Just for Love - In Thanksgiving

This is belated, for which I apologise – but, like wine, thanksgiving keeps, warms and enriches! 

I want to say a fervent ‘thank you’ for your support, interest and prayers for our 140^th year, and particularly for its culmination in the Mass celebrated in Soho on the 11^th February 2012.  Let me tell you a little about it.

St. Patrick’s Church, as you know, is a very special place. It is situated beautifully in Soho Square, and seems to nestle comfortably into the corner of a bustling, lively London Piazza, if there is such a thing – but it has an Italian air about it – a little imposing, but also very welcoming, warm and well-used as most Italian churches seem to be.  Of course its congregation is wide-reaching and international; that gives it a gracious, open feeling, and a sense of the universality of the Church. 

We felt very privileged to celebrate our special anniversary there, particularly as our Foundress and the early Sisters in the Congregation worshipped there.  They walked the wide squares and narrow streets of the area way back in the late nineteenth century, visiting the tenements and crumbling houses which were the places where the poor lived then. Perhaps ‘existed’ might be a better word, for the great facades of the time hid the dirty, fetid, unhealthy rooms where they huddled around a few sticks in a grate – if they were lucky – to warm themselves.

Soho was then a violent, corrupt place, where pimps operated ruthlessly to extort money from the poor women who plied their trade as prostitutes to provide bread and other necessities for their children.  It was to these that Frances Taylor – Mother Magdalen – reached out.  She understood their sense of hopelessness and their fears.  Because she believed passionately in the dignity of each human being, she fought to give back to these young women the self-worth and confidence they had lost.  She gave them a listening ear, a smile, a respect they very much appreciated.  She taught her sisters to do the same, and never to judge them as many others did.

So for us, Soho is a special place.  One of the Convents they lived in is now occupied by the Fox Film Company.  It is right opposite the Church.  I went in there the day after the Mass, and the people who worked there were very interested in our history and in what the early Sisters had done in that building and in the surrounding districts.

St. Patrick’s Church has now been restored and is very beautiful. As we went in, we were greeted by a sense of love, unity and shared celebration which was lovely.  Every pew of course was packed with people of all ages who had come to share in our special day.  We began by taking up the flags of the countries in which we work throughout the world which set the scene for a very colourful and meaningful day.

L to R: Cardinal Murphy O'Connor,
Bishop Kieran Conry,and Fr. Alex Sherbrooke,
 Parish Priest of St. Patrick's Soho

The chief celebrant at the Mass was Bishop Kieran Conry of Arundel and Brighton.  He has known us all his life, as his Aunt was an SMG for over sixty years.  We were privileged to have the Cardinal Emeritus of Westminster, Cardinal Cormac Murphy O’Connor with us, and also many priests who work with SMG’s in different parishes throughout the country.  It was a striking picture of the Church in miniature, which our Foundress would have loved. 

Sr. Mary Whelan, SMG
and Kenneth Campbell

It was moving and enriching to see the symbols of our past and present SMG life placed on the altar at the beginning of Mass and we felt that those who had started the SMG tradition here approved.  The liturgy was a mixture of past and present as we held hands with those who had gone before us in spirit, and embraced all that is happening to us today. 

Painting of the Sacred Heart pleading
by Gagliardi

Sr. M. Whelan, our Superior General, gave us her usual warm, loving and eloquent welcome, and she also put words on the symbols as they were brought up. Chief of these of course was the painting by Gagliardi of the Sacred Heart pleading which Mother Magdalen commissioned. It was the centre of our celebration as it showed so clearly what she wanted of us – to be friends of the poor.  “True devotion to the Sacred Heart”, she always said “means a real, practical love of Our Lord, and an actual realisation of his love for us.”  By that she wanted us to understand that devotion to the Sacred Heart was not about pious practices, but is an acceptance of his wonderful, all-embracing love for us, which invites a response of love in return.  The response she wanted was to show that love through reaching out to the poor, the lonely, the bewildered, and the lost.  That is why this special picture was at the heart of our celebration. Everything that followed reflected this, and the place we were in reminded us of the love of those first sisters, who, to quote St. Therese of Lisieux, “put love at the heart of the Church” -  and the world of their time: thus challenging us to do the same today.

