The Spirit of the Good God Flows Like a River

A Reflection by Sister Liane Delsuc, SNDdeN

After the Belmont Jubilee celebration in August, these five women shared memories of their 50-year friendship, begun when they took first vows together in 1975. left to right: Laura Eakin, Sisters Liane Delsuc, Theresa Linehan, Sharon McMillan, SNDdeN and Lynne Lukenbill.

The celebration of my 50th jubilee as a Sister of Notre Dame de Namur has been a special time to reflect on how the Spirit of our Good God has been at work in my life all these years. I stand in awe and wonder as I recognize the river flowing beneath, a Scriptural image of God’s action in our universe.

I discovered St. Julie Billiart’s story in elementary school in California. During my freshman year in high school, a powerful experience of God showed me the compassion of God towards people living in poverty, which began my sense of call to become a missionary. That call took years to surface again.

Looking back, a series of events reveals the flow of God’s river: I thoroughly enjoyed my Spanish classes in high school, which led me to major in Spanish in college, and ultimately led to teaching in a public-school bilingual first-grade classroom in a low-income district of the San Francisco Bay Area. A tour of Peru before spending the summer with a Chilean family gave me a genuine experience of Peru’s culture, history and art, which I had studied in college. After making my first vows and teaching children with learning differences in South Central and East Los Angeles for eight years, the call to Peru from our Sisters there awakened my missionary spirit. This is what I’ve been called to do. The next 16 years I spent at our school on a sand dune south of Lima.

Living and serving among people living in poverty has taught me about the resilience of the human spirit and the deep faith of many marginalized individuals, whose only hope is in God. Teaching children with learning differences in a multicultural  school amid the strawberry fields of Watsonville, California, for 16 years was then followed by an invitation to Phoenix to live in the first Habitat for Humanity community in the U.S., a neighborhood of African American and Latino people. As I taught English as a Second Language to adults, I became aware of the plight of migrants and the harrowing journeys they undertake in search of safety, and so began my passion to serve and learn from asylum seekers from all over the world. That has led me to expand my tent to include companion volunteers from other faith traditions, who are also called to ‘welcome the stranger.’ Together, we strive to create a welcoming space of respect and dignity for migrants.

What a wonder! How the Spirit has led me, prepared one step at a time for the next step! Holy Mystery! Our God is very good!

This story appears in the Winter 2025 edition of Sowing Goodness, where you can also read about this year’s inspiring Jubilarians.

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