Aug 8 – St Mary Helen MacKillop, RSJ, (1842-1909), Foundress of the Josephites

August 6, 2014 techdecisions

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/02/19/saint-mary-mackillop-aust_n_468595.html

Feb 19 2010

VATICAN CITY (AP) – Pope Benedict XVI approved sainthood for Mother Mary MacKillop on Friday, making the woman known for her work among the needy Australia’s first saint.

The pope made the announcement during a ceremony at the Vatican and set the formal canonization for Oct. 17 in Rome. Five others – from Italy, Spain, Poland and Canada – will be canonized at the same time.

MacKillop founded the Congregation of the Sisters of St. Joseph (of the Sacred Heart!), an order that built dozens of schools for impoverished children across the Australian Outback in the 1800s, as well as orphanages and clinics for the needy.

With vows of abstinence from owning personal belongings and dedication to helping the poor, MacKillop is credited with spreading Roman Catholicism in Australia and New Zealand.

But she was a strong-willed advocate who sometimes got into trouble for challenging orthodox thinking within the male-dominated church. In 1869 she was excommunicated for supposedly inciting her followers to disobedience, though the bishop who punished her recanted three years (some accounts say five months) later (nine days before his death – timing is everything) and she was exonerated by a church commission. [Explain to Jesus how you excommunicated a saint!]

[Bishop Sheil spent less than two years of his episcopate in Adelaide and his absences and poor health left the diocese effectively without clear leadership for much of his tenure. This resulted in bitter factionalisms within the clergy and disunity among the lay community. After the founding of the Josephites, Sheil appointed Woods as director-general of Catholic education. Woods came into conflict with some of the clergy over educational matters and local clergy began a campaign to discredit the Josephites. As well as allegations of financial incompetence, rumours were also spread that MacKillop had a drinking problem. A 2010 investigation by the Revd Paul Gardiner, chaplain of the Mary MacKillop Penola Centre, found no evidence to support these allegations. In fact, it was widely known that she drank alcohol on doctor’s orders to relieve the symptoms of dysmenorrhea, which often led to her being bedridden for days at a time.

Father Charles Horan OFM met with Sheil on 21 September 1871 and convinced him that the Josephites’ constitution should be changed in a way that could have left the Josephite nuns homeless; the following day, when MacKillop apparently did not accede to the request, Sheil excommunicated her, citing insubordination as the reason.[25][26] Candid coverage in the Catholic newspaper The Irish Harp and Farmers’ Herald[27] earned for its editor C. J. Fox ostracism and expulsion from the Catholic Association of which he was president.[28] Though the Josephites were not disbanded, most of their schools were closed in the wake of this action. Forbidden to have contact with anyone in the church, MacKillop was given the rent-free use of two houses in Flinders Street, Adelaide by prominent Jewish merchant Emanuel Solomon and was also sheltered by Jesuit priests. Some of the sisters chose to remain under diocesan control, becoming popularly known as “Black Joeys”.

On his deathbed, Sheil instructed Horan to lift the excommunication on MacKillop. On 21 February 1872, he met her on his way to Willunga and absolved her in the Morphett Vale church. An episcopal commission later completely exonerated her.]

“This is a great, great tribute to the Catholic church and a great, great tribute to her hard work in education,” Australia’s Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said Friday. “This is a great honor for Australia. I offer a heartfelt expression of appreciation to the wider Catholic community.”

MacKillop died in 1909 and was beatified by Pope John Paul II in 1995.

Australians have been awaiting Friday’s announcement since Benedict in December cleared the way by declaring MacKillop was responsible for the required second miracle, one of the final steps in the complex process before sainthood can be bestowed.

“It’s more than just Catholics, the whole country has a new hero – someone that will give them hope for the future,” said Garry McLean, CEO of the Mary MacKillop Heritage Center in Melbourne.

