When Sister Eunice Teresa of Divine Mercy was seven years old and living in the Dominican Republic, almost out of the blue she announced to her mother and her eight siblings, “I want to be one of those nuns that don’t get out,” -- a cloistered nun, or monja de clausura in Spanish, who lives a life of prayer separated from the outside world.

“I don’t remember ever hearing anything about the Discalced Carmelites,” she said in a recent interview with the Catholic Standard. “But somehow I knew I wanted to be one.”

Sister Eunice made her final profession of vows on August 22, 2020 at the Carmelite Monastery in Port Tobacco, Maryland in a Mass presided by Washington Archbishop Wilton Gregory.

“To me, living a religious life as a Carmelite is living a life of love, of service to others, self-sacrifice, faithfulness to the Rule and penance for love of our Lord Jesus Christ,” Sister Eunice wrote in a reflection on her vocation story. “It is being obedient to the Church’s teaching while living in a community with women that have the same desire to love Him whom have chosen us to be his faithful brides.”

Sister Eunice was born in Dajabon, a town in the Dominican Republic that borders Haiti, where she and her eight siblings were raised by her mother, a devout Catholic teacher. She and her siblings attended a Catholic school run by the Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and her town was ministered to by Jesuit priests.

These early years of her life were filled with her own love for the Lord, Sister Eunice said. Her mother’s example built their familial life around the prayer and the sacraments.

“I remember having a great love for the Lord growing up,” she said. “I wanted to be in Heaven and I wanted my family and everyone to be in Heaven.”

After graduating from high school, Sister Eunice moved to the United States to live with her family, who had moved to Virginia years earlier. While the transition was difficult for her, she said she was grateful to be with her family.

But as she became more and more immersed in the culture of the times, Sister Eunice said she stopped going to Mass and began to separate herself from her family. She then turned all of her attention toward obtaining an education and graduated from George Mason University with an accounting degree in 2007. Continuing her master’s degree in taxation at American University, her dream was to establish her own tax business.

“I set up EMH Tax Services, LLC, registered in Virginia and almost purchased a tax service franchise after I graduated from American University in 2011,” she wrote in her reflection. “I am glad that God intervened before I became too entangled in the business world as a business owner. This would have put pursuing my vocation in Carmel in jeopardy.”

Throughout this time in her life, Sister Eunice said she dated, was even once engaged for marriage – but something was always missing.

“I just said to God, ‘You know Lord, take the lead. If you have something else for me, show me… I’m done doing things my way,’” she said. “That’s when things started happening and my conversion story took place.”

At a Life in the Spirit seminar, Sister Eunice said she heard about the love of the Father for her, for Eunice, the way she was right then, and she had a change of heart.

“Wow, I knew that God loves me just the way I am,” she said. “I don’t have to do anything, I just have to say 'yes.'

“And that was revolutionary for me because I was looking for that love, that person that I could lean back and know that that person would hold me and wouldn’t let me fall. That night I discovered that that person was God. In Him, I have everything. I just opened my heart and decided that I was ready for Him to take the lead.”

A friend of Sister Eunice, who is a third order Carmelite and was familiar with the Carmelites of Port Tobacco, offered to drive Sister Eunice to the convent for a visit on Labor Day in 2012, shortly after Sister Eunice had started to feel a call to religious life.

“As I drove through the gate, I remember saying, ‘This is my future home’,” she said. “And I hadn’t even seen anything.”

From there, Sister Eunice visited the sisters often, keeping in contact with them, and she said, “more certainty began to grow within” her.

In June of 2014, Sister Eunice entered the convent for a three-month live-in experience, and at the end of the three months, she returned home to Virginia to settle her last things and get rid of everything to enter religious life. On Sept 30, 2014, Sister Eunice entered the Carmelites of Port Tobacco, on the eve of the feast of St. Therese. In March 2015, she entered the novitiate, and she took her first vows two years later.

As preparation for her final vows on Aug. 22, Sister Eunice said she has been praying with and reading the book, 33 Days to Greater Glory: A Total Consecration to the Father Through Jesus by Father Michael Gaitley. The consecration, which walks the reader through the Gospel of John, relates well to her Carmelite vocation, Sister Eunice said.

In the weeks leading up to her final vows, Sister Eunice said she was nervous a little, but overjoyed.

“I’m giving my all to God because He is giving His all to me,” she said. “Trust in His mercy and love and let Him take care of everything.”

Her family and relatives attended the ceremony for her final vows on Aug. 22.

“The vocation of Sister Eunice Teresa of Divine Mercy is a gift to the Church… a vocation of prayer and contemplation, love and service, joy and sacrifice,” said Father Carlos Piedrahita, a priest of the Society of Priests of St. Sulpice, who gave the homily at Sister Eunice’s final profession of vows.  “Today’s celebration is not the end of the journey of six years of discernment, but the beginning of a commitment to glorify God and serve his Church through the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience -- three words that frame your spiritual covenant with the Lord; three ways that Jesus presents to you, Sister Eunice, as the path for holiness.”