Sister Cecilia Agustina Hervás, R.A. returned home to God on Tuesday, April 8, 2025. She was in the 91st year of her life and the 63rd year of her vowed life in the Religious of the Assumption.
Born in Iloilo City on the island of Panay in the Visayas Region of the Philippines on May 26, 1933, Sister Cecilia was the first of the six children of Candelaria and Eliseo Hervás. From a very early age, she showed remarkable musical talent, and often said that her parents had had her at the piano before she could talk. She would also add with a grin that her need to practice excused her from many household chores when she was a child, a point that her younger sisters always confirmed as all too true!
She and her family lived through the Second World War in Iloilo; after the war, she attended St Scholastica’s College in Manila. From there, in the mid-1950s, she headed to the United States, where she studied on scholarship at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, NY, graduating in 1960 not only with a Master’s degree in Music, but also as the winner of the prestigious Performer’s Certificate. It was there that she first experienced snow.
Soon after she left Eastman, Cecilia traded in her full skirted swing dresses and kitten heels for the purple and white habit of the Religious of the Assumption, entering the congregation at their Ravenhill campus and novitiate. After three years of religious formation, she made her first vows on August 31, 1962 and was then assigned to the Philippines, where she taught Religion, Music and English for 22 years, making her final profession of vows in September 1967. During that time, she was also entrusted with other responsibilities, including the formation of the novices. She was a superior in several communities during these years, including in the community of Kauswagan, Mindanao, where she and the sisters shared the hardships of their people amid the relentless violence between government and rebel forces.
In 1985, she was given a different kind of mission: helping to start a new foundation of the Assumption Sisters in Worcester, Massachusetts, while working at Assumption College in partnership with Assumption’s sponsors, the Assumptionists. The men’s congregation had been founded by Fr. Emmanuel d’Alzon, a dear friend of the foundress of the Religious of the Assumption, Mother (now Saint) Marie Eugénie Milleret, in the 1840s. Now, 145 years later, the two groups were planning to collaborate once more. Sr. Cecilia would do her part by spending the next thirteen years at Assumption College. There she worked as a campus minister among students seeking deeper meaning in their lives. She did that first of all by befriending them; her ancient and well-thumbed address book bears witness to her tremendous capacity for taking young people where they were. She knew how to listen and to encourage them. She also knew how to have fun! Her gift was simple: she liked people. They liked her. Really, they loved her. And she loved them back.
At Assumption, in collaboration with her dear friend Fr. John Franck, A.A., Sr. Cecilia initiated the Mexico Mission, which rapidly became an important element in the life of the College and in the lives of many students. Of the mission, which allowed young Americans to experience firsthand the life of the Otomi Indians of the deeply rural village of San Ildefonso, about two or three hours north of Mexico City by a bone-jolting bus ride, she said: “The experience was a taste of the harsh reality of the marginalized and effected in us an inner transformation.” That interest in transformation reflected a key element in her working philosophy, influenced as it was by the ideas of Marie Eugénie and d’Alzon concerning the “transformation of society,” one young person at a time.
As she was working at Assumption, however, she was also feeling a call to a personal transformation. On entering religious life twenty-five years earlier, she had left the rigorous and time-consuming demands of classical music behind. Teaching music to schoolchildren or providing accompaniment for liturgies was work she did gladly, but the joy of high-level performance that had been nurtured by her education had receded. She had believed that the two worlds could not co-exist; looking back, she said, “Well, maybe they couldn’t when I was just beginning.” But, in her maturity, she found herself listening very attentively to what she would always refer to as “the call to befriend my music once more.” For Cecilia, it was clearly a divine invitation to renew her God-given gift, and with typical rigor and discipline, she returned to the piano with her whole being – and a little bit of Filipina charm as well. When Cecilia discovered that the lady across the street had a Steinway in her living room that hadn’t been played in years, she arranged to have it tuned in exchange for the privilege of practicing on it. Even with the windows closed, the voice of “Stan the Steinway” (as the instrument was known on the Assumption side of the street) could be heard loud and clear as she prepared for her return to the world of musical performance.
She said of those days, “It was at this time of my life that I took up the piano again but with a new sense of music as GIFT to be shared. I have since given concerts in this country and in Paris, Denmark and the Philippines, integrating elements of reflection within the program.” Those elements of reflection played a role at the Assumption Ecumenical Institute, an annual week-long series of courses that attracted many people who wanted the opportunity to listen to Scripture scholars like Fr. Jerome Murphy-O’Connor and Sr. Carolyn Oziek, among others. Cecilia would provide an evening of music and reflection that was always well received, mingling Chopin and Schumann with Filipino stories and wisdom.
