Saint John the Baptist parishioner gives new meaning to Carmelite Fair's 'Run for the Nuns'

Intermountain Catholic

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Mother Maureen Goodwin, Mother Superior of the Carmel of Immaculate Heart of Mary Monastery in Holladay, presents medals to the top runners in the Carmelite Fair 5K run. The top runners were (women) Amber Ryckaert, Carol Cabanillas and Emily Price; and (men) Tyler Nielson, Michael Kelliker and Zachery Manritz. Nielson and Kelliker also finished 1-2 in last year's race, while Ryckaert is a repeat winner for the women's category. (See the photo album on the Intermountain Catholic Facebook page.)

HOLLADAY — Katherine Mahoney participated in the Carmelite Fair’s 5K run for the first time this year. Although she’s known about the fair since she moved to Utah four years ago, "I’m usually traveling up to Canada about this time of year, so we’ve missed it every single year," she said.

This year, however, she decided to stay in Utah for the fair, which was Sept. 18. "I think it’s such a great idea that they do this and it seems like an awesome fundraiser," she said.

But she wasn’t running just to support the nuns at the Carmel of Immaculate Heart of Mary Monastery in Holladay; she also was thinking of her daughter, who on June 21 gave her solemn profession to Mount Carmel Monastery near Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.

"I think she’d be really proud that I was running," Mahoney said of her daughter Colleen, who ran cross country as a high school student and later competed in road races, winning "a ton of medals" before becoming Carmelite Sister Agnes Marie of Divine Mercy.

Mahoney and her husband, Ted, have three children: Sr. Agnes Marie, an older daughter and a younger son. When their middle child announced at age 20 she was going to become a nun, "it was a little bit of a surprise," Mahoney said. "And when she told us she was going to be a Carmelite, we knew nothing about Carmelites. I did not know what a cloistered nun was, and that was a little upsetting to me."

Five and a half years to the day that she entered the monastery, Sr. Agnes Marie professed her solemn vows. That period of discernment was good for her whole family, Mahoney said, because it gave them time to adjust. For example, nine months after Colleen joined the monastery, her father began RCIA and is now a baptized Catholic.

"We were ready when she told us that she was ready to make her solemn profession," said Katherine Mahoney, who is herself a convert to the faith. Since moving to Utah from Canada, she has become the Saint John the Baptist parish coordinator for the Welcome the Stranger refugee resettlement program.

"Our daughter’s profession means we’ve had to talk about our faith," she said. "We’ve had to tell people about what our daughter is doing and talk to family and try to explain something that’s pretty unexplainable. It’s really made us more aware of our faith in so many ways. You have to talk about it. You can’t just say, ‘I have two children.’ I have three children and my middle child is a Carmelite nun. It’s a real conversation stopper sometimes. We pray for vocations, we sing about vocations, and they happen."