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| Sister Miriam Therese Winter, M.M.S. |
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Nomination:
For her role as American Musician, Composer, Author and Educator
Gloria Winter was born on June 14, 1938 in Passaic, New Jersey. Her first recollection is that she loved the sounds of words that sing. She knew nothing about music. But words! These were her imaginary friends, the “playthings” of her youth - which have carried over into adulthood. She wrote her first poem at age six, and though it was only a “one-liner,” she realized that poetry would be her means of learning to communicate. At that early age, the fact that her simple poem was actually an original “composition” hooked her - and since that time, she’s never stopped creating. Her poems would become her interpreters.
Shortly after graduating from high school in 1955, Gloria entered the Medical Mission Sisters in Philadelphia. After her postulancy, she and the other members of her class, were given the traditional habit of the congregation, a grey dress and scapular, a silver cross, a large rosary, and a brilliant blue veil. Each sister was also given a new, religious name, and Gloria was given the name Miriam Therese. The symbolism of exchanging a birth name for a religious name was that each new sister was to “take off the old woman - and put on the new.”
In 1966 Sister Miriam Therese Winter and ten other Medical Mission Sisters traveled to New York City to record their first album at Avant Guard Records on West 57th Street. In the recording studio, she snapped her fingers to and fro, giving the guitarist the initial beat, and then the sisters took off, singing their hearts out. Seven hours later, the award-winning Gold album, “Joy is like the rain” was birthed. During the recording session, “investigators” asked her what she was trying to accomplish. “Singing is part of healing, it’s medicine.” Sister believes that music is part of the physician’s art. “It’s tonic to the spirit!” The brilliant, light, bouncy rhythms of her songs have changed the way many Catholics worship. And no matter if the songs are about sorrow or joy, they all share the same theme of life, and they reflect the Bible - with a beat. The amazing part of the process of writing scriptural songs - is that there’s no end.
In 1967, Miriam Therese was invited to perform some of her works at Carnegie Hall. It was the first time, in the hall’s 75 years, that an ecumenical concert of modern sacred music was performed. The event was called “Praise the Lord in Many Voices,” and there was not an empty seat in the house.
Miriam Therese’s music has gone far beyond the Catholic Church. She has been commissioned to compose hymns for Protestant Church hymnals, for anniversaries honoring church-foundings, for dedications of chapels, and for church-school programs. She won the ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers) Popular Award for 29 years in a row, as well as a Citation from the House of Representatives and numerous honors for her best selling albums and books.
Thirty-three years after she wrote and recorded “Joy is like the rain,” Miriam Therese Winter has 11 albums available, 10 books and 2 anthologies of music. Her life has been an excursion of miracles in which she has doctored the ailing church to better health. Though she never made it into the field of medicine, her ability to spiritually heal so many illnesses of the body, mind and soul through her talents, pays tribute to the God Who has made it all possible. Her selfless giving of her spirit has made this world a much better place!
This nun and artist-rare sums it up best: “Join me, please, in a spirituality of song and singing that seeks to integrate liturgy and life through a biblical understanding of word that is so much more than words. Together let us sing of Word enfleshed, Wisdom embodied, Spirit dwelling within and among us, day after day, year after year, re-creating our world and re-imagining you and me.”
“We are called to be
a healing presence
at the heart
of a wounded world,
to witness to the integrity
of all creation,
and to build one world
where the gifts of all people,
all cultures,
all creation,
are affirmed and celebrated.”
Constitution, Medical Mission Sisters
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