How accompanying migrants deepens the call to religious life
“I do not know what God has in store for me, but whatever it is, I trust that He will give me what I need to respond.”
For Sister Josefina “Pina” Bejarano Padilla, those words captured what it meant to profess her final vows this summer: to say “yes” to God for life without knowing exactly where that yes would lead.
As family, friends, and members of her religious community gathered for her Profession, Pina made her lifelong commitment as a Missionary Sister of the Eucharist. Among the faces before her were those of her parents. As Pina offered her “yes” to God, she saw them offering a “yes” of their own, embracing her religious sisters as their new family.
It is a moment Pina says she will never forget.
But the “yes” she offered that day had been years in the making. Long before her final vows, Pina had been learning to recognize and respond to God’s call—a journey that brought her to the border more than a decade ago. For years, she has lived out that calling through her ministry with migrants at Kino Border Initiative in Nogales.
Pina’s journey invites us to look beyond the moment of Profession itself and ask: How does a calling like hers take shape over a lifetime, and what happens when that calling meets the realities of the border?
A Call That Begins Long Before Final Vows
The lifelong commitment Pina made this summer was the culmination of a much longer process of discernment and formation. Within the Catholic tradition, vocation is God’s invitation to a particular way of life and service. Most Catholics live out that call as lay people, including through marriage, family life, work, and service to others. Some discern a call to religious life as sisters, brothers, or priests.
For women and men discerning religious life, that response unfolds over many years. Through prayer, community life, study, and ministry, they learn to listen more closely for where God may be leading them. Religious sisters and brothers first profess temporary vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience before eventually making those commitments for life through perpetual vows, also known as final vows. This summer, Pina and Sister Anastasia “Tachita” Monjarez, M.E., both reached that milestone, professing their final vows as Missionary Sisters of the Eucharist.
For some men, a vocation to religious life also includes a call to the priesthood. In addition to professing religious vows, religious priests receive the Sacrament of Holy Orders, through which they are ordained to celebrate the sacraments and shepherd God’s people. KBI’s Interim Executive Director, Father Victor Pro Yanez, SJ, reached that milestone this summer when he was ordained a Jesuit priest.
For Pina, even the final year before her Profession was a period of continued preparation and discernment. She describes it as “a year of deepening her commitment, filled with emotions, feelings, dreams, and changes–a year she would not take anything away from or add anything to. It was, simply, a gift.”
That year also brought an unexpected challenge. In December 2025, Pina’s mother was diagnosed with cancer. Throughout the months that followed, Pina experienced what she describes as God’s faithfulness through the many people who prayed for her family and through the Missionaries of the Eucharist, who opened their home in Colima so her mother could receive care surrounded by support.
Then, just one week before Pina’s Profession, her family received remarkable news: the cancer was gone. “I could not have received a better gift or a greater sign of God’s faithfulness,” Pina reflected.
The news became part of how Pina understood a year already devoted to preparing for a lifelong commitment. But that year was only the final stretch of a vocation that had been taking shape for much longer. More than a decade earlier, one important chapter of that discernment had brought her to the border.
Why The Border? Accompaniment as an Expression of Religious Life
When Pina asked to undertake a mission experience with the Missionaries of the Eucharist in 2015, she was sent to Nogales, Sonora. There, she spent time accompanying women and children at the shelter.
“This experience confirmed my desire to dedicate my life to God,” Pina reflected.
She often returns to the words of Father J. Jesús Ursúa: “There, where the world is hungry…” His words capture something at the heart of religious vocation at the border: a willingness to go where the needs of others call for presence, service, and encounter. Since that first mission in Nogales, Pina says she has continued to find joy in her vocation, reaffirming it “in every place and with every person I encounter.”
Pina’s experience is deeply personal, but the relationship between religious vocation and accompaniment has long been part of Kino’s story. Since its founding, Jesuits and Missionary Sisters of the Eucharist have served alongside one another at the border, living out their distinct vocations through a shared ministry with migrants.
