January 27, 2012
Benedictine Sister Maria Tasto
Noted spiritual director has new DVD: ‘A Transformed Life’
Benedictine Sister Maria Tasto holds a set of newly-released DVDs titled “A Transformed Life.” She says the set answers “yes” that we are loved by God and that we are basically good. (Message photo by Mary Ann Hughes) Click for a larger version.
By MARY ANN HUGHES (Message staff writer)
A few years ago, Benedictine Sister Maria Tasto was giving a retreat in the Dominican Republic which was attended by a well-educated, well-read man.
He listened to her presentation, and then he asked two questions: “Why haven’t we been told we are loved by God?” and “Why haven’t we been told we are basically good?”
The retreat ended, but his questions stayed with her, and when her religious community in Ferdinand began to look for ways to communicate information about Benedictine spirituality, she felt prompted to respond to his questions.
Her answers, that “yes” we are loved by God and that “yes” we are basically good,” are the underlying message of a newly released DVD set, “A Transformed Life.” (Related: DVDs show ‘how to be transformed by God’)
It includes six 45-minute conferences by Sister Maria, who was inspired by the work of Father Thomas Keating, a Trappist monk and a founder of the centering prayer movement, and her own near-death ordeal.
The 74-year-old sister has been a member of Monastery Immaculate Conception since the early 1950s. Her parents were from Minnesota and North Dakota, and her father’s job took the family all over the Midwest. When she was in the third grade, they moved to Indianapolis where she attended grade school and high school.
She began her college work at St. Benedict in Ferdinand, as she entered the Benedictine order there. As most young sisters of that time, she began a teaching career.
She was called back to Ferdinand in the late 1960s and became a formation director at the monastery. At the time, there were 50 women in temporary formation. That was her first foray into the field of spiritual direction. “What should I do?” she remembers asking, and being told to teach a Sunday morning class. “I started to develop a curriculum for formation.”
In the mid 1970s, she attended the Institute of Religious Formation in St. Louis, and “that’s where I got a sense of the context of spiritual direction.”
When she returned to Ferdinand, she worked to provide on-going formation in the community which meant, in part, providing spiritual direction for the sisters.
“That’s when we started Kordes,” she said, of the retreat center on the monastery grounds, and that’s when she started bringing in noted theologians every summer to “get us up to date after Vatican II. They got us abreast theologically. It had a tremendous effect on the community.”
By the 1980s, she pulled away from administrative duties, and began concentrating on working as a spiritual director.
In 1986, she took a sabbatical at an ashram in Oklahoma, and learned about East-West dialogue. She laughs as she remembers heading to Tulsa with plans of reading the classics, books by St. Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross.
She did, but she also learned about “sitting prayer,” or “centering prayer.” At the end of the four months, she realized “the most important time was the sitting, the sitting in God’s presence. It was a most transformative time.”
She determined that she wanted to learn more about the Christian form of centering prayer, and so she headed to Minnesota to attend a retreat given by Father Keating.
During her years as a spiritual director, she had always looked for ways to teach people to pray. “I had all the pieces of the puzzle, and he [Father Keating] helped put it together. He put it in the context, because I didn’t have the overall context.”
She was so excited about what she learned at the retreat from Father Keating that she returned to Ferdinand and transcribed all of his tapes. “I was so taken. I thought, ‘There is something here.’”
She was certified as a presenter of centering prayer, and that evolved into teaching lectio divino, a traditional Catholic practice of scriptural reading, meditation and prayer.
And that’s how she stayed very busy — until 2000. That year, as her lungs filled with fluid and there seemed to be no medical solutions, her doctor gave her two weeks to live.
Her brother, Father John Tasto, traveled to Indiana from Mexico to anoint her.
Within days of the doctor’s prognosis, she woke up in the middle of the night and she couldn’t get her breath. “I was drowning. Fluid was building up in my lungs.”
Suddenly, her whole life flashed in front of her, and she felt a presence right behind her. “It was Jesus, and the two of us were looking at my life, and as each situation came up I was the judge — a very critical judge.
“I pointed out all that I had done wrong, and I heard, ‘Maria, you made mistakes, but you learned from those mistakes.’
“He nudged me to go on, and we went through my whole life.”
As the encounter ended, she was overcome with gratitude. “It bubbled up inside of me — what had been choking me before, now was gratitude for God’s patience with me. He pointed out to me it was a learning process.”
She’s still not sure how long it lasted — minutes or hours — but she says it was a watershed moment for her. “It filled me with confidence in God’s love.” She always knew in her head that she was loved, but now she had the heart knowledge.
As her body slowly returned to good health, she struggled to make sense of what had happened. “At first, I could hardly articulate it, and it dawned on me slowly what had really happened.”
The event was transforming, she said, noting the “confidence it gave me of God’s love particularly in contrast to my criticalness.”
She learned that transformation happens gradually through “our vulnerability and God’s love, compassion and mercy.”
And, because of what had happened to her, she could provide answers to the man in the Dominican Republic who questioned why we weren’t being told we are loved by God and that we are basically good.
So when her community began to process ways to help people on their spiritual journeys, Sister Marie knew she could provide some answers.
“That’s the underlying message of the tapes, that we are loved by God, and that we are basically good. It’s a simple guide to help people who are serious pilgrims on the way.”
DVDs show ‘how to be transformed by God’
Ann Byrom of Mount Vernon was invited to attend the tapings of Benedictine Sister Maria Tasto’s DVD “A Transformed Life.”
“It was a remarkable taping,” she said. Sister Maria had undergone heart surgery months earlier, and when she arrived for the taping “I looked at her, and she looked thin and frail.”
When the taping began “she was like the Energizer bunny,” Byrom said. “You see her completely get out of God’s way. She is such an open vessel to him. That’s what I witnessed at the tapings.”
Everyone there “had such a deep respect for her. You are aware of what an open vessel she is to God. It’s amazing to see how he works through her.
“She is a most humble creature, and she exudes God’s presence.”
In the DVDs, Byrom said Sister Maria “simplifies everything for you,” adding that “you don’t have to live the monastic life to have this deep spirituality. She shows you how to be transformed by God.”
Of the DVDs, she said, “You can hear them over and over and over again. It’s like having spiritual direction on demand.”
To purchase the DVDs call Monastery Immaculate Conception in Ferdinand at 812-367-1411 or visit the monastery website at www.thedome.org/ATL.