Sr. Danielle Victoria

"Not all are called to be artists in the specific sense of the term. Yet, as Genesis has it, all men and women are entrusted with the task of crafting their own life: in a certain sense, they are to make of it a work of art, a masterpiece".

- Saint John Paul II, Letter to Artists

I have chased after beauty and authenticity all my life. Then I discovered that what I was looking for was really a “Who.” My life radically changed when I realized as a young adult that this person—Jesus—had been with me all along in the messiness of my life. And, surprisingly, he’d been with me most intimately when I had thought him least relevant and completely absent.

When I was young, I was convinced that someday I would have a big family like the one I grew up in and a fulfilling career as an artist. Creativity was nurtured throughout my life. When I received a scholarship to attend the Rhode Island School of Design, I truly felt I was living my dream. Art and delving into the creative process became the center of my life. I spent hours a day developing my gifts. Pretty quickly, without realizing it, I had wrapped my identity solely around being an artist and I stopped practicing my faith.

But shortly after graduating college I had a conversion experience that radically changed my life. In that experience I was filled with a stark clarity that God was real, imminently present in my life and had a plan for me. From this encounter with God a hunger grew that ran deep.

I decided to make a 30-day retreat and at the end I met some Daughters of St. Paul who had also made the retreat. I was surprised to learn how their mission of communicating Christ through the most efficacious and rapid means of media was rooted in a Eucharistic spirituality of adoration and prayer. I visited the motherhouse the following day and knew that this was where God was calling me.

During my first profession of vows kneeling before the altar with my right hand on the Bible and my left hand over my heart, I felt the Lord handing my offering back to me along with a promise that we would give these gifts of creativity to the world together in my vocation as a Daughter of St. Paul.