Marriage in Cana, Giotto c. 1304

We were reminded in the Word of God of the heart-warming phrase “How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring Good News!"  How beautiful indeed, and the Good News on that day was the Cana event, which brought the light of hope not only to the wedding pair, but also to all those who were guests – in fact to the whole village, and later, from them to everyone they met!  So it is with us, we are, as our Foundress put it, meant to be Christ bearers who bring hope and light to all those around us.  That is what she did.

Fr. Alexander Sherbrooke, the parish priest spoke movingly of the work of the Sisters and how it is carried on today in the parish – the Holy Hours before the Blessed Sacrament, the outreaching to the poor, and much more.  It was very uplifting to hear him.  At the end of a wonderful celebration, Sr. Frances Ennis also spoke in her inimitable way of the life, times and continuing inspiration of Mother Magdalen in a world of darkness and division.

I do not have space to say much more, but the kaleidoscopes keep returning – the meeting for refreshment after the Mass, the delight at seeing old friends and colleagues – the noise, laughter and joy...  the enjoyment of the huge birthday cake, and so much more. 

Sr. Mary Whelan, SMG
with Kenneth Campbell
and Sr. Joseph, SMG

Kenneth Campbell and niece Julia

We were so privileged to have Kenneth Campbell, his sister Julia and his daughter Jacqueline with us. Kenneth and Julia are the great grandchildren of Charlotte Dean, Mother Magdalen’s sister, so they are very close relatives of Mother herself.  Charlotte became a Catholic two years after leaving the Crimea.  She was very close always in thought and in affection to her youngest sister, and having experienced the horrors of the Crimea together, the bond was strengthened.  To talk to Kenneth, Julia and Jacqueline brought the whole story of the SMG’s to life – this was part of the family from which the first SMG came.  It was awesome! 

We’ll end where we began – with a fervent thanksgiving.  Thank you to all who organised the service and did the refreshments, to all those who so lovingly participated, and to all of you who faithfully prayed for us. 

Let’s remember to say together: “My soul glorifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour!” 

Thank you.

The dream of Jesus for our world

The Third Sunday of Advent has some stirring readings. The first one is from the prophet Isaiah which Jesus read in the synagogue in his home town of Nazareth, when those blinkered people with their small-minded view of life, tried to throw him over the cliff because he claimed to be the Messiah.  "Why can't he do the things he did in Capernaum here?" they complained. But Jesus faced them squarely. "Because you do not believe in me" he replied.  They growled angrily muttering things like: "He was at school with our  Nathan (or Samuel or Moses). Who does he think he is?  He is working miracles in Capernaum and Bethsaida, but here, where he was brought up, he refuses even to pray with our sick!  Some prophet he is!"  You can imagine the angry exchanges that took place after the few words that Jesus spoke to them.  Angry and jealous, they tried to kill him, but he escaped. Here this text is given in full, and it is a beautiful Advent reading.  We can see why it contained what we might call the dream of Jesus for our world - his blueprint, or mission statement we might call it today.  This young, sunburned man had offered to his own people his dream for our healing. A dream he and his Father shared, a dream that, in the end, would bring him to that hell-hole we call Calvary - the place of the skull, the place of death.  But the dream survived because Calvary is also the place of the greatest love this tired old world has ever known. Drop by drop it came to us, as his blood landed on our earth, and we have never been the same since.  He blotted out all the hatred,  the misunderstanding, the envy by love and forgiveness. And here, in Advent we are faced once more with this dream which appeared to end on Calvary, but in reality carried on through time and space to us.  Jesus envisaged a world where the light of Christ would overcome the darkness of sin and ignorance, where no one would be left out, ignored forgotten or unhealed. Where there would be a special time of blessing, when debts would be written off, rifts healed, old scores forgiven and families would live in peace.  Not for one year of course,  as the Jewish law procclaimed, but for always. 



