Consuela Torrecer of Puunene, Maui, is a contemplative Maryknoll Sister, a member of the missionary order’s little known “cloistered” community, which pursues a life of prayer for the missions and the world within its New York convent.

Sister Consuela celebrated her 50th anniversary in Maryknoll on May 18 with five others at Maryknoll Sisters Center, Maryknoll, N.Y.

Consuela was born in Puunene to Filipino immigrants, one of 10 girls and one boy. Her family belonged to the now-closed Holy Family Parish. She attended St. Anthony High School in Wailuku, which at the time was staffed by Maryknoll Sisters, and graduated in June 1956. She aspired to be a Maryknoll Sister, but first decided to work for two years in Honolulu.

Sister Consuela entered the Maryknoll novitiate in Valley Park, Missouri, in December 1958. Accompanying her as an assistant novice mistress was her beloved Sister Mary Modesta (Margaret Ell) who had been principal at St. Anthony.

After making her first profession in August 1961, Sister Consuela went with the newly professed group to the motherhouse, now called the Maryknoll Sisters Center, outside Ossining, in Maryknoll, NY.

While working at the motherhouse, she came to the realization that she was called to a life of prayer. She requested an assignment to the cloistered community within Maryknoll and was assigned there in 1965, returning first to visit her family in Maui and Honolulu.

In 1971, Sister Consuela began giving retreats and spiritual direction. From May to September of that year, she and Sister Cecilia Viveiros traveled to Asia to give retreats to Maryknoll Sisters in the Philippines, Taiwan, Japan, Korea, Hong Kong and Hawaii. She also became a charismatic prayer group leader from 1971 until 1986. She took a course on spiritual direction and directed retreats from September 1980 to June 1981, accompanying people on their spiritual journeys.

When the Maryknoll Cloistered Sisters established a mission cloister in Guatemala, Sisters Consuela, Helen Werner and Ruth Rienda were the first to be sent there, in November 1985. In preparation for this assignment, the sisters studied Spanish at the Maryknoll Fathers Language School in Cochabamba, Bolivia. Their cloister was the convent of a parish which had no resident pastor. The sisters were a prayer presence among the people of the Mayan tribe.

Sister Consuela returned to the cloister in Maryknoll, N.Y., in 1994. The following year the Cloistered Community changed its name at its annual assembly to the Maryknoll Contemplative Community, to more accurately describe a life of prayer, rather than an existence “cloistered,” or “walled off,” from the world. The new title better serves the original intention of the Foundress Mother Mary Joseph Rogers in 1931 when she first established the cloister as a group of missioners committed to a life of prayer for the work of the missions, for missioners and for the world.

Today Contemplative Communities of Maryknoll Sisters are present in Guatemala, in Southern Sudan, and in Thailand. Sister Consuela continues in her accompaniment of a Women’s Prayer Group from 2000 until the present.