Friday, November 30, 2012

MARTYRS in the USA

Scattered along the Georgia coast lie the nearly forgotten sites of pioneering 16th-century Franciscan missions. Here, more than 400 years ago, five Spanish friars were slain while bringing the Catholic faith to the native Guale people.

Guale was an historic Native American chiefdom along the coast of present-day Georgia. During the late 17th C.and early 18th C., Guale society was  devastated by extensive epidemics of new infectious diseases as well as warfare from other tribes. Some of the surviving remnants migrated to the mission areas of Spanish Florida while others remained near the Georgia coast. Joining with other survivors, they became known as the Yamasee, an ethnically mixed group that emerged in a process of ethnogenesis.

Guale village

Few people today are familiar with the dramatic events of this area's earliest Catholic history. The first of these friars, Fray Pedro de Corpa, came to Spanish Florida in 1587 and was sent to the Guale village of Tolomato, near modern-day Darien, Georgia.

Conflict erupted there in 1597. Fray Pedro insisted that those who were baptized must be faithful to Church teaching about the sanctity of marriage. But Juanillo, the local native chief's nephew, openly took a second wife. The missionaries reminded him that when he had become a Christian, he had made a solemn promise to forsake the Guale custom of taking multiple wives.

Juanillo refused to listen to the friars. They responded that they could not support his desire to succeed as chief. Enraged, Juanillo left the mission, gathered a band of warriors from the countryside, and proceeded to murder Fray Pedro and his four missionary companions who resided at three other mission sites along the coast.

Dr. Paul Thigpen believes that the martyrs will find "friends" not only in Georgia, but also across the country and beyond.  "In fact, all Americans concerned with protecting the nature of marriage in today's society can draw courage from the witness of these men. Their witness strengthens the moral fiber of all. They remind us that some truths are worth dying for."

Bronze by Marjorie Lawrence,  St. Simon's Island
The five martyrs are:
Pedro de Corpa, priest. One of his companions described Pedro by saying, “Since he was a wise and holy man, the love of God burned in his heart, and by means of prayer, abstinence, and self-discipline he gave good example to the Indians of the West whom he strove to convert."

Miguel de Anon was a priest.

Francisco de Verascola was a man of great physical stature and strength and served as bodyguard to officials visiting the area (despite being an ordained priest), and easily interacted with the Guale youth who included him in their athletic games and sports. Through his witness, many were brought to Christ.



Antonio de Badajoz  was a lay brother who  immediately learned the Guale language and served as interpreter and translator for the mission priests, and following their example, played an important role in evangelizing the Guale.

Blas de Rodriguez, a priest said:  "My sons, for me it is not difficult to die. Even if you do not cause it, the death of this body is inevitable. We must be ready at all times, for we, all of us, have to die someday. But what does pain me is that the Evil One has persuaded you to do this offensive thing against your God and Creator. It is a further source of deep grief to me that you are unmindful of what we missionaries have done for you in teaching you the way to eternal life and happiness."    (Homily at his last Mass)

Following the death of the Franciscans, the Guale missions were disbanded, to be resumed seven years later in 1605. They prospered for nearly a century, instructing and converting the native Indians, until English colonists arrived in 1702 and destroyed the missions.

If raised to the altar, these Spanish missionaries would join the three 17th century Jesuits martyred near present-day Auriesville, NY as the only beatified martyrs slain on American soil.

Wednesday, November 28, 2012

MISSIONARY in the MIDWEST

Robert ‘Brett’ Edenton

VENERABLE FATHER SAMUEL CHARLES MAZZUCHELLI
born in Milan, Italy on November 4, 1806. He became a member of the Dominican Order and was ordained in the USA. He was sent in 1830 to the island of  Mackinac to be the only permanent priest in the upper Great Lakes region. He founded the first Catholic school in Wisconsin at Green Bay and visited various Native American tribes as a missionary. During his time in Wisconsin, he faced a number of challenges, such as hostility from other Christian denominations.
He then went to what would later become the city of Dubuque, Iowa. While there, he reorganized the parish and named it Saint Raphael’s, which later became the Cathedral parish when the Dubuque Diocese was formed in 1837. He assisted Bishop Mathias Loras during the first few years after the founding of the Diocese. He also worked quite extensively in what would eventually become the Diocese of Madison. He  founded many churches in Iowa, Wisconsin, and Illinois, and founded St Clara Academy (today Dominican University of  Illinois), a frontier school for young women. In 1849, he founded the Sinsinawa Dominican Sisters.

