Teaching in the Bronx for one year after college made a deep impact on Rachel Roeber, who will move to the Salesian Sisters’ motherhouse Aug. 30. (Submitted photo)
Rachel Roeber
St. Frances Cabrini, West Bend
Quote: “Love, then do as you will.” — St. Augustine
Family: Parents, Mary and the late Mike Roeber; three siblings; and Dakota, a cockapoo.
Summer favorites: Swimming, kayaking, paddleboarding, hiking, soccer, ultimate frisbee, spikeball and reading.
Dream for the future: If I could dream big, I would want every individual baptized Catholic to know Christ.
It was only supposed to be one year that Rachel Roeber would teach catechism in the Bronx, but God had other plans.
The New York assignment was part of Seton Teaching Fellows, a postgraduate Catholic mission program she joined after graduating with a bachelor’s in elementary education and a minor in Catholic studies from the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minneapolis.
Roeber, 24, planned to move back to the Midwest to either marry or build her career in education, but while in the Bronx, she learned to become detached from her goals, expectations and plans for her future.
It was there she met the Salesian Sisters of St. John Bosco, Daughters of Mary Help of Christians, and began discerning a vocation as a religious sister.
“I was so set on living in the Midwest that even when I realized that I might not be called to marriage, at first, I only considered orders in the Midwest,” she said. “Staying in the Bronx for another year after ‘my mission year’ … forced me to let go of my community, family and a place familiar to me.”
Rachel Roeber grew up Catholic in West Bend and remains a member of St. Frances Cabrini, where she and her three siblings attended school.
“Going to Catholic school also played a huge role in making the idea of a religious vocation familiar,” she explained. “At home, I was raised not only as a devout Catholic in the sense that I was taught to uphold all the precepts and teachings of the Church but encouraged to pursue the heart of Christ himself. In that pursuit, I stumbled on a vocation.”
From an early age, Roeber’s parents instilled in her the importance of her Catholic faith, prayer and service. She also grew her faith taking part in mission trips in high school, the Wisconsin Catholic Youth Rally and Steubenville Youth Conferences.
Her parish stepped forward in a special way after the death of her father.
“My dad passed away in a car accident while I was in high school. The response of our parish in the week after his death, at his funeral and beyond, was tremendous. He was well known as a man of deep faith and had a deep impact on me and my faith.”
When Roeber began teaching with Seton Teaching Fellows, living in the Bronx was a culture shock compared to the quieter, more rural surroundings of West Bend.
“The pace of life is much faster, louder and busier,” she said. “I’ve gotten used to praying my holy hours with all sorts of sounds from the street, cars honking, people yelling, police sirens or the Mister Softie truck jingle. Sometimes, when I’m at the chapel here in Wisconsin, I have to take a moment to realize it’s quiet.”
Day and night, people walk around the streets of the Bronx, which Roeber admits can be both overwhelming and offer a sense of community.
“The reality of physical poverty is also on full display. It’s a reality that must be taken in multiple times a day. My vague notion of ‘the poor’ was pretty quickly lost in recognizing the faces and names of people I knew to be in poverty, especially when it was my students living in a shelter, for example,” she said, adding, “Faith is mainly a cultural matter for most families, who are mostly Hispanic and Catholic.”
Roeber will move into the Salesian Sisters’ motherhouse Aug. 30. They are the largest order of religious sisters in the world and have just one community in the Midwest, in Ohio.
Roeber’s mother was apprehensive when she first expressed her interest in becoming a religious sister, but that changed over several months.
“A few weeks after I sent in my application, I knew I won her over when she told me, ‘I think this might be good for you.’ My siblings were curious, asking me more questions as I was becoming more and more certain of my next step,” she said.
Roeber also is grateful for the support of others beyond her family.
“I’m blessed with very strong Catholic friends in a tight-knit Catholic community here in the Bronx, but also in St. Paul, where I went to college, so of course their response has been overwhelmingly positive. It is something to be excited about, so I’m grateful to have a group around me who’s proportionately excited.”
She credits her work with numerous immigrant families for leading her to the Salesians.
“It’s important to realize that regardless of nationality, experiences, culture or country of origin, In Illo Uno Unum — in the One, we are one,” she explained, “I know these attitudes will be necessary for me going forward.”