“Today it has been recognized that a woman can become a saint in the Australian environment with all its complexities and challenges,” Postulator for the Cause of Mary MacKillop, Sister Maria Casey, said in a statement. “Mary MacKillop is to be listed among the saints of the Catholic Church. I look forward to the celebration of her goodness when many pilgrims from all over the world come to Rome for the ceremony.”

“By their fruits you will know them.” (Mt 7:16)

Because of my personality, I realize, when I was considering making a solemn promise of vows similar to Mother MacKillop, the one I struggled with most then and still would now is obedience without reservation or foreknowledge. I wanted a contract with rights and duties, limits of liability, and perfect clairvoyance of the future – or something like that. With the benefit of twenty-two additional years of experience and maturity, I might have some incremental hope of inching closer to such a promise now, not knowing what that would mean or entail for the rest of my life; yet, my experience with authority in human organizations since then could also be a bulwark and an impediment against the embrace of such a promise.

That may seem odd, and others might find poverty, or celibacy or life in religious community more challenging, but for me, it was obedience. And, I couldn’t just let the clock run out and potentially make a promise in my heart of hearts I really knew I couldn’t fully embrace or potentially fulfill. That would have been dishonest. It’s not that simple, but that’s probably one of the bigger reasons I left.

Marriage has its own implicit promises of obedience, without reservation, regardless of gender or role in family – the obedience of love, to the best of our ability. And this obedience is joyful, as I am sure those who embrace the vow of obedience in religious life, like Mother MacKillop, must find it to have any hope of living it.

What the article fails to mention is Mother MacKillop took that vow of obedience I could not. Obedience to authority has become very unfashionable in the last few centuries. Granted, those in authority are replete with all the human weakness we all suffer. Yet, Christian love, in my understanding and my attempted and faltering and failing practice, requires mission and obedience are inextricable, by the Lord’s own example.

Mother MacKillop’s life and example was replete with rich fruits of her profound faith and practice of it. Her works, as are all good works of Christian charity, are the fruits of profound faith. There is no dichotomy between “faith & works” in my understanding or experience. One blossoms into the other, it has to, in the Catholic understanding, and the Lord should be praised therefore.

When I grow angry with the failings of those in authority, and feel the need to express my displeasure openly, I ask myself “What are the irrefutable fruits of my own faith in my life all could recognize, such that I possess evidence for myself and for others that it is not merely anger which I am celebrating or indulging in, but my anger is a just a continuum of my attempt to live out of Christian love?” As Mother MacKillop did? That is not to let the culpable off the hook, but rather to assure myself of my proper orientation in what I am doing and trying to live my faith.

The Lord commands us to love one another, especially when we are most unhappy with or treated most unjustly by each other, even to the point of evil – even the evil of crucifixion and a tortured death. Could I forgive in the moment of my agony? I doubt it in the extreme. God give me the grace to hope to do so and, please Lord, do not test my faith.

In this Lent, let us give up righteous anger, no matter how good or right it feels in the moment, let us abstain from it, and put on righteous love, as Mother MacKillop did through grace.

Besides, would you mess with an Australian nun who lived in the outback without air conditioning wearing a habit like the one in the picture, accomplished what she accomplished, and who had so big a crucifix stuck in her belt? Not me.