Known for his skill in music, painting, and architecture, he designed many of the churches built.

Many remembered him as a kind and gentlemanly priest. Fr. Mazzuchelli was able to break down the cultural barriers that existed at the time and appeal to many different ethnic groups. The Irish he ministered to called him Father Matthew Kelly. He died on February 23, 1864 after contracting an illness from a sick parishoner that he had visited.

Ven.Father Mazzuchelli is buried at Saint Patrick’s Cemetery in Benton, Wisconsin.

Early in April 2006, Italian doctors charged by the Vatican with determining the validity of miracles decided after careful study that the curing of Robert Uselmann of cancer was indeed a miracle. Robert, a resident of Madison, Wisconsin had gone to Sinsinawa Mound with his family in 2001 to pray Father Mazzuchelli for his assistance in curing him of cancer. While there he prayed with the Sisters. Robert Uselmann would later find that he had been cured of the cancer, and it was established that there was no medical explanation for this cure.    As a result, Ven. Father Mazzuchelli is now eligible for beatification.


"A Christian who comprehends the sublimity of revelation and sees how perfectly it is adapted to rescue men from the misfortunes of his present state, does not make civilization consist in the form of government, in civil laws, in the regulations of society, in human sciences or arts, in the courtesies of life, in riches, in social elegances,  but he believes it lives in the knowledge of God and in the practice of the moral virtues. The savage become Christian, may in truth be called civilized in an eminent degree, for the reason that his knowledge of God and purity of morals illumine his intellect and fill it with religious science, infinitely beyond the entire array of human discoveries.


 And besides, to what does it all really aim--this world of books, of studies, of gold, of grandeur, of elegances of life, of progress, whether civil, literary or social? Their one object is to attain to a certain degree of happiness. But the Catholic Indian is put in possession by his religion of that moral and social felicity, which not Solomon himself with all his wisdom and royal magnificence could enjoy." (From Mazzuchelli's Memoirs).










Sunday, November 25, 2012

CHRIST THE KING

Fra Angelico
Ghent Altarpiece-van Eyck
Today is the feast of Christ the King and the final Sunday in the Church year.
It is one of our newest feasts instituted by Pope Pius XI  in 1925 in his encyclical Quas Primas. He connected the denial of Christ as king to the rise of secularism. At the time of Quas Primas, secularism was rising, and many Christians (including Catholics) began to doubt Christ's authority and existence, as well as the Church's power to continue Christ's authority. Pius XI, and the rest of the Christian world, witnessed the rise of dictatorships in Europe, and saw Catholics being taken in by these earthly leaders. The Feast of Christ the King was instituted during a time when respect for Christ and the Church was waning, when the feast was most needed.


Deesis Mosaic, Hagia Sophia, Istanbul

This encyclical has been called "possibly one of the most misunderstood and ignored encyclicals of all time. St. Cyril of Alexandria, noting that Jesus' kingship is not obtained by violence wrote: Christ has dominion over all creatures, a dominion not seized by violence nor usurped, but his by essence and by nature. Pope Pius XI instituted the feast of Christ the King in 1925 to remind Christians that their allegiance was to their spiritual ruler in heaven as opposed to earthly supremacy. .

Europe was reeling from World War I, facing economic uncertainty, and witnessing the rise of dictators, such as Benito Mussolini, who were promising to make everything right. The Pope saw people of  faith being taken in by the earthly philosophies and false promises of such leaders. Respect for Jesus as Lord and ruler of life was waning, and so Pope Pius instituted this feast with three hopes:

Peter Jakab Szoke, Hungary
    That nations would see that the church is ruled by Christ, and thus has  freedom and is immune  from the  state;
    That leaders and nations would see that they are bound to give respect to Christ;
    That the faithful would gain strength and courage as we allow Christ to reign fully in our hearts,  minds, wills, and bodies.