Today, that legacy continues through religious women and men whose ministries take different forms. Kino’s Community Promoter, Sister Cecilia Arias Lopez, M.E., oversees the Livelihoods Project, helping migrants and deportees obtain documentation, access resources in Mexico, prepare for employment, and rebuild stability. Jesuits at Kino serve through pastoral care, spiritual accompaniment, leadership, and daily presence with migrants. Father Victor Pro Yanez, SJ brings to his ministry at the border both his vocation as a Jesuit priest and his own family’s history of migration and migrant labor.
The work itself may vary, but at its heart is a commitment to presence: listening to migrants’ stories, responding to immediate needs, sharing in moments of uncertainty and joy, and recognizing Christ in those they meet. In this way, religious vocation is not lived apart from the realities of the border. It takes concrete form within them.
The Fruit of Encounter
On the day of her Perpetual Profession, Pina found herself thinking not only about the commitment she was making, but about the women whose commitments had come before hers. For 75 years, Missionary Sisters of the Eucharist had dedicated their lives to God in her hometown of Chavinda, Michoacán. Their “yes,” she realized, had helped make hers possible.
“I have reaped what they sowed,” Pina reflected. Now, she says, “it is my turn to sow so that others may reap.”
Her words capture something essential about vocation: what is received is meant to be shared. At KBI, that fruit can happen at the border as religious women and men continue their ministry here, or in communities far beyond it.
Catholic Sisters Walking with Migrants (CSWM) offers one powerful example. The Kino program invites women religious to encounter migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border and then bring what they have learned into their own local contexts. The goal is not simply to witness the realities of migration, but to allow those relationships to inform how sisters pray, minister, advocate, and build community after they return home.
Sister Yliana Hernandez, PBVM, has continued her commitment in New Windsor, New York. She has helped establish a Rapid Response Team and a Solidarity Table with local leaders and community organizations, coordinated “Change the Narrative” events throughout the Hudson Valley, and joined community efforts opposing a proposed ICE detention facility. Her work in New Windsor reflects the kind of local response CSWM seeks to foster: bringing a deeper awareness of migration into the communities where sisters already live and serve.
Yliana’s story is one example of a much broader movement. Across North America, sisters who have participated in CSWM are carrying what they learned into education, parish ministry, pastoral care, advocacy, and community organizing.
Earlier this summer, Sisters Eileen McKenzie, FSPA, and Josephine Panem, RGS, who participated in the March 2026 CSWM cohort, joined survivors and advocates in Washington, D.C., in efforts to advance legislation aimed at preventing human trafficking. The issue intersects closely with the realities of migration, as research from the Polaris Project has documented the particular vulnerability of immigrants to labor trafficking. The sisters’ advocacy reflects another way the experience at the border can move outward: from listening to individual stories of migration to addressing systems that leave people vulnerable to exploitation.
Pina’s image of sowing and reaping offers a way to understand these different expressions of religious life. A seed planted through one relationship may bear fruit somewhere entirely different. For some, that means years of ministry alongside migrants at the border. For others, it means returning home with new eyes for the needs of migrants in their own communities.
Wherever that calling leads, what is received through encounter can be carried forward—taking root in new relationships, new ministries, and new acts of faithful service.
The Invitation
One blessing from the day of Pina’s Perpetual Profession has stayed with her. Her paternal grandfather told her simply:
“I want you to be a kind nun and never forget the poor.”
His words offer a simple reminder of what a life dedicated to God asks: that faith turn us outward, toward one another and especially toward those too often pushed to the margins.
Pina looks toward the future of religious life with hope. Even as fewer women and men enter religious communities, she sees uncertainty as an opportunity for growth—and an invitation to remain open to what God is asking and to new ways of being and serving.
That invitation extends beyond those called to religious life. Every Christian vocation invites us to recognize the humanity of our neighbors and respond with generosity, courage, and love. And Kino’s mission welcomes people of goodwill who share that commitment, regardless of faith tradition. Whether through prayer, advocacy, hospitality, volunteering, or financial support, each of us has a role to play in building a more welcoming world.
This summer, Pina said “yes” to God for life. But her story reminds us that such a commitment is lived through countless smaller yeses: to trust, to listen, to serve, and to remain open to where the journey may lead.
Perhaps the question for the rest of us is simply:
What might your “yes” look like?
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