Christ has no hands but ours...

 We are carriers of that dream, and Advent is the time to look at it again.  St. Teresa's prayer "Christ has no hands but ours..." becomes a reality - we are offered the chance to reach out to heal, to forgive, to reconcile, to place love at the heart of the Church and the world, as St. Therese put it.  Our Foundress used to say that we are all given the hands of Christ to work with, the heart of Christ to love with, and the mind of Christ to illumine the world.  That's quite a statement, whoever first thought of it! 

We talk a lot about service, what we can do to help our neighbour, how we can best serve one another, but here we have the way given to us by Christ himself. "The Spirit of the Lord has been given to me and he has anointed me to give Good News to the poor...  the prophet cries.  And Christ answers:  "I have anointed  YOU to bring my name before Gentiles and Kings. Go and tell everyone...."   What a commission! 

Notice the responsorial psalm of this Sunday. It is Mary's Song, the Magnificat, which she quoted at the Visitation.  "My soul glorifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour..."  She had just said her "yes" to being a carrier (literally) of the dream of God for our world - and her spirit was full of joy - in smaller ways we can do the same.  Have a joyful Advent!

Mary's Day

Today, we celebrate Mary's special privilege of being free from sin from her conception.  The Church has always believed that Mary was specially favoured, as the greeting from the Angel Gabriel implied in Luke's account of the Annunciation, and this was made an article of faith in 1854.  Remember that, when little Bernadette Soubirous asked the beautiful lady who appeared to her at Lourdes who she was, the lady answered: "I am the Immaculate Conception."  That was beyond Bernadette's understanding of course,  but the Bishops and priests around her understood what she meant. It was Our Lady herself who was appearing on the rock in Massabielle - she was using her title to help them to realise who she was.

We believe that Mary, as Mother of God, is, as Wordsworth said in the Ecclesiastical sonnets : "Our tainted nature's solitary boast."  He meant that Mary never went into that darkness patrolled by Satan and his cohorts which we call sin.  She was always so close to God that sin never entered her soul.  She was born without original sin, which we know is the tendency we have to allow ourselves to be pulled into sin, into doing things that harm us.  St. Paul, even though he was a great Saint, once said, ruefully, to the Christians of Rome:

"I know of nothing good living in me -living that is,  in my unspiritual self - for though the will to do good is in me, what I do is not, with the result that, instead of doing the good things I want to do, I carry out the sinful things I do not want."  That is called original sin.  We know that feeling well.   We are pulled into sin, or tempted to sin, and we often don't resist it.  But Paul goes on to encourage us - he says that, in the power of the Holy Spirit we are able to resist the attacks of Satan, and live in the light. 

Mary is the fresh breath that blows away the darkness and despair that sometimes seem to cover our world.  She reaches out to us, heals our fears, our loneliness and our pain, and makes us feel better.  That's the work of a good mother.  She is our best friend, as my mother always used to tell us.  She really is.  She understands us, and never judges us.  She wants us to "do good" as the slogan puts it.  She is our role model.  She wants the young people of our world, in particular, to use the gifts God gave them, enthusiasm, energy, joy and so much else, to bring life and love into our world.  You think that doesn't include you?  You're not young any longer?  Wrong.  If you have the Holy Spirit in your heart, if you "act justly, love tenderly, and walk humbly with your God" you will always be young in heart.  Isn't that a comforting thought?  Ask Mary to look after you today, to be your friend, to keep you young, beautiful and joy-filled.  She'll do it.  Let's pray to her:

Mary, our Mother, we wish you a happy feast.  We love you very much, and we want you to befriend us, to show us what we ought to do to be heralds of the Gospel, so that its good news may reach the ends of the earth.  Be with all those who are in dangerous places today, those who are sick, those who are bitter and angry.  Help them, and us, to be better people, more loving, more generous, more thoughtful, and help us to have thankful hearts, so that we can say exultingly with you: "My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord, my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour!"    Have a good day.