Christ’s kingship is not like a king with a jewel-encrusted crown in purple finery on a gold throne wielding an a scepter. Rather, he is the crucified God with a crown of thorns hanging half naked on a cross in order to set us free from our bondage.


Bro. Robert Lenz
Jesus comes to us not as a great conquering military leader but as the Prince of Peace, the One whose reign proclaims peace, justice, liberation,and love.

Friday, November 23, 2012

BLESSED MARIA TRONCATTI- MAMACITA to the SAVAGES


We interrupt our journey through North America to give you one of my favorite women,  another example of a saint whose biography reads like Indiana Jones in the jungle.

BL. MARIA TRONCATTI was born at Corteno Golgi (Brescia) on 16 February 1883. She grew up in a large family happily working in the fields and caring for her younger brothers and sisters. She regularly attended catechism in her parish, where she developed a deep Christian spirit and found her calling to religious life.  In obedience to her father and parish priest, however, she waited until she reached adulthood before asking to be admitted to the Institute of the Salesian Sisters. She made her first profession in 1908.

During the First World War Bl. Maria took a course in health care and worked as a Red Cross nurse in the military hospital. This experience was to prove very valuable in the course of her long missionary life in the Amazon forests of Ecuador.
Susan Cohen Thompson

She left for Ecuador in 1922, her first assignment being in Chunchi, a small town on the Cordillera.

After three years she was sent to work among the Shuar people where, together with two other Sisters, she began the difficult work of evangelization. Madre Maria was in her mid 40s when she headed for the Amazon on horseback to begin her work among these peoples. They faced dangers of every kind: the wild beasts of the forest; the fast flowing rivers that had to be waded through or crossed on fragile "bridges" made from creepers, in canoe, or on the shoulders of the Indians.

The indomitable Shuar of the Amazon, reputed to be the only tribe in the Americas that has never been conquered, have lived as warriors, hunters, cultivators, and healers for generations. Even in today's acquisitive, often wasteful world they defend their rainforests and sustainable ways of life and offer their philosophy of love, joy, and hope. Their area is on the rivers between Ecuador and Peru.


Madre Maria
Bl. Maria's first encounter with these people was life-threatening and terrifying.When they reached Mendez, a tribal chief's young daughter lay mortally wounded by a bullet when she was caught in the crossfire of two warring tribes. The witch doctor had been unable to cure her, so the chief demanded that the missionaries do it or die. Madre Maria operated immediately and after three days the girl's fever left and she was saved. Soon after this the tribal drums beat across the jungle about this "doctor" greater than all their witch doctors. The passage way for the missionaries was secured among the people.

Madre Maria in the middle
To her people she was nurse, surgeon, orthopedist, dentist, anaesthetist. But, above all, she was catechist and evangelizer, rich in the wonderful resources of her faith, patience and fraternal love and she worked effectively for the emancipation of the Shuar women.

A young woman taught them the language, and soon a home for young women was started as well one for babies who were born illegitimate or with defects. Up to the time of the missionaries, by law such infants were killed.

"A glance at the Crucifix gives me the strength and the courage to work” she often used to say.

Bl. Maria lived in the jungle 43 years and died in a tragic air crash at SucĂșa on August 25, 1969. Along with two other sisters (who survived) they were on their way to Quito for their annual retreat.

All the surrounding villages came to mourn their loss of this saintly nun who offered her life for reconciliation between the colonizers and the Indians. Her remains lie at Macas, in the Province of Morona (Ecuador).


Madre Maria with some of her children

 THE MIRACLE
Josefa Yolanda Solorzano Pisco, from Ecuador, married with five children, was struck down in 2002 by one of the most dangerous forms of malaria,  which in a short time led to an irreversible degenerative process and a diagnosis of only a few days or even a few hours to live.

The collective trusting invocation of  Bl. Maria Troncatti, through a novena of prayers proposed by the Salesian Fr. Edgar Ivan Segarra  had the effect of obtaining for the sick woman the beginning of an unexpected recovery and soon a complete cure.

Her beatification will take place November 24 in  Macas.



