HULL -- When Father Scott Euvrard, pastor of St. Mary of the Assumption Parish in Hull, told parishioner MaryJane Silva that she was going to receive the Cheverus Award, she was watering the flowers in front of the altar.

"What for?" Silva asked Father Euvrard. "Because I water plants?"

Not exactly. Silva does indeed water the plants (she loves to garden), but she has also been a catechist, a member of the Parish Pastoral Council, a lector, a greeter, a washer and ironer of altar linens, a member of the St. Vincent de Paul Society, and an altar server during funeral Masses. She is so active in her parish that, recently, she had to rewrite a section of the parish bulletin congratulating her for her accomplishments: It forgot three of the ministries that she's involved in.

"I keep busy," Silva, 89, told The Pilot in a June 6 interview. "I'm never bored."

She was one of 151 people who received the Cheverus Award, given to those who dedicate their lives to serving the Archdiocese of Boston, in 2023.

"I was thoroughly shocked because so many people at St. Mary's are real good at helping and volunteering and doing everything," she said.

"MaryJane certainly came up (for the Cheverus Award) because of the many varied ways in which she contributed to parish life over a long period of time," Father Euvrard told The Pilot in a May 15 interview, "and many of those ways were behind the scenes. She really was the face of the parish."

Silva was born and raised in Hingham, one of six children in an Italian family.

"My mother and father were quite modern in their day," she recalled. "Even though they were Italian, they kept up with being very American and brought us up to be the same way. Very Catholic . . . We were very normal."

She and her family walked two miles to Mass every Sunday, then two miles back home. In those days, she explained, nobody had cars. None of her siblings had to be forced to go to church.

"We just did it because it was part of normal living," she said. "We did it like we woke up in the morning."

Silva has lived in Hull for 60 of her 89 years. After graduating from public school, she briefly worked at an advertising firm, then went to work for New England Telephone. She retired in 1980 and subsequently became more involved in her parish.

"As much as I love doing it, I find it to be very therapeutic," she said. "Things weren't always perfect, and there were problems."

When her daughter died at the age of 39, Silva dedicated even more of her time to volunteering.

"I gave it my most when that happened, because it was therapy," she said.

The loss of her daughter made her want to be an altar server at funeral Masses. In a small and close-knit community like Hull, many of the deceased were people Silva knew.

"I felt naturally a little bit solemn because I knew them," she said. "Just being part of it made me feel like I was helping the family."

Silva said that it was "absolutely indescribable" to go to the Cathedral of the Holy Cross in Boston to receive the Cheverus Award from Cardinal Seán P. O'Malley. She had not been to the cathedral since she was a little girl, and seeing its beauty gave her a spiritual feeling.

"To have the cardinal put that around my neck was like I was in Heaven; I was dreaming," she said.

Although she was one of 151 Cheverus Award recipients, she felt like the only one there.

"Many nice things have happened to me during the course of my lifetime," she said, "but that was probably one of the most outstanding things."