When the Dominican sister Albertine Cevallos was young, serving God and advancing scientific knowledge would have seemed to be two very different activities, even exclusive.
“I grew up in a very rationalist household,” said Sister Albertine, now a science teacher at the Mount of Sales Academy in Catonsville.
Although she was baptized and generally raised in faith, including the Catholic school in the fifth year, most conversations and dinner table outings were going around science, she remembered.
“We have had a rich academic experience,” said his sister Albertine, recalling how her father chemical engineer and doctor-doctor frequently took her, she and her brother, in a science museum.
Sometimes the family of Virginia-Western welcomed more fervent Christians for dinner. Sister Albertine remembers the subject of miracles to come, and she remembers both the politeness expressed at the table and the law period that occurred later.
“They leave, and my parents said,” It’s not real, “said his sister Albertine.
His first exposure to science and faith as complementary rather than opposite concepts came during his college years, to Caltech of all places.
“I worked very hard in high school,” said Sister Albertine. “My dream plan was to go to a very selective college, to study astrophysics and to be a physics teacher.”
The California Institute of Technology – the prestigious Pasadena institution which counts the famous physicist Richard Feynman among his former teachers – clearly produced the first stage of this plan.
“I really expected to be surrounded by scientists sharing the same ideas, where the best you can do is agnosticism,” said his sister Albertine. “I thought it would be in the water there.”
She met something completely different, and “he threw all my vision of the world in a fall”.
To her surprise, the largest group of Caltech students was the Caltech Christian Fellowship, whose members she described as “so intelligent and also voluntary with the homeless, or make sure you have treats for your birthday”.
“These are real human touches and real acts of love,” recalls Sister Albertine.
She has never officially joined the Christian group, but she became a friend with various participants.
Over time, she realized that science had reported faith from the start.
“There is a link between the wonder necessary to study science at a deep level and the contemplation you need to enter a deep prayer,” said Sister Albertine. “A question like:” Why is the sky blue? ” – It’s a step to ask why God loves us so much.”
Find your way
After obtaining her Caltech diploma with a diploma in astrophysics, Sister Albertine continued a diploma in scientific communication from the University of California in Santa Cruz, because she liked the idea of ”explaining science in a way that people understand”.
This decision was in accordance with her current role – helping young women understand science – but when she started an internship in a newspaper in Orlando, Florida, she felt something that would be missing.
“I sucked in something bigger,” she said.
Meanwhile, Sister Albertine’s friends prayed for her.
She went to a non -denominational service and, a little later, to an event of praise and worship in an evangelical church.
“There was a time when I came to believe,” said his sister Albertine. “Before this moment, I would have been skeptical, but after this moment, I was on fire.”
It was in 2010.
Sister Albertine met more Christians. She obtained another internship, this time in Washington, DC, and a chief editor of the publication she carried out was Catholic.
“She would go to lunch mass and I would go with her,” recalls Sister Albertine.
While Sister Albertine learned the Eucharist, she came to a rational realization.
“If it’s Jesus, why wouldn’t you stay with him all day in the Church?”
In her own way, she did her best to do it. She returned home, continued independent writing and worked on biblical studies at night, the mass “as often as possible” and frequent Eucharistic worship.
His prayer and his contemplation made a request: “Lord, help me understand if you are really in the Blessed Sacrament.”
Called
“During worship an afternoon, I felt him call me to offer her my life,” said his sister Albertine. “I knew it was a call to be a sister. I was very humiliated to receive him, because I spent so long not to believe in him.
She attended her first retirement with the Dominicans in 2011, spending time in their parent company in Nashville.
“I didn’t want to leave,” recalls Sister Albertine.
It entered the Dominican sisters of Saint-Cécilia in 2013. The Order based in Nasville is mainly a teaching community, founded in 1860. The sisters are currently teaching more than 15,000 preschool students in college in the United States, Canada, Europe and Australia.
Sister Albertine has been teaching Mount de Sales, who has been administered by Dominicans since the 1980s for four years. She teaches physics, chemistry and IT AP, and helps the robotics team and the ultimate Frisbee Club.
“I love teaching,” she said, noting that she takes her role as a physics teacher as “a pure gift” from her community.
Sister Albertine was presented in the episode of June 8, 2025 of Catholic Review Radio. Click on play below to listen to the full show:
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