‘Take Gentle Care of Your Beautiful Self’
Column by Joe Pisani
You know you’re entering that perilous period of life called the senior years when the people you love start to die.
It happens to all of us, and even though I’m usually saddened by the grief, I always try to remember I’ll have a person upstairs who will put in a good word for me. Yes, it helps to have friends in high places, and you can’t get much higher than heaven.
Recently, a very close friend died, a person who saved my life and certainly my soul.
She was Sister Pauline Semkow, a Sister of Mercy I worked with during the days when I thought partying was more important than praying. Once I said to her, “Sister, I wish I had your faith,” and without a moment’s hesitation, she replied, “All you have to do is ask.”
“It can’t be that easy,” I thought. Well, it was. Sister, you were right. Faith is a gift, so I started asking for it, and I still am.
I knew her when we both were young. Over the years, she helped so many people as a teacher and spiritual director.
You’re lucky if you have one, maybe two, possibly three people who truly make a difference in your life, and guess what, they’re usually people who go largely unrecognized by society. No monumental achievements, no great worldly successes, no notoriety, just lives of quiet holiness.
As a journalist, I had the opportunity to meet people of power and prestige on occasion, and I usually wanted to run in the opposite direction as fast as I could.
Then, there were those like Sister Pauline, whose achievements were truly monumental but often unheralded because they let God work through them and didn’t try to expropriate the glory that is due to God alone. They’re servants of the Lord, or as St. Paul appropriately put it, “slaves of Jesus Christ.”
No Oscars, no Pulitzers, no fashion lines, no skin care products, none of the fake accolades that come from being a celebrity — in short, none of the stuff that gets a lot of attention here, but you won’t be able to put on your heavenly resume. Maybe you can try, but it won’t get you anywhere.
These are people who don’t follow worldly agendas or ideologies. The only agenda they have is Jesus Christ’s.
At the end of Pope St. John Paul II’s life, a news anchor asked a priest to sum up the pope’s life in one sentence, and he replied: “He had many questions in life, but he found all the answers in Jesus Christ.” That was Sister Pauline.
Her obituary said, “Sister Pauline Semkow, formerly Sister Mary Philip, daughter of Philip and Rose (Albano) Semkow, entered into the fullness of life on Monday, May 18, 2026.”
She was born in Middletown and in 1957 graduated from Mount St. Joseph Academy and immediately entered the Sisters of Mercy. There was no question in her mind that she was called to be a bride of Christ. She professed her perpetual vows in 1963.
For almost 25 years, she taught. I met her at Greenwich Catholic Middle School, where she was a math teacher, and I taught English composition and religion.
She had a contemplative side, and I always marveled at how much she trusted God in everything, even the trials and suffering we eventually encounter.
That lifelong “desire for a closer relationship with God” took her to California to the School for Applied Theology at Berkeley, where she became certified to be a retreat and spiritual director, a ministry that took her to Mercyhurst in Pinehurst, North Carolina, and Our Lady of Calvary in Farmington. In her later years, she offered spiritual direction from her home. From time to time, we’d go to lunch (she loved Olive Garden) and talk about life and, of course, God. I guess she always wanted to check up on my spiritual life.
Because of health issues, she retired to Frances Warde Towers and later St. Mary Home, where she died.
She was a humble person, who understood love, joy, hope and the mercy of God more than most of us. One of her favorite sayings was “Take gentle care of your beautiful self.”
OK, Sister, I confess that I always had a hard time with that one because I was usually hard on myself and others, but I promise in the time I have left, I’m going to make a real effort to do what you said. So pray for me please. And take gentle care of your beautiful self.
Until we meet again.