PERSONAL NOTE: The year before my trip to Peru I "drew" her name as patron  saint for the year. Who was this woman?  I was fascinated by her and her work. The following year I was offered a trip to Peru by wonderful friends. It was in the north of Peru, away from tourist areas.  I prayed to Madrecita
to keep me safe, especially in my hunt for birds in the mountains.
Looking at Ecuador

Since we were on the border of  Ecuador I had hoped we could cross over, but it was not a good time politically for border crossings. My Irish guide and friend took me to Ayabaca (10,000 ft) for birding where we spent three wonderful, magical days.  Each day as we walked we were able to peer over into Ecuador, praying to this wonderful woman who gave so much to her people.




Wednesday, November 21, 2012

"HOMESICKNESS"



Bougainvillea of many hues- Peru

At this time of year as the winds bring down tall branches scattering them across our island roads and the temperature is on the chilly side, I miss the warmth of Peru and Costa Rica. Here I present some poems written about one of my favorite "hot"places on earth!


IT IS SPRING NOW IN PERU

 THE BURROWING OWL SITS BY HER NEST IN THE BARREN GROUND
            THE WHITE-TAILED JAY FLITS THRU THE GREEN WHILE
Fork-tailed Woodnymph (Mts of Ayabaca)
                        TWO GOLDEN-BACKED WOODPECKERS DO
                                    WHAT IS NATURAL THIS TIME OF YEAR.
PICAFLORES ARE WONDROUS IN THEIR GOWNS OF RED, GREEN, BLUES,  AND PURPLES AND
SMALL PARROTS CAN BE HEARD IN THE BACKGROUND BUT RARELY SEEN AS  MY  FAVORITE CRESTED CARCARA WAITS FOR FOOD TO FLY HER WAY.
THE EVER PRESENT TANAGERS OF MANY HUES AND THE HUGE FAMILY OF FLYCATCHERS ARE EVERYWHERE IN YELLOWS, ORANGES AND GRAYS...

I MISS THE BIRDS OF PERU

(I added over 200 birds to my life list in Peru
and another 170 in Costa Rica)


Cotton handweaving-  Ayabaca, Peru

        MY PEOPLE

OH MY PEOPLE OF PIURA
           WITH YOUR READY SMILES AND OPEN HEARTS
                       SO WILLING TO TAKE ME
INTO THE
            FABRIC OF YOUR LIVES
WEAVING
           OUR SOULS TOGETHER INTO THIS
           TAPESTRY OF NOT COTTON OR SHEEP’S WOOL
           BUT OF LOVE….

(in my 6 weeks in N. Peru I never saw a llama or alpaca- 
only sheep- the main crop being cotton)


Cloud forest, Ayabaca, Peru
THE IMPOSSIBLE

THEY SAID IT COULD NEVER BE DONE
            DRAGGING MY KNEE ALONG AS THO IT
            WAS NOT A PART OF ME

BUT I MADE IT 10,000 FEET TO THAT MAGIC WONDROUS FOREST
            WHERE THE CLOUDS ENVELOPED US LIKE CAPES
                        AS WE SEARCHED FOR THE BIRDS OF PURPLE, CRIMSON, GREEN
                        AND SO MANY SHADES OF YELLOW I LOST COUNT...

NOW BACK AT SEA LEVEL, I DREAM OF THAT HIGH PLACE WITH ITS GENTLE QUIET
            PEOPLE, UNLIKE THE NOISY LOWLANDERS-
            AND THE FOODS NEVER BEFORE TASTED AND THE ANCIENT CHURCH WITH SO MANY
                        STRANGE PRACTICES THAT I LAUGHED AFTER MASS,
            AND SO MANY BIRDS FOUND IN THAT LOST HORIZON STILL HERE ON EARTH...



The arana



THE ARANA IN THE BANO*


HELP I YELLED
            CLUTCHING THE TOWEL AROUND ME AS
            THE MANY LEGGED FURRY CREATURE
                        CLUNG TO THE WALL- INNOCENT
OF ANY WRONG DOING.

WHAT IS IT SCREAMED JUDY ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE DOOR
            ALWAYS READY TO JUMP INTO THE FRAY.

