Sister Josephine Magoffin Lucker celebrated 60 years as a Maryknoll Sister at a Mass for religious celebrating their Jubilees on Sunday, Jan. 25, 2015, at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, Los Angeles, CA.
Sister Josephine is one of 10 Maryknoll Sisters who will celebrate 60 years with the congregation in 2015. Three other sisters will celebrate 25 years, 11 Sisters will mark 50 years, 13 Sisters will celebrate 70 years, and three Sisters will mark 75 years with the congregation.
A member of the Magoffin family, one of the principal pioneer families of El Paso, TX, Sister Josephine was born in 1933 in Tientsin, China. (Her father from New York and her mother from El Paso, lived in China at that time because her father was an international lawyer.) Sister Josephine entered Maryknoll Sisters at its Valley Park, MO, novitiate from the Immaculate Conception Parish, El Paso, TX, in 1955. A 1950 graduate of Georgetown Visitation Preparatory School, Washington, DC (1948-1950), she was educated from Grades one through ten by the Sisters of Loretto in El Paso, as she was raised by her family in El Paso from 1936 -1948. She holds a B.A. in sociology/theology from St. Mary’s College, Notre Dame, IN,(1954), an M.A. in religious studies from Mundelein College, Chicago, IL,(1975), teaching certification from Mary Rogers College, Maryknoll, N.Y. (1958); and studied clinical pastoral education at New York University’s Teaching Hospital for one quarter (1986).
Sister Josephine received her first assignment in 1958 to Tanzania. There she first taught in Marian Secondary School, Morogoro, from 1959-1960, and then served as Highschool principal and teacher in Rosary Secondary School, Mwanza, from 1961-1970.
She then participated in the development of a series of religious education training and textbooks (Developing in Christ and Christian Living Today) as a staff member of the AMECEA Pastoral Institute (Gaba) from 1970-1974.
This material was inter-church (ecumenical), a project of the Pastoral Institute, incorporating life themes studied in the light of Scripture, African values and traditions, Church history with special emphasis on Africa, and reflective integration in the Synthesis. This methodology of Life-Bible-Life involved the participants in the dynamic sharing of their own experiences, questions and insights, as was the vision of Vatican Council II. From the end of 1975 to 1980, Sister Josephine, continued at the Pastoral Institute, tasked with helping to give on-site training in the use of these new materials in many countries of Africa.
Sister Josephine returned again to the United States in 1980, doing mission education and promotion work for her congregation in Western States until 1982. She then served on the Maryknoll African Desk, in collaboration with Maryknoll Fathers & Brothers, from 1984-mid 1986, after which she returned to Africa.
From 1987-1993, Sister Josephine did part-time ministry in camps for Mozambican refugees in Zimbabwe.
In 1994-1996, she helped to start the Maryknoll Sisters Mission Presence in Namibia, shortly after that country had gained its Independence from South Africa in 1990.
She was then missioned to El Salvador, doing pastoral work and catechetics, along with accompanying basic Christian Communities, and women’s groups from 1997-2004.
Sister Josephine was then sent to her home community of El Paso, where she was a member of the Maryknoll Border Team, a collaborative effort of the Maryknoll Sisters, Maryknoll Lay Missioners, Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers, from 2005-2009. Her ministry then was working with abused women helping to implement the U.S. Violence Against Women Act (VAWA).
She then moved to the Maryknoll Sisters’ residence in Monrovia, CA, where she currently makes her home. She is involved as a volunteer at the Catholic Worker Soup Kitchen in downtown Los Angeles, Skid Row, a day a week, and in her local parish, Immaculate Conception Church, Monrovia, and in ministry, being ministered to and in ministry with her own Maryknoll Sisters in Monrovia.
Having lived 32 years of her life in Africa, Sister Josephine smilingly says that one of the wonderful gifts that she has been given is the experience of how African peoples, in dance and music and song, express their deep faith and hope and joy of life, in all of its “ups and downs”. In Kiswahili, a language of Eastern Africa, “Tukipenda wenzetu, kati yetu, Mungu yupo” which means “If we love one another, God is in our midst.”
Founded on Jan. 6, 1912, Maryknoll Sisters is the first US-based congregation of Roman Catholic women religious dedicated to foreign mission. They now number 448 members and serve in a wide variety of ministries throughout the world. For more information, please visit our website: www.maryknollsisters.org
