Christine Julie “Christine Marie” McGuirk

Sister Christine Julie McGuirk had a happy childhood in a large Irish Catholic family in Cambridge, Mass. Among seven children, the family had two sets of twin girls (Sister Christine was a twin), another girl and two boys.

Her family was very active and well-known in their parish of St. Mary in Cambridge. She attended St. Mary’s Catholic School through 12th grade, and her brothers went to a Jesuit high school.

Sister Christine remembers that the Sisters gave vocation talks, and she began sensing a calling to religious life in the seventh grade. “One of my teachers, Sister Agnes Claire, was a great influence and inspiration,” she says. “She nurtured my vocation!”

People thought that one of the other McGuirk sisters would enter religious life, but Christine was the one who joined SNDdeN as a postulant on August 1, 1951, in Waltham, Mass. Her first assignment was teaching 50 fifth-grade boys at St. John School in Peabody, Mass. She loved the children, but was so new to teaching that she didn’t realize the boys were misbehaving. With the help of another Sister, she worked on her classroom management skills until her students were in ship shape.

In time, Sister Christine taught seventh graders and then high school science classes, including 10 years at Chaminade Julienne High School in Dayton, Ohio. For 20 years, she was a well-respected biology teacher at Boston College High School, a Jesuit school for boys in Boston, where she was one of only two women on the faculty. She remembers loving that time in her career and finding the Jesuits helpful and the students well-behaved. After she retired, she went back to visit during prom and was touched when the students and faculty gave her a standing ovation.

One of her memorable assignments was serving 10 years in Kenya at the Sisters’ teacher-training school. “I truly enjoyed going out to the classrooms and watching my students teach,” Sister Christine says. “Over the years, I learned as much from my students as they learned from me.”

At the time of her 75th Jubilee in 2026, Sister Christine expressed gratitude for the wonderful life she has had as an SNDdeN: “I am grateful to God for many blessings in my life: my extended family, my students who became SNDs and my many missions.”

Updated in 2026