Sr. Esther Mary Nickel, RSM, brings a wealth of knowledge, experience and compassion to the Archdiocese of Detroit’s Office of Worship

DETROIT — Sr. Esther Mary Nickel, RSM, has led a roundabout life.

Growing up in the corn country of Ida, in Monroe County, she was surrounded by farms, so a career in agriculture would have seemed natural.

She did end up with advanced agricultural degrees, but that wasn’t her original plan.

“I was interested in medicine, and I started in respiratory therapy,” Sr. Nickel, the Archdiocese of Detroit’s new director of worship, who started in January, told Detroit Catholic. “I wanted to take care of children who were dying, and my route was to be pediatric pulmonology.”

In 1980, she entered the Religious Sisters of Mercy in Alma, with the intention to continue her health care ministry.

“I was a member of the community, and we were starting new convents at the time,” Sr. Nickel said. “We started a new convent in Jackson, Minn., and we took on helping the small hospital there and started a medical clinic. Because of my experience in that rural community, I was asked to study agriculture.”

So Sr. Nickel finished her bachelor’s degree in biology — not heading toward medicine, which was her original plan, but instead studying agronomy and plant genetics at the University of Minnesota, where she would earn masters and doctorate degrees.

“I did a lot of lab work as part of my research, but mostly I was working with farmers and I loved it,” Sr. Nickel said. “They taught me a lot. They helped me deepen my faith even more than it was. I was looking at sustainable agriculture and practices of organic agriculture.”

While working with farmers and young people in Minnesota, Sr. Nickel was given the opportunity to visit her fellow sisters living and working in Rome — another experience that would change her life.

Her community asked her to again begin studies — this time in sacred theology — with an eye toward developing new formulas for liturgies for the Sisters of Mercy.

“I thought it would be a three-week trip, but then I was asked to start studies again, so I stayed in Rome and earned a bachelor’s in sacred theology from the Angelicum (Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas), and a doctorate in sacred liturgy from the Pontifical Institute for the Liturgy at St. Anselm’s in Rome,” Sr. Nickel said.

“My work was a beautiful opportunity, because I was asked to develop the formula of the prayers for the Mass and the Liturgy of the Hours for our religious community under the patronage of the title of Mary, Mother of Mercy,” Sr. Nickel continued. “So it was a great joy to do that.”

Sr. Nickel’s original Latin texts were submitted to the Vatican’s Congregation for Divine Worship for approval, before being translated into German, Italian and English.

It was then that she developed a deep love and appreciation for the liturgy that dramatically transformed her life.

“When I went to Mass, I always had a good and lively faith, but when I went to Rome, I thought, ‘There's something different here. And we’re missing something,’” Sr. Nickel said. “What I realized we were missing was this sense of prayer and solemnity that brings us into a deeper relationship with God.”

Upon completing her studies in Rome, Sr. Nickel was asked to serve as professor of sacred liturgy and sacramental theology at St. John Vianney Theological Seminary in Denver from 2004-16 — where she did her job so well that she no longer had one.

“Our goal in Denver, which was laudable, was to participate in the formation of young priests so that they then could take our jobs,” Sr. Nickel laughed. “And indeed, the time came when there were young priests would had studied there, and I could happily turn over the courses that I taught to them.”

After a brief period as a consultant in the Denver archdiocese’s worship office, Sr. Nickel moved on to the Diocese of Sioux City, Iowa, as assistant director of worship, before she was called back to Michigan to serve in the Diocese of Saginaw, teaching high school and college biology and assisting in the diocesan worship office.

After taking a leave of absence during the COVID-19 pandemic to finish a book she was writing on sacramental and pastoral charity, Sr. Nickel was approached by the Archdiocese of Detroit to consider becoming its new director of worship.

Though her life’s path might seem windy and disconnected, that’s not how Sr. Nickel sees it. From medicine to farming to liturgy, the energetic sister finds a common thread.

“When I was farming, I learned a lot about cultivation,” Sr. Nickel said. “I learned a lot about the beauty of creation and wonder. When we pray the Canticle of Daniel — ‘Bless the Lord for the sun and the rain and the snow and the sleet’ — that gave me a beautiful insight into worship. The things that come from God, such as wheat, we give back to Him in the offering of the Mass.”

Sr. Nickel noted that the Vatican Congregation for Divine Worship’s Latin name is Culto Divino — “divine cult, but actually divine cultivation,” she said.

“As I learned about cultivation and growing crops and working with others, I started to think, as we worship God, what is this cultivation?” Sr. Nickel said. “There’s the cultivation of soil and the cultivation of souls. It seems like the Lord wants me to assist in the cultivation of souls, and liturgical formation helps us, as baptized, get to our eternal goal, which is heaven.”

In the Archdiocese of Detroit, Sr. Nickel will pick up where retired worship director Dan McAfee left off, working with RCIA directors, catechumens and candidates, and assisting Archbishop Allen H. Vigneron with planning special liturgies, but she’s most looking forward to helping parishes realize the deep connection to the Lord that can be found through liturgy.

“Little by little, everything is being reformatted in a very beautiful way through the Office of Evangelization and Missionary Discipleship, of which Fr. (Stephen) Pullis is the director,” Sr. Nickel said. “Seeing the Office of Worship as part of evangelization and missionary discipleship is huge. And I think that's exactly the right place for it.

“When we have a little dip in faith, it’s sometimes because we're not making acts of faith to believe that Jesus is truly present in the Blessed Sacrament,” Sr. Nickel added. “When we were baptized, we became a new creation. We need to ask for the grace to believe this. We have to be intentional.”