By Patrick Downes

“This may be difficult for you,” Kris Theiler said. The congregation in the Newman Center chapel managed to chuckle at the young woman’s cheery attempt to gain control of her tears as she told stories about her aunt, Maryknoll Sister Katherine Theiler, at her funeral service, Aug 5.

It was difficult. Kris could barely get though each sentence without being interrupted by her own halting sobs. But the assembly kept tender attention.

“We looked forward to her visits,” she said of her aunt who left her big family in the tiny town of Tomahawk, Wis., in 1941 to become a Maryknoll Sister.

The visits were special because they were infrequent — every three to five years — and from that glamorous place called Hawaii.

“I must be honest,” Kris said. When she was younger, she admitted, it was Aunt Katherine’s little exotic gifts that she looked forward to. She and 22 other nieces and nephews.

“Maybe that’s why her visits were infrequent,” she joked, remembering the large number of presents Sister Katherine felt obligated to deliver.

But as Kris grew older, it was her beloved aunt herself she looked forward to seeing. And hearing. Especially the stories of her missions, told over a few beers, with the family all around.

“It was difficult for her family to have her so far away,” said Kris, who was there with the late Maryknoll sister’s brother Carl Theiler and sister NellAnne Theiler-Virgil.

But Sister Katherine had another family. And they were also at her funeral. Sixty years of friends, associates, co-workers and students who had woven in and out of her long and fruitful Hawaii assignment packed the small Newman chapel. It was so crowded that a U.S. congressman who came a few minutes late did not get a seat.

Sister Katherine died on July 24 at St. Francis Hospice in Nuuanu. She was 87 and had been a Maryknoll Sister for 65 years.

Most of those years were in Hawaii. She came here in 1944, the year she made her first profession and took the religious name Sister Carla Maria. (Her father’s name was Carl.) She taught for 10 years at Maryknoll Grade School, making her final profession at Sacred Heart Church, Punahou, on March 7, 1947.

In 1955 she was appointed principal of St. Michael School in Waialua; in 1958, principal of St. Anthony School in Wailuku; and in 1964, principal of Maryknoll High School in Honolulu.

Sister Katherine returned to Maryknoll, N.Y., in 1974 to be the coordinator of the renewal program for Maryknoll Sisters returning from the missions. During her time in New York, she earned a master’s degree in religious studies at Maryknoll Seminary.

In 1978, she was back in the islands and her ministry took a reflective turn. Responding to both a long-held personal desire and a real community need, she teamed with two other Maryknoll sisters to create a place where people could come for hospitality, prayer, solitude, and spiritual direction. She called it the Spiritual Life Center.

Sister Katherine served as the center’s director for two decades, leading it to fresh streams and new pastures as the times and situations demanded. After retiring from the center in 1998, she became the Hawaii coordinator of Worldwide Contemplative Outreach, a centering prayer movement, and continued her spiritual direction.

It was her spiritual guidance that other speakers remembered at her funeral gathering.

Father Gary Secor first met Sister Carla Maria as a Maryknoll High School freshman in 1965. Many years later, as a young priest seeking a spiritual experience beyond the routine, he asked Sister Katherine to direct his week-long silent retreat.

“Her wise counsel was a blessing to me,” Father Secor said, something he would “never forget.”

Maryknoll Sister Rita Kane said “Her gentle unassuming attitude made prayer so attractive to others, especially lay people.”

If anything, she was “prominently and predominantly ecumenical,” Maryknoll Sister Joan Chatfield said.

The testimony of Protestant minister Rev. Dan Hatch eloquently proved that point. For four years Sister Katherine had been his spiritual advisor.

“I was overwhelmed by her sense of peace,” he said. While in hospice, she was in a “perpetual state of meditation.”

“Katherine of the blue dancing eyes, full of love and mischief,” he called her.

Jesuit Father Christopher Cartwright presided at the Mass which Sister Katherine herself had planned. The readings were brief and spoke of God’s warm, affectionate, parental love. The music was quiet and reflective. Father Cartwright said that, in her funeral liturgy, Sister Katherine had resumed her work of spiritual direction, one last time for all who were there.

“She was, after all, a missionary,” he said.

On a small table near the altar, a tall square-shaped ceramic jar decorated with a bright bird of paradise flower held her ashes. It stood beside a recent photo, her yellow crystal rosary, her worn Maryknoll ring and her old missioner’s crucifix.

Sister Joan had described Sister Katherine’s 169 days in hospice as her “long slow slant to eternity,” a period that seemed to test her self-defining prayer, “I want what you want for as long as you want.”

But those were productive days where her final spiritual lessons were taught with a smile, a breath, and rich stretches of silence.

One of Sister Katherine’s hospice caregivers was a woman whom she had counseled through “step five” in her recovery from alcoholism. Helping women through the Hawaii Alcohol Foundation’s Sand Island Rehabilitation Center had been one of Sister Katherine’s final ministries.

The reunion of the two women, their care-giving roles reversed, was an “amazing moment of truth,” said Sister Joan, who choked on her own emotions as she recalled the event.

Tucked in the Mass program was a copy of Sister Katherine Theiler’s last entry in her prayer diary: “My cup overflows with love for you and for all the people you have given me in my life. My cup overflows with gratitude. My cup overflows with the joy of surrender to you.”

Sister Katherine’s ashes were buried two days later on Aug. 7 at Diamond Head Memorial Park.