            AN ARANA IN OUR BANO I YELLED DROPPING THE TOWEL
            AND REACHING FOR MY NIGHTIE

TRYING TO BAT THE THING TO HELL AS IT QUICKLY SCRAMBLED UP A HOLE INTO THE
WALL OF THE VOLCANO-LIKE BATHROOM CEILING.

I DON'T MIND THE FOX AT THE DOOR EACH EVENING AND MORNING
            I DON'T MIND THE FACT THAT WE CAN'T FLUSH TOILET PAPER DOWN THE
            JOHN
OR THAT THERE IS NO GLASS ON OUR WINDOWS OR THAT A WILD
SPECTACLED BEAR WAS SEEN NEAR OUR CASA LAST NIGHT

OH NO, IN THIS PARADISE ALMOST ALL THINGS ARE ACCEPTED EXCEPT
THE ARANA IN OUR BANO!!

* the arana was a Chilean Tarantula
            -a Bano is the bathroom

The infamous Bano in Chaparri- Peru


















ROYALTY

EVERY MORNING THE GUARDS SALUTED ME
            AS THO I WAS SOME DIGNITARY
LITTLE DID THEY KNOW OF MY SECRET MISSION…
YES, I AM A TERROR
           WITH MY BINOCULARS
                       AND BAG FULL OF HEAVY SUSPICIOUS ARTICLES
           FOR DISCOVERING WHAT MANY DO NOT SEE AROUND THEM
IN THE TREES, ON THE BARRON GROUND, FLYING HIGH OVER ME
Garden at Uni. Piura (45 years ago this was desert)
           LIKE THE STEALTH OVER WHIDBEY

ARMED WITH THE KNOWLEDGE THAT IS TODAY
           SO READILY FOUND ON THE NET
I CAN DECIPHER ALL THE WONDER ABOUT ME…

(guards were at gate to University where I 
daily went to Mass & to bird watch)





MOTHER ABBESS

HER PEOPLE ARE NOT MY PEOPLE
            BUT
                        KNOWING THEM HELPS ME
TO  UNDERSTAND HER THO I THINK HER
            ENGLISH MOTHER TEMPERED SOME OF HER
                         TRAITS
I SAW HER IN SO MANY FACES OF THE MOUNTAIN PEOPLES-

WHAT WAS IT LIKE FOR HER FATHER TO COME DOWN FROM THOSE MOUNTAINS
                SO MANY YEARS AGO?
THIS WEEK WE CELEBRATED HIS PASSAGE INTO A NEW LIFE IN THE MOUNTAIN
            OF THE FATHER

WHEN WILL I LOOK ON THOSE DEAR FACES?
            IN THE MOUNTAINS OF ANOTHER LIFE?


Friends in Piura, Peru


Monday, November 19, 2012

WHEN DID HOLY DAYS BECOME HOLIDAYS?- A BLESSED THANKSGIVING

Rockwell

Many people are surprised to discover the origins of our most popular religious and non religious traditional holidays.

The roots of the word holiday are found in two words: holy and day. Back in the 1500s when this word emerged, a holy day was a day set aside for reverence, for worship, for acknowledging the power of God to be at work in our lives and recommitting ourselves to serving God and others. Yet we have allowed our culture to transform holy days into holidays, making them something which we think we are entitled to, often forgetting their true origin and meaning and turning them into an excuse for a day off  from work or school.

A "holiday" in our modern terminology  is a day designated as having special significance for which individuals, a government, or a religious group have deemed that observance is warranted. It is generally an official (more common) or unofficial observance of religious, national, or cultural significance, often accompanied by celebrations or festivities. A holiday does not necessarily exclude doing normal work.

 While holidays are a very important times because they hold traditions that will always be remembered and repeated for generations, if used correctly, they can also be great teaching moments that will be reminders of the Gospels and the ways we should live.


Cheryl Bartley
This leads us to our national holiday of Thanksgiving. When the Pilgrims landed in the New World, they found a cold, rocky, barren, desolate wilderness. There were no friends to greet them. No houses to shelter them. During the first winter, half the Pilgrims died of sickness or exposure. But with hard labor the Pilgrims found they had more food than they could eat themselves. They set up trading posts and exchanged goods with the Indians.