After thirteen years at Assumption, Cecilia was on the move again, this time to the sisters’ community at Lansdale, PA and the parish of St. Stanislaus, where she served for many years in pastoral ministry. As usual, she made many good friends, including those seeking entrance to the Church through RCIA, members of the Secular Franciscans, and the ladies of the Scripture Study group. Cecilia always enjoyed spending time with others and with the Word – and if a delicious lunch was to be had into the bargain, well, that would be, as she would often say: “THE BEST!” Even after she retired from active parish ministry, she could be found every morning at the 8:00 mass, playing the piano for the liturgy. She encouraged the song leaders, skillfully and discreetly supporting them—covering for them, too, if they began to wander off the tune. Similarly, every day, she would play a brief musical interlude as the celebrant prepared the gifts of bread and wine. With impeccable timing, she would draw her playing to a close at exactly the same moment when Father would be ready to begin the Eucharistic Prayer with the Sanctus. How did she do both of those things so well and make it sound so easy? Her reply gives another insight into the way she led her life: “To be an accompanist is to recognize the needs of the person you’re accompanying and go from there.” Many of us felt the truth of that in her encounters with us, whether they were in the musical or spiritual realms or even just in the realm of “sitting around telling stories and sharing a glass of Pete’s Wicked Ale.” Stories like “How I Discovered Adobo” (by accidentally using vinegar instead of white wine in a chicken dish) or “The Time the Japanese Were Shooting At Us and I Was Carrying One of The Twins,” or “When We Visited Crystal Cave, I Promised the Sisters I Wouldn’t Know Anyone but Suddenly My Second Cousin Appeared,” and a million more like that.
Finally, it’s important to recall that Cecilia was a woman of prayer. She accompanied many people on their spiritual journeys, whether as a professional director at the Jesuit Retreat Center at Wernersville, PA or simply as a holy friend who would listen to another’s stories and hold them warmly and safely. Even as she was wonderfully funny, able to laugh at herself and her foibles (of which there were quite a few), she was also wonderfully serious. Cecilia’s credo was “In beauty is the salvation of the world,” a saying attributed to Dostoevsky. She sought beauty always, first and foremost with her musical gift, but also just in the way she was. Her deep faith in the God who had made her, the God who had also made Bach, Beethoven, Chopin and Schumann, prompted her to join them in God’s work of healing the world through beauty.
Sr. Cecilia spent her last days in the community of Philadelphia, lovingly surrounded by the sisters and by a team of care-givers who did everything possible to make her comfortable and at peace. The sisters are grateful to them and to the team Penn Hospice for their care and compassion, as well as to the many friends who visited, sent cards and emails or who simply prayed “for Chichi.”
Sr. Cecilia is survived by her devoted youngest sister Celerina Hervás, who spent many months accompanying her on her final journey home to God, her sister Eloisa Hervás of Montreal and her brother Dr. Eliseo Hervás and his wife, her sister-in-law Nelia Hervás of Temple, TX, her three nieces, Chrissy Hervás, Pinky Hervás and Marinelle Mayo and her husband Mark, as well as her grandnephew Ellis Mayo and her grandniece Lauren Mayo. She is also survived by her Assumption sisters and brothers all over the world.
In lieu of flowers, you might consider a donation to the Assumption University Campus Ministry SEND trips (of which the Mexico Mission was the forerunner) that engage students in week-long encounters with people in need domestically and internationally. Donations in memory of Sister Cecilia may be sent to Campus Ministry, ATTN: SEND, Assumption University, 500 Salisbury St., Worcester MA 01609 or through the RA website (assumptionsisters.org/donate) with the memo Sr. Cecilia.
She will be greatly missed. May she rest in peace and rise in glory. Amen!
Wake service: Monday night, April 21, 5-7 p.m. Prayer Service: 6 pm Simcox-McIlvaine Funeral Home, 532 E. Main Street, Lansdale, PA 19446.
Viewing and Funeral mass: Tuesday morning, April 22. Viewing: 9:00-10:30, Mass at 10:30. Saint Stanislaus Catholic Church, 51 Lansdale Avenue, Lansdale, PA 19446.