Love,
Matthew

Summa Catechetica, "Neque enim quaero intelligere ut credam, sed credo ut intelligam." – St Anselm, "“Si comprehendus, non est Deus.” -St Augustine, "Let your religion be less of a theory, and more of a love affair." -G.K. Chesterton, "As the reading of bad books fills the mind with worldly and poisonous sentiments; so, on the other hand, the reading of pious works fills the soul with holy thoughts and good desires." -St. Alphonsus Liguori, "And above all, be on your guard not to want to get anything done by force, because God has given free will to everyone and wants to force no one, but only proposes, invites and counsels." –St. Angela Merici, “Yet such are the pity and compassion of this Lord of ours, so desirous is He that we should seek Him and enjoy His company, that in one way or another He never ceases calling us to Him . . . God here speaks to souls through words uttered by pious people, by sermons or good books, and in many other such ways.” —St. Teresa of Avila, "I want a laity, not arrogant, not rash in speech, not disputatious, but men and women who know their religion, who enter into it, who know just where they stand, who know what they hold and what they do not, and who know their creed so well that they can give an account of it, who know so much of history that they can defend it. I want an intelligent, well-instructed laity… I wish you to enlarge your knowledge, to cultivate your reason, to get an insight into the relation of truth to truth, to learn to view things as they are, to understand how faith and reason stand to each other, what are the bases and principles of Catholicism, and where lie the main inconsistences and absurdities of the Protestant theory.” (St. John Henry Newman, “Duties of Catholics Towards the Protestant View,” Lectures on the Present Position of Catholics in England), "We cannot always have access to a spiritual Father for counsel in our actions and in our doubts, but reading will abundantly supply his place by giving us directions to escape the illusions of the devil and of our own self-love, and at the same time to submit to the divine will.” —St. Alphonsus Ligouri, "The harm that comes to souls from the lack of reading holy books makes me shudder . . . What power spiritual reading has to lead to a change of course, and to make even worldly people enter into the way of perfection." –St. Padre Pio, "Screens may grab our attention, but books change our lives!" – Word on Fire, "Reading has made many saints!" -St Josemaría Escrivá, "Do you pray? You speak to the Bridegroom. Do you read? He speaks to you." —St. Jerome, from his Letter 22 to Eustochium, "Encounter, not confrontation; attraction, not promotion; dialogue, not debate." -cf Pope Francis, "God here speaks to souls through…good books“ – St Teresa of Avila, Interior Castle, "You will not see anyone who is really striving after his advancement who is not given to spiritual reading. And as to him who neglects it, the fact will soon be observed by his progress.” -St Athanasius, "To convert someone, go and take them by the hand and guide them." -St Thomas Aquinas, OP. 1 saint ruins ALL the cynicism in Hell & on Earth. “When we pray we talk to God; when we read God talks to us…All spiritual growth comes from reading and reflection.” -St Isidore of Seville, “Also in some meditations today I earnestly asked our Lord to watch over my compositions that they might do me no harm through the enmity or imprudence of any man or my own; that He would have them as His own and employ or not employ them as He should see fit. And this I believe is heard.” -GM Hopkins, SJ, "Only God knows the good that can come about by reading one good Catholic book." — St. John Bosco, "Why don't you try explaining it to them?" – cf St Peter Canisius, SJ, Doctor of the Church, Doctor of the Catechism, "Already I was coming to appreciate that often apologetics consists of offering theological eye glasses of varying prescriptions to an inquirer. Only one prescription will give him clear sight; all the others will give him at best indistinct sight. What you want him to see—some particular truth of the Faith—will remain fuzzy to him until you come across theological eye glasses that precisely compensate for his particular defect of vision." -Karl Keating, "The more perfectly we know God, the more perfectly we love Him." -St Thomas Aquinas, OP, ST, I-II,67,6 ad 3, “But always when I was without a book, my soul would at once become disturbed, and my thoughts wandered." —St. Teresa of Avila, "Let those who think I have said too little and those who think I have said too much, forgive me; and let those who think I have said just enough thank God with me." –St. Augustine, "Without good books and spiritual reading, it will be morally impossible to save our souls." —St. Alphonsus Liguori "Never read books you aren't sure about. . . even supposing that these bad books are very well written from a literary point of view. Let me ask you this: Would you drink something you knew was poisoned just because it was offered to you in a golden cup?" -St. John Bosco " To teach in order to lead others to faith is the task of every preacher and of each believer." —St. Thomas Aquinas, OP. "Prayer purifies us, reading instructs us. Both are good when both are possible. Otherwise, prayer is better than reading." –St. Isidore of Seville “The aid of spiritual books is for you a necessity.… You, who are in the midst of battle, must protect yourself with the buckler of holy thoughts drawn from good books.” -St. John Chrysostom