,” she says.
One of the ways she remains involved with her alma mater is through her work with the St. Kate’s/CSJ Food Access Hub Community Garden, which also celebrated its 20th anniversary in October. Sr. Jill says her connections with students and young adults give her hope for the future.
“I’ve found a great deal of meaning in that work,” she says. “Thinking of myself, 20, 30 years ago when I was a young adult, and seeing who young adults are today, and the commitment, self-knowledge, and awareness they’re bringing to their work and to the world. There’s great change and promise.”
The seasonal transformation of the gardens often presents itself as a metaphor for that very change and promise. At the end of the garden season, Sr. Jill and her fellow volunteers meet to celebrate the harvest. “There’s all we know and can measure, in terms of pounds of food, and then there’s all that happens that we can’t measure,” she says — the relationships that develop, the internal growth that people experience.
Another point of connection to St. Kate’s, and an emblem of steadfastness amid change, is the newly restored Our Lady of Victory Chapel. Sr. Jill recently visited the Chapel after it reopened for its centennial celebration. She was struck by the small square that was left untouched so visitors could see the difference between the restored bricks and the original ones.
She reflects: “Imagine: This is the way people would have first experienced the Chapel when it first opened up 100 years ago. There’s such a specialness and a uniqueness to the St. Kate’s campus and to particular buildings. They each have their story.”
100 years of the Chapel, 60 years of marriage, 25 years as a CSJ, 20 years of the community garden — all of these anniversaries are made up of moments and days, quietly but steadily amassing. None of these legacies happened instantaneously.
“What I’ve learned is, it’s a faithfulness,” Sr. Jill says. “It’s something that happens over time. It’s not just trying on a new set of clothes and you’re suddenly this. It’s that daily faithfulness of showing up, in relationships and in community meetings and in prayer. There’s a faithfulness and consistency of that. There’s the ups and the downs and the challenges, and all of those are opportunities to grow and to learn.”
Congrats to all St. Paul this year!
80 Years
Sister Mary Charlene O’Keeffe
75 Years
Sister Brigida Cassady
Sister Joan K. Groschen
Sister Mary Elizabeth Harroun
70 Years
Sister Anna Marie DeVos
Sister Ansgar Holmberg
Sister Bernadette Newton
Sister Carol Podlasek
Sister Marian Walstrom
65 Years
Sister Mary Lamski
Sister Colleen O’Malley
Sister Angela Schreiber
Sister Joanne Weiland
60 Years
Sister Mary Frances Allen
Sister Margaret Brown
Sister Ann Diehl
Sister Karen Hilgers
50 Years
Sister Althea Johns
45 Years
Sister Lillian Long
Sister Irene O’Neill
25 Years
Sister Jill Underdahl