Sister Marilyn Medau (formerly Sister Mary Laetitia)

April, 1935 was fast drawing to a close. John and Marjorie Medau had put away the last dollar of food money for a taxi ride to Saint Mary Hospital, and it was there that Sister Marilyn was born. Four years later, her sister Margaret was welcomed into the family.  Scarcely two years later life changed forever when Marjorie contracted polio and lost the use of her legs. Later in life her father, who had lost a leg in a childhood bicycle accident, would joke that the two of them made it through life on one leg!

Following what she describes as wonderful years at Saint Agnes Elementary School and Academy of the Presentation in San Francisco, Marilyn entered the novitiate of the Sisters of the Presentation. After considering a vocation with Maryknoll Sisters, her dear friend Margaret Cafferty felt called to Presentation, and the two eventually walked up the steps of 281 Masonic Avenue together on June 30, 1953.

At reception, I was given the name ‘Laetitia’ after Mary, Cause of Our Joy, and subsequently taught school at Saint Anne, Saint Teresa and Saint Agnes schools in San Francisco; Our Lady of Lourdes in Los Angeles; and Saint Patrick's in San Jose, and obtained a B.A. from the University of San Francisco. Three of those seventeen teaching years were spent at the novitiate, later Presentation Center, Los Gatos.  These were the years of the Second Vatican Council, a time rich in the church’s history of change and new life.  Sister Marilyn is continually grateful for the opportunity of those years to appreciate the vision of the Council that the church be leaven in the world.  As a teacher of sewing and history, she also marvels that the Sisters were able to make the many habits necessary for the yearly reception ceremony.

When offered her choice of name after the council, she reclaimed her baptismal name of Marilyn (also after Our Lady), and continued teaching at Saint Mary School, Gilroy.  During these years, she was becoming more aware of the Vatican Council call for religious to read the ‘signs of the times’ as well as to look at the roots of their religious congregations.

Following the call of the Spirit, her ministry took a turn in the road. After relocating to the East Bay, Sister Marilyn worked three years as Pastoral Associate at St. Columba parish. She then became staff or "Connector" for a network of people around the Bay working for the Gospel values of peace and justice. For fifteen years, 1975-1990, Building Ministerial Community supported the participants' dreams of making a transforming difference in the world. This was a privileged time of grace; the group sponsored prayer days and workshops, wrote a monthly newsletter, and presented an annual conference sub-titled “As If People Matter” with noted resource people to pursue the theme on the topics of politics, institutions, spirituality, theology, and community. The very title of the network, "Building Ministerial Community," spoke to the participants' dream and that of Nano, to make a transforming difference in the quality of life for their brothers and sisters.

During these turbulent years on the world stage, Sister Marilyn was privileged to spend two summers at the Catholic Committee on Urban Ministry at the University Notre Dame; three months in Washington, DC with Network, a Catholic Social Justice Lobby; and participate in peace delegations to Cuba and El Salvador.

After the deaths of her parents in 1990-1991, she had a wonderful sabbatical year. She then served in parish ministry at St. Anthony parish in Oakland for one year, then with Religious Witness for Homeless People in San Francisco, before joining St. Mary's Center in Oakland as Director of the Food Program, serving the needs of homeless seniors, families and preschool children. This included shopping weekly at the Alameda County Community Food Bank, where Sister served on the Board for eleven years.  One of the annual programs at St. Mary’s Center was the Christmas program whereby low income families were provided with gifts for children and food for Christmas dinner. Sister Marilyn continued the dream of Nano and lived out the congegation's Directions and Challenges, organizing the food program for homeless and low income seniors, until her retirement in 2018. 

Sister Marilyn now serves on St. Mary’s board supporting its growth as “a  community of hope, healing and justice dedicated to improving the well-being of Seniors and Preschool families in West Oakland.”

St. Mary's Center kitchen	With Executive Director Sharon Cornu

Sister Marilyn is active in her parish, St. Columba in Oakland. Besides a ministry of presence, she belongs to the Hope for Haiti Ministry, the Listening Committee, Morning prayer on Zoom, Proclaimers of the Word, protests for racial equity, and Cease-Fire walks against gun violence. In 2019 she was given the gift of a pilgrimage to the Holy Land with St. Columba, a gift from the parish and community. She counts this experience another time of special grace.

	Ceasefire Walk

With deep gratitude for the gift of her life, she considers a question Nano asked herself: “What does God want of any of us but faith that’s not afraid to put itself at His disposal, to go out one pace beyond?” Continuing the challenge from Nano to go “one pace beyond,” Sister Marilyn's life has taken some circuitous routes along the way. Sister Raphael Considine, in her poem "Trasna," puts it this way:
    "When your star rises deep within, trust yourself to its leading.
    You will have light for your first steps."

More meaningful prayers/reflections:

The Prayer of St. Francis:
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace: where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy.

O divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console, to be understood as to understand, to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive, it is in pardoning that we are pardoned, and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen.  
 

and this reflection by Edwina Gately:

I do not need to seek God.  God is already here
Waiting to be found, soaked in my reality.
My journey is to be one of recognizing God, always already present,
And surfacing that presence in my daily life.

Ministries: