Sister Maria Felicite

SISTER MARIA FELICITE        ND 4775              ⇒PDF Download
Gertrud SCHOLTE VAN MAST

Maria Regina Province, Coesfeld / Germany

Date and Place of Birth: June 4, 1933 Kleine-Mast near Vreden, Germany
Date and Place of Profession: August 30, 1955 Coesfeld
Date and Place of Death: November 14, 2013 Coesfeld
Date and Place of Funeral: November 19, 2013 Coesfeld

Sister Maria Felicite was born as the seventh of the eleven children of the farmer Heinrich Scholte van Mast und his wife Maria, born Gehling, in Kleine-Mast near Vreden, County Ahaus. On June 7, 1933, she was baptized in St. George’s Church in Vreden. In 1940, she received her First Communion and in 1943 she was confirmed. Together with five brothers and five sisters she grew up in her parental home. Her eldest sister Helene entered the congregation of the Franciscans of Mauritz and received the name Maria Celinis.

From 1939 to 1947, Gertrud attended the primary and secondary school in Vreden. When she was eleven years old, she was shot in the knee by a low-flying aircraft of the Allied Forces. This injury caused her pain all her life long. After completing school, she started the apprenticeship of a seamstress at Josefshaus, Vreden, which she finished with a very good examination. After her apprenticeship, she worked from May 1951 to the beginning of 1953 in the sewing room of the children’s home Vinzenzwerk e.V. in Handorf near Münster.

The Catholic way of life in her family and in her home town Vreden had formed Gertrud. Her relationship with our Lady was especially important to her. The decision to chose religious life had certainly been influenced by her encounter with the Sisters of Notre Dame who took care of children from broken families at the so-called Vinzenzwerk. Moreover, she had experienced her sister’s joining a religious congregation.

On January 21, 1953, Gertrud began her novitiate in the Congregation of the Sisters of Notre Dame. In the reference by the parish, which she handed in like all the candidates, the parish priest confirmed that by her way of life she had done “credit to her parents and to the parish.“
Before professing her final vows in 1960, Sister M. Felicite was in charge of sewing habits in Coesfeld and Vechta and she took care of the chapel and the reception desk. From 1961 to 1976, she gave sewing classes and taught needlework in Allagen, where she was also the local superior for three years. She completed her training as a seamstress by getting a dressmaker’s diploma.

Thanks to her skillful hands and to her capacity to sew habits made-to-measure, we have been wearing well-fitting clothes for decades and we are grateful that she used her talent for us. Since 1978, she was responsible for the reception desk in Kloster Annenthal, where she always showed a great willingness to help. Especially on feastdays we enjoyed her ever new flower decorations which she arranged with great creativity.
With loving interest she maintained the contact to her family.

She left us unexpectedly and as silently and discreetly as she had lived among us. We know that she is now in God’s hands where she can rest after a very active life.