It wasn’t just an economic system that allowed the Pilgrims to prosper. It was their devotion to God and His laws. And that’s what Thanksgiving is really all about. The Pilgrims recognized that everything we have is a gift from God. Their Thanksgiving tradition was established to honor God and thank Him for His blessings and His grace.

Jennie Augusta Brownscomb, 1914
All of the early Thanksgiving celebrations had one thing in common. The thanksgiving was directed toward God. It did not matter that many had very hard times. The people knew that God was their Creator and Provider and that all good things ultimately came from Him. It is in this spirit that we should be mindful of the true meaning of this feast day! "Give thanks to the Lord, call on His Name; make known among the nations what He has done."

200 years later we continue that tradition.


J. F. Millet


A Blessed and Happy Thanksgiving.


 Holidays

The holiest of all holidays are those
kept by ourselves in silence and apart;
The secret anniversaries of the heart.
        Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Antonio Esteves, 1978



Saturday, November 17, 2012

OUR FRIENDS THE LITHUANIANS


VENERABLE MARIA KAUPAS, Foundress of the Sisters of St. Casimir, was born Casimira Kaupas in Ramygala, Lithuania in 1880.   At the request of her older brother, Rev. Anthony Kaupas, she came to the United States in 1897 to serve as his housekeeper.  Rev. Kaupas, who had previously immigrated to the United States, was serving as pastor of St. Joseph Lithuanian parish in Scranton, Pennsylvania.   It was during her four-year stay in the United States that Casimira met Sisters for the first time and was attracted to an apostolic religious life.
 When she told her brother of her intent to enter a congregation in the United States, he informed her that the American Lithuanian clergy sought to establish a Lithuanian congregation of women religious for the purpose of educating the youth in a Catholic setting, and help preserve the language and customs. Casimira was then asked to lead this new venture that would sustain and nourish the faith life of the early Lithuanian immigrants in the United States. Within a short time as the Congregation’s ministries expanded, this focus  broadened to encompass all who came under the influence of the Sisters of St. Casimir. 

Mother Maria’s dream to provide a religious education for the children of Lithuanian immigrants became a reality when on January 6, 1908, Holy Cross School opened with over 70 pupils. Lithuanian pastors, recognizing the depth and strength of this new Congregation toward preserving the faith life of the immigrant people, sent requests begging for Sisters to staff their parochial schools, first in Pennsylvania, later in Chicago and in many other parts of the United States.

Mother Maria on left
Mother Maria remained in the office of General Superior for 27 years, from 1913 to her death in 1940. During her administration, the Congregation grew in membership and in expanding areas of ministry. 

For the first twenty years, the Sisters of St. Casimir focused on their primary apostolate of education.  When the United States experienced the influenza epidemic of 1918-1919, it was evident to Mother Maria that there were “too few doctors and too few to give care.” (Letter to Sr. M. Josepha, October 16, 1918). 

In 1916, with an element of  freedom returning to Lithuania because of Czarist Russia’s pre-occupation with its own revolution, the Bishops of Lithuania wrote to Mother Maria seeking her assistance.  They had heard about the great advancement she and her Sisters had made among the Lithuanian American immigrants.  They wrote asking that she return to Lithuania and establish her Congregation there. 
First Lithuanian postulants

In 1920, Mother Maria sailed to Lithuania with four of her Sisters.  They were given as a residence the beautiful seventeenth century historic, baroque monastery of  Mount Pacis, today known as Pazaislis, outside of Kaunas, Lithuania. Within weeks new candidates arrived and the Congregation began to grow. As the Sisters increased in number, they opened schools and other institutions in various cities.  The American and local Lithuanian Sisters remained and served in a variety of ways until 1934 when the Lithuanian Congregation became independent from the American Congregation in Chicago. 

The 25th Anniversary of the Congregation was celebrated with great joy in 1932.  Within a few months of the celebration, it became evident that Mother Maria was suffering from a malignant condition.  She persevered for the next eight years with great courage as the bone cancer spread. On April, 17, 1940,  Mother Maria died at the Motherhouse in Chicago, surrounded by her Sisters. 

Within a matter of hours after her death, the newspapers carried articles titled, “Sainthood Sought for Mother Maria.”  Thousands of people came for her wake and burial.




Throughout her life, Mother Maria fashioned the spiritual identity of the Congregation.  She taught the Sisters that the mission entrusted to them by the Church, works of faith and love, must flow from a life of union with God rooted in faith, built on love and imbued with a spirit of hope.  Her motto: "Always more, always better, always with love."

OUR FRIENDS:
Lithuanians  in Bethlehem, Conn. played a major part in our Abbey's beginnings. They had settled in the area years before our arrival in 1947.  Mrs. Lazauskus, the wife of a local farmer, prayed for years for a church where she could go to daily Mass. After our foundation, she came daily, often having her son plow ahead of her up the steep drive in the midst of blizzards. For many years we paid 30c a dozen for her eggs, when the going rate was 3x that. In the days before our gardens were planted and livestock purchased, baskets of food would appear on the doorstep.

Over the years the Lazauskus', Marchikitis, Yurgaitis, etc, etc. have remained benefactors and friends keeping  the faith of their fathers, some perhaps educated by the Sisters of St. Casimir.


Abbey Co-foundress MM Aline & artist Lauren Ford 
in front of old Lithuanian tower on Abbey property





Thursday, November 15, 2012

A SIGN of CONTRADICTION



VENERABLE CORNELIA PEACOCK CONNELLY was born in Philadelphia on January 15, 1809. She was an attractive, well-educated woman with a lively personality. At 22, she married an Episcopalian minister, Pierce Connelly, and four years later, the young couple with their two children became Roman Catholics.

In early 1840, still grieving the death of her third child, a baby daughter, Cornelia made her first retreat of three days. God touched her deeply and her interior life was profoundly changed. She gave herself in a new way to God, desiring to do God's will as it was made known to her through her duties and the events of daily life.  Her growing attachment to God was tested that very year. In February, her beloved two-year-old, John Henry, was scalded in a tragic accident and died in Cornelia's arms. From this anguish was born in her a lifelong devotion to Mary as Mother of Sorrows.

In October of that same year another heartbreak came: Pierce told her he felt called to the priesthood. Cornelia was pregnant with their fifth child, and urged her husband to consider his proposal yet again, but added characteristically that if God asked it of her, she would make the sacrifice-and with all her heart.

Gradually Cornelia discovered her own vocation to be a Religious. In 1845 Pierce was ordained in Rome. Cornelia, hoping to join the Society of the Sacred Heart, went with two of her children to stay with the sisters in Rome, but finding no peace there, she prayed to know God's desires for her. These were made clear in a request from Pope Gregory XVI that she go to England.


In 1846 Mother Cornelia and three companions arrived in Derby and the Society of the Holy Child began. To her great sorrow she was ordered to send her children away to boarding schools. Many other deprivations filled her Society's small beginning, yet a spirit of joy and peace prevailed; Mother Cornelia was able to inspire in her sisters something of her own serenity in adversity.

Soon they were running schools for the poor, holding day, night and Sunday classes to accommodate the young factory workers, giving retreats and helping in the parish.

As her Society grew and its works flourished, great personal suffering again came to Mother Cornelia through Pierce. He renounced both his priesthood and his Catholic faith, removed their three children from the schools they were attending and denied her all contact with them, hoping thus to force her to return to him as his wife. He even pressed a lawsuit against her that gained notoriety in England, but he eventually lost the case.


In this suffering, Venerable Cornelia clung steadfastly to God, her strength. She wrote in her notebook, “I belong all to God,” and this total belonging freed her to give herself to others. Her love for God grew and she sought joyfully to live her life as one continuous act of love. The mystery of God embracing all that is human was the foundation of her charism.

Venerable Cornelia Connelly died in 1879, at St. Leonards-on-Sea, Sussex and was proclaimed Venerable in 1992.

Today, there are Sisters of the Holy Child Jesus in fifteen countries, living the apostolic life as Venerable Cornelia did, seeking  to meet the needs of our age through works of spiritual mercy. They are engaged in educational and related spiritual and pastoral ministries.

Ursuline Convent, New Orleans