Senite Sahlezghi ’11

Class of 2011

When Senite Sahlezghi ’11 did her first clinical rotation as a nursing major, she had a life-changing realization.

“I realized I wasn’t supposed to be a nurse,” she remembers. Instead, “I was called to be with the patients and listen to their stories.”

She switched her major to mental health and human services and began to focus on counseling.

After graduating, Senite returned to her hometown of Denver, Colorado, and spent a year as a missionary doing homeless outreach with Christ in the City. She then earned a master’s in counseling from the University of Denver and worked at Samaritan House, a homeless shelter run by Catholic Charities. For the past four years, she has been the program director for Marisol Health Clinic in Lafayette, caring for women in unexpected pregnancies and crisis situations.

“These women who find themselves in poverty or in crisis are beautiful, beautiful people who desire to be good moms, and to get to walk alongside them in that process has been really beautiful,” she says.

One day in 2015, Senite went hiking and attended Mass on a mountain. During the Eucharistic Prayer, she had another life-changing realization: In her heart, she heard, “I am supposed to be Christ’s.”

She spent the following year discerning with the Missionaries of Charity. Praying in their garden in 2016, she had one more life-changing realization: She was supposed to be Christ’s bride as a consecrated virgin.

For six years, Senite discerned her calling to this ancient Church tradition through spiritual direction and formation. On June 12, 2021, the feast of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, she was consecrated a virgin for the Archdiocese of Denver during a Mass offered by Archbishop Samuel J. Aquila.

Outwardly, many parts of her life have remained the same since her consecration. She still has the same job. She still loves spending time with family and friends, hiking, cycling, running, and going to concerts. Interiorly, though, the lens through which she does these things has changed.

“The heart of the vocation is a spousal union and a spousal love with Jesus Christ,” she explains. And so, in everything she does, in every interaction, “the hope is that there are opportunities to hear the voice of Christ and see the face of Christ in the other, and then to be able to receive that and to give that.”