If you think that Karen Pulaski and Mari Snyder, the only two women in the core community at Mt. Irenaeus, are responsible for doing the dishes and tidying up the place, you’re right.
Karen Pulaski sets the altar for Mass at Holy Peace Chapel at the Mountain.
Just like Kevin Kriso, Lou McCormick, and Joe Kotula, the Mountain’s three resident friars.
Pulaski bristles at the antiquated notion that, as long-term companions at Mt. Irenaeus, she and Snyder mostly tend to the daily needs of the friars. The reality is that all five residents are equal partners in sustaining the community. Everyone pitches in to collectively address doing the dishes, tending the garden, cooking, outside yard maintenance, and cleaning the cabins.
Likewise, each has a role in the Mountain’s most important work.
“We get to open up the world of Franciscanism to people,” said Pulaski, who also serves as the Mountain’s director of faith formation. “Maybe they had a bad experience with organized religion, no experience at all, or they don’t identify as ‘religious’ or even ‘spiritual,’ yet they’re starting to ask themselves if there isn’t a deeper meaning to life. It’s so rewarding to interact with people who are searching, to be able to say, let me share with you what our life is like.”
As long-term companions, Pulaski and Snyder receive room and board, health insurance, and a stipend that covers other expenses. They live and work at the Mountain most of the year.
About 75 percent of their time is spent planning and hosting programs for students, mostly from SBU, but from other institutions as well, Pulaski said. “It might be the rugby team or the dance team coming for an overnight, and there’s a lot of planning and organization that needs to be done,” she said, noting that there were more than 800 student visits at Mt. Irenaeus during the 2024-25 academic year alone.
Adults also visit the Mountain regularly for retreats and other events. Some 60 people participated in a recent 14-month virtual program offering a “deeper exploration” of the Franciscan faith, Pulaski said. There are other outreach programs as well, such as Mountain on the Road and Mountain in Your Home, that take the Mountain’s ministry to cities across the U.S.
For Snyder, joining the Mountain’s core community was an opportunity to live her faith, her values. She’s proud of her life’s work and of the contributions she made to matters important to her: human dignity, equal opportunities for all, protection of the environment.
“I did contribute, but, like many, in somewhat traditional ways, like giving money or serving on a board,” Snyder said. “And that’s great. That’s what people do, that’s service.”
Joining the Mountain was a chance to take the next step, to “be in the life,” she said.
Their new lives didn’t come without some sacrifice, Pulaski said.
“I’ll be honest, there are some who don’t understand what I’m doing, who keep asking, ‘When are you coming home? Haven’t you done that long enough?’ I do miss events and milestones back home because I’m busy here,” she said. “I just think God had more in store for me, and I’m grateful that I was given this opportunity.”
Neither she nor Snyder looks past their next commitment — for Pulaski, one year; for Snyder, six months.
Pulaski said she sits down each year to answer some difficult questions: “Did I spend my time appropriately? Am I following the Mountain’s mission? Did my being here add some value? Did I grow, and am I continuing to change and transform? As long as those things remain in place and I continue to feel this is where God is calling me to be, I will be here.”
Snyder, too, feels she’s where she belongs.
“When I’d visit the Mountain, I’d tell people that I went back to try to get in touch with the young woman who left all those years ago,” she said. “This is a place that has taught me to love others more than myself, that instilled the values that really mean something to me.”
Snyder has identified the “key components” of the life she wants in retirement. “I want to have good relationships, a strong spiritual life, and I want to be learning and growing,” she said. She can’t think of a better incubator than the Mountain.
Pulaski has a message for anyone contemplating making a similar major lifestyle change: Don’t focus on the things standing in your way.
“A lot of people look at what I’m doing and say, ‘Oh, that’s great, but I could never do that,’ and I could easily come up with 16 reasons why I shouldn’t be doing this,” she said. “But I tried not to put the obstacles first. You still have to deal with the obstacles, like who’s going to watch my dog while I’m away, but if this is where I’m supposed to be and the work I’m supposed to be doing, the obstacles will take care of themselves.”
Pulaski does feel like she’s come back home.
“I think I have found what I came here for,” she said. “I just hope and pray that I can extend that out to other people.”
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