France Pollard vocation story
My name is Frances Pollard, I’m 28 old and I entered the Franciscan Sisters of the Renewal as a postulant on 21st November 2002. I never thought of becoming a sister at all growing up. I was lucky enough to be brought up in a devote Catholic Family, go to Catholic schools but never had any real contact with nun’s or friar’s. I thought that young people don’t really enter really enter religious life any more.
Despite this I did follow what the faith taught and continued to practice the sacraments even after I left home. I even had high moral standards and was firmly pro-life. Now I see that although I professed my faith and followed all the rules I really didn’t believe it my heart. My prayer life and therefore my contact with God was not existent apart from Sunday mass.
Then in August 2000 I went to Rome for the 15th World Youth Day where Pope John Paul II spoke to two million young people from all over the world. Those 6 days spent in Rome changed my life. Being around so many other young Catholics who where so fervent and happy spoke very quickly to my heart-what was I missing-I did not have this joy that I saw in their faces. My answer came-from the Pope:
“It is Jesus in fact that you seek when you dream of happiness; He is waiting for you when nothing else satisfies you; He is beauty to which you are so attracted; it is He…who stirs in you the desire to do something great with your lives…”
These words shot to my heart as if they were spoken only for me and my heart said my first yes even though with great fear, trembling and tears!
In the next two years after learning
how to pray daily and to seek god will not my own I found that deep down I
desired only 1 thing-to live completely for Jesus, to become his spouse!