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Friday, Sep. 19, 2025

SALT LAKE CITY — Carmelite Sister Mary John of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Holy Face, who professed her solemn vows on Sept. 8, 1980 at the age of 23, celebrated her Golden Jubilee with a Mass on Aug. 9 in the Carmel of the Immaculate Heart of Mary in Salt Lake City.

Carmelite Father Stephen Watson was the main celebrant at the Mass. Concelebrants were Father Sebastian Chacko, in residence at Saint Francis Xavier Parish; Father Anastasius Iwuoha, administrator of Saint Patrick Parish in Salt Lake City; Father Kenneth Kelechi, a visiting priest from Nigeria; and Father Andre Sicard, parochial vicar at the Cathedral of the Madeleine.

In his homily, Fr. Stephen spoke directly to Sr. Mary John, saying that, probably in “words unspoken in your heart, you realized in your youth that you were born for God, that your desire to love, know and serve him led you to Carmel. You were not afraid of those deep desires you had for happiness, for truth, for beauty and for lasting love.”

As a nun, “you have given yourself totally to the service of God,” he said, and, as he closed his homily, Fr. Stephen prayed that by her example “of these 50 faithful years” Sr. Mary John would inspire others to follow their own hearts to God and to the Carmel in Salt Lake City. 

Following the homily, Sr. Mary John reaffirmed the Profession of her Solemn Vows of chastity, poverty and obedience according to the Rule and constitutions of the Discalced Nuns of the Order of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Mount Carmel.

After this, Fr. Stephen blessed Sr. Mary John with holy water and placed on her head a wreath symbolizing the glory to come to those who respond to the call of God and accept espousals with the crucified and risen Lord.

Sr. Mary John, who was born Margaret Mary Uhlig, grew up in a Catholic family on a farm in Idaho near Twin Falls.

“I knew I had a vocation when I just turned 16,” she said. “I was alone sitting down and the Lord just invaded my heart. That was it. I never changed my mind.”

She had read the biography of St. Thérèse of Lisieux, and wanted to be like the French Carmelite, “but the calling went deeper than that,” she said.

She asked God that, if she had a vocation to the Carmelites, she be allowed to enter the monastery at age 16, but her mother opposed the idea, “so I said, ‘Well, I guess I don’t have a Carmelite vocation,’” she said.

Instead, after graduating from high school she attended Saint Martin’s College (now university), a private Benedictine institution in Lacey, Wash., where she studied voice and music. After she asked a priest at her college about joining the Carmelites, he took her and a friend to a monastery. However, the mother superior told her she would have to wait until she was 21.

“I cried the whole way home,” she said.

After graduating from college with a bachelor of arts degree, she waited another year before joining the Carmel in Salt Lake City.

“The big catch was, it upset my parents so much I felt like it was a sin, almost, to enter, and yet I knew I had that call,” she said.

During her years in Carmel, “I just grew,” she said, acknowledging that she’s gone through different trials and made a lot of mistakes, “but it doesn’t matter because God always makes up for those mistakes.”

Through the years, “God’s really changed me. … I’ve gotten a lot more God-centered than when I entered,” she said. “We think we’re perfectly God-centered before we enter, but we’re not, when we really find out.”

Religious life is growth, she said, “Growth in every way: how you treat other people, how you accept trials, in own spiritual life. … God wants more for us than just to be a good religious. He wants us to be the best – he wants us to be in love, and the whole basket is about what love is, to grow in love.”

To grow in the spiritual life, “good reading is very important,” Sr. Mary John said, adding that she particularly likes Elizabeth of the Trinity and St. John of the Cross as authors.

“When you taste God on a deeper level, you want more of him, so you read more and you search more,” she said.

She chose her name, Sister Mary John of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Holy Face, because the Sacred Heart of Jesus is what I’ve always loved about God,” she said, adding that the family had a picture of the Sacred Heart in the home while she was growing up.

The Holy Face is a nod to Thérèse of Lisieux, whose full religious name was Thérèse of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face. Sr. Mary John chose to be called after the Blessed Mother because “I wanted her name so bad, and I wanted St. John of the Cross,” she said. “I dearly love both of them.”

For her Jubilee celebration, friends and family came from Idaho and Washington, and the other sisters in the Carmel spent hours making the decorations. In addition, because of donations from friends, she was able to send flowers to her brother and a cousin who were unable to attend, she said.

“God just lavished all this on me,” she said. “I was so overcome with the people that came.”

After 50 years in Carmel, she has a message for those outside the cloister, she said. “I wish people knew how much God loves us. I wish I could tell the whole world how